The weather continues to be an assmonkey. I've had so much trouble breathing today. I'm a little shocked I actually managed to put away laundry and stuff. In any event, hopefully this hangover from the hurricane will soon pass and we can go back to normal end of summer weather. I'd really like for it to start getting colder. That would make me quite happy.
Despite the breathing issues, today was a fairly happy day. My slow climb up the mountain of better health is still moving forward. I accomplished some physical things I'd not been able to do before. Small things, but still important to me.
My roommate and I have been talking a lot about how when one is losing weight, every little accomplishment should be acknowledged and celebrated. If you just look at your endgame, you won't enjoy all the little tasks and goals and victories along the way. One of the most profound statements I ever read was that happiness is not a finite resource. You don't have to WAIT to be happy until the end of your quest. You can be happy at every little gain. In the end, you'll still get to be happy about reaching your goal. Being happy along the way will not diminish that.
Speaking of my roommate, his birthday is tomorrow. He reads my blog so I thought I would end this post by wishing him a happy birthday and hoping his year is full of more happiness.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
The Zombie Politic
Back during the 80s, there was this kind of sensationalized genre of media that dealt with the theme of massive social dedication to causes . . . usually these causes being governments of the Communist kind. You would see this a lot. People in uniform, their souls and identity stripped down to the basics of just living for the State.
As a kid in America, this idea was considered about as horrible and offensive as things could get. We were the Home of the Free, after all. We celebrated the individual (as long as they weren't TOO individual) and would never allow ourselves to become mindless drones for the State. This worked, actually. A lot of us grew up with a profound jaded indifference to the State, one that the government continually reinforced by sucking.
Now here we are in another election year, and I find myself less able to think about politics and how it applies to more and more about how well they are able to present themselves. Which party is doing the less idiotic job of gaining voters? Which party is able to comfort their base while at the same time reaching out to those outside of it? I'm kind of guessing it will be neither.
If you read the blog, you certainly know I care about many political issues. I want people to have the right to marry whomever they want. I want people to be in control of their own bodies. I want people to be able to protect themselves, have stable jobs, and stable communities.
It's just that I don't TRUST politicians to help me with the issues I care about. It seems like half of them have better things to do and the other half think my ideas are somehow evil. None of them appear to be working for a kind of mutual common good. They all seem to be far more interested in the next speech, the next election, and winning at whatever cost.
So politicians will have their conventions. They'll do their songs and dances. They'll spend insane amounts of money and get people all emotional about them. At the end of the day, part of the people in the country will be happy. Some of them will feel like they somehow got cheated. The rest of us will just breath a sigh of relief that the whole thing is over for a while.
As a kid in America, this idea was considered about as horrible and offensive as things could get. We were the Home of the Free, after all. We celebrated the individual (as long as they weren't TOO individual) and would never allow ourselves to become mindless drones for the State. This worked, actually. A lot of us grew up with a profound jaded indifference to the State, one that the government continually reinforced by sucking.
Now here we are in another election year, and I find myself less able to think about politics and how it applies to more and more about how well they are able to present themselves. Which party is doing the less idiotic job of gaining voters? Which party is able to comfort their base while at the same time reaching out to those outside of it? I'm kind of guessing it will be neither.
If you read the blog, you certainly know I care about many political issues. I want people to have the right to marry whomever they want. I want people to be in control of their own bodies. I want people to be able to protect themselves, have stable jobs, and stable communities.
It's just that I don't TRUST politicians to help me with the issues I care about. It seems like half of them have better things to do and the other half think my ideas are somehow evil. None of them appear to be working for a kind of mutual common good. They all seem to be far more interested in the next speech, the next election, and winning at whatever cost.
So politicians will have their conventions. They'll do their songs and dances. They'll spend insane amounts of money and get people all emotional about them. At the end of the day, part of the people in the country will be happy. Some of them will feel like they somehow got cheated. The rest of us will just breath a sigh of relief that the whole thing is over for a while.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
This Deep
I am unaccountably depressed right now. I'm qualifying that because I quite often stay depressed, but right now, it's deeper than usual. It feels like it's in my bone marrow and I'm not quite sure how to alter it. Sometimes with depression, you just have to ride it out. At least, when it gets this deep.
Depression like this is very isolating. I feel so out of sorts with people. I feel like all conversations are disjointed and slightly off. I'm having trouble talking to people. Quite often when I do talk to them, I come to the end of the conversation with a need to cry. That isn't to say that anything in the conversation itself warranted tears . . . but that hardly matters when it's this deep.
I can't sleep. I go to bed and just lay there for hours. When I'm anxious, I'll lay in bed with my mind racing, full of worry and agitation. Eventually, I can calm myself down from it and I will sleep. When I'm really depressed, my mind does nothing. I just lay there like my ability to sleep is caught in a vice. It's like my body forgets how to sleep and it scares me. So I stay up later, which is exhausting, but at least easier than laying in bed and nothing happening forever. Eventually, I finally do sleep, but it takes forever. I get to where I dread nights in my bed when the depression is this deep.
When you're this depressed, you have trouble with the things you love. I'm having trouble writing my blog. It's hard to find my creativity. It's hard to find anything amusing or fun. It's hard to remember how to just let my thoughts flow and do what they need to do. Instead I sit here staring at a blank blog. I stare at a blank word processing document. And I doubt everything I write. I think it all sounds stupid and pointless. I doubt my talent and my abilities. I doubt everything when the depression is too deep.
I'm writing this because I know I'm not the only person who gets this way. I'm pretty sure someone may even read this one night at four in the morning when their depression is so deep sleep is just GONE from them as well. And if you do, know it's okay. Remember that sometimes the depth of the depression is so so deep that you feel like you can never climb out of it.
You do climb out though. You do. We always do. It just takes some time and a little faith in the idea that things can pass.
Depression like this is very isolating. I feel so out of sorts with people. I feel like all conversations are disjointed and slightly off. I'm having trouble talking to people. Quite often when I do talk to them, I come to the end of the conversation with a need to cry. That isn't to say that anything in the conversation itself warranted tears . . . but that hardly matters when it's this deep.
I can't sleep. I go to bed and just lay there for hours. When I'm anxious, I'll lay in bed with my mind racing, full of worry and agitation. Eventually, I can calm myself down from it and I will sleep. When I'm really depressed, my mind does nothing. I just lay there like my ability to sleep is caught in a vice. It's like my body forgets how to sleep and it scares me. So I stay up later, which is exhausting, but at least easier than laying in bed and nothing happening forever. Eventually, I finally do sleep, but it takes forever. I get to where I dread nights in my bed when the depression is this deep.
When you're this depressed, you have trouble with the things you love. I'm having trouble writing my blog. It's hard to find my creativity. It's hard to find anything amusing or fun. It's hard to remember how to just let my thoughts flow and do what they need to do. Instead I sit here staring at a blank blog. I stare at a blank word processing document. And I doubt everything I write. I think it all sounds stupid and pointless. I doubt my talent and my abilities. I doubt everything when the depression is too deep.
I'm writing this because I know I'm not the only person who gets this way. I'm pretty sure someone may even read this one night at four in the morning when their depression is so deep sleep is just GONE from them as well. And if you do, know it's okay. Remember that sometimes the depth of the depression is so so deep that you feel like you can never climb out of it.
You do climb out though. You do. We always do. It just takes some time and a little faith in the idea that things can pass.
Pleasing Others and Why You Shouldn't
Gossip Girl is taking its time to hit Netflix and I was in the mood for something at about that level. To sate this mood, I started watching Pretty Little Liars. The show is what I expected it to be and I'm happy about that, though it does have its moments of depth. In fact, it has its moments of truths.
In one of the early episodes, Toby and Emily are talking about peer pressure and bullies. Toby tells her that the bullies don't want you to change and be more like them. They want you to go away. If there is any true line in any show, it is this. The people who dislike you will not start liking you because you jump through their hoops to please them. They're just going to think they have control over you.
I watched this episode a bit after I'd read this article discussing why a girl had plastic surgery to make people stop teasing her. The article makes a lot of good points about how we should reframe our ideas about attractiveness and self-esteem, but if you look in the comments, you see the same thing repeated over and over again. "Now the bullies will know they've won. They will never leave her alone."
There are times, of course, when it is important to live up to people's expectations. Those times involve work. You need to meet performance levels. You need to look a certain way at your job. Every job has its own type of uniform, even if that uniform is full out drag queen dress. Meeting expectations and standards at a job (or to fulfill a requirement of a class) are distinctive in two ways.
In the cases mentioned above, conforming to a certain standard is acceptable. In life, around people, especially when you are being bullied or pressured into it, it is not only unacceptable to conform, it's also futile. There is no reward because they won't stop their treatment of you. There is no time limit, because if you let people begin to chip away at who you are, that will never stop. Worst of all, there will be no end to their demands. Once they start seeing how well you jump, they will keep asking you to go higher and higher and higher.
There will be times when knowing this is the most horrible thing in the world, especially when you are surrounded by the people who are treating you like crap. There is also a lot of freedom in it. If you know you really can't please these people no matter what, it affords you the chance to stop trying. It allows you the option of spending your energy in other ways, like devising strategies for handling them and looking for ways to get them out of your life.
Getting them out of your life is the most important thing you can do.
Look, I know how cliched it is to tell people to be themselves. It's one of the slogans of the modern age and something that probably holds as much weight as any other empty bit of advice people will give you. We pay it so little attention any more that we tend to forget how true it really is, how vital.
Perhaps it's best to put it this way. In any given situation, you have to weigh your actions, thoughts, and emotions. If people are impacting you in a negative way and they don't fulfill the three requirements I listed above in my happy little bullet points, then you need to truly consider if they are worth your time and effort. Yes, if you are stuck in a geographical situation with them, it may not be possible to remove yourself physically from the situation. In that case, your best bet is emotionally removing yourself.
Nothing hurts a bully like indifference.
In one of the early episodes, Toby and Emily are talking about peer pressure and bullies. Toby tells her that the bullies don't want you to change and be more like them. They want you to go away. If there is any true line in any show, it is this. The people who dislike you will not start liking you because you jump through their hoops to please them. They're just going to think they have control over you.
I watched this episode a bit after I'd read this article discussing why a girl had plastic surgery to make people stop teasing her. The article makes a lot of good points about how we should reframe our ideas about attractiveness and self-esteem, but if you look in the comments, you see the same thing repeated over and over again. "Now the bullies will know they've won. They will never leave her alone."
There are times, of course, when it is important to live up to people's expectations. Those times involve work. You need to meet performance levels. You need to look a certain way at your job. Every job has its own type of uniform, even if that uniform is full out drag queen dress. Meeting expectations and standards at a job (or to fulfill a requirement of a class) are distinctive in two ways.
- 1. There is compensation for meeting the requirements. You get paid/get a good grade.
- 2. There is a time limit. You only work for so many hours. Classes only last so long.
- 3. (and this one is the most important) Once you meet the requirements, no other higher levels of requirements can be set. Now, I know this doesn't always apply when one is working. Some bosses are demanding fucks who keep upping the standards. When that is the case, it's best to leave the job as soon as possible.
In the cases mentioned above, conforming to a certain standard is acceptable. In life, around people, especially when you are being bullied or pressured into it, it is not only unacceptable to conform, it's also futile. There is no reward because they won't stop their treatment of you. There is no time limit, because if you let people begin to chip away at who you are, that will never stop. Worst of all, there will be no end to their demands. Once they start seeing how well you jump, they will keep asking you to go higher and higher and higher.
There will be times when knowing this is the most horrible thing in the world, especially when you are surrounded by the people who are treating you like crap. There is also a lot of freedom in it. If you know you really can't please these people no matter what, it affords you the chance to stop trying. It allows you the option of spending your energy in other ways, like devising strategies for handling them and looking for ways to get them out of your life.
Getting them out of your life is the most important thing you can do.
Look, I know how cliched it is to tell people to be themselves. It's one of the slogans of the modern age and something that probably holds as much weight as any other empty bit of advice people will give you. We pay it so little attention any more that we tend to forget how true it really is, how vital.
Perhaps it's best to put it this way. In any given situation, you have to weigh your actions, thoughts, and emotions. If people are impacting you in a negative way and they don't fulfill the three requirements I listed above in my happy little bullet points, then you need to truly consider if they are worth your time and effort. Yes, if you are stuck in a geographical situation with them, it may not be possible to remove yourself physically from the situation. In that case, your best bet is emotionally removing yourself.
Nothing hurts a bully like indifference.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Mugginess
Ermergerd, it is so muggy out right now. It's been threatening to rain for days, but nothing has come of it other than air as thick as soup and just nasty hot wetness. This totally sucks because it's not quite hot enough to turn on the AC, but it's so completely humid that it stays in this constant state of uncomfortable. I hates it forever.
The mugginess makes me not want to do anything at all. It's why I didn't write a post last night. I seriously just though, 'I should write, but it's muggy so no.' It's really oppressive and bad. It makes me wish I lived in some nice climate controlled house so I didn't have to seethingly hate the world right now.
Though I know I shouldn't bitch so much. I'm sitting here in Oklahoma, far away and safe from the hurricane that is brewing. I won't be affected by in any way other than just this humidity. I have nothing to fear from it. For this, I am grateful.
Not for the mugginess though. No one should be grateful for that.
The mugginess makes me not want to do anything at all. It's why I didn't write a post last night. I seriously just though, 'I should write, but it's muggy so no.' It's really oppressive and bad. It makes me wish I lived in some nice climate controlled house so I didn't have to seethingly hate the world right now.
Though I know I shouldn't bitch so much. I'm sitting here in Oklahoma, far away and safe from the hurricane that is brewing. I won't be affected by in any way other than just this humidity. I have nothing to fear from it. For this, I am grateful.
Not for the mugginess though. No one should be grateful for that.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
A Personal Reflection on Consumerism
Lately I've been thinking a lot about my consumerist tendencies and how they have shaped my thinking over the years. I'm not surprised by them. I've grown up in a culture where consumerism is touted as the means to solve just about every one of our problems. Our system is so completely geared towards this, that most of the time, we can't even think of ways around it.
I'm poor though, and even though I plan on one day not being so poor, I do plan on trying to live as frugally as possible. With this in mind, I've been trying to examine how consumerism has shaped my thoughts and actions. I'm not really doing this as a denouncement of our culture as a whole. It is what it is, as they say. This is more of a personal thing.
Honestly, it's not even overt consumerism that bothers me so much. For instance, I play Sims. Sims is a stupid addiction to virtual dolls who can have babies. Occasionally, they come out with expansion packs that make the whole thing even more expensive. It also gives me an easy thing to ask for during the holidays. It's my playtime and diversion and I'm not going to feel bad about it.
I'm talking about the deeper levels of consumerism. Capricorns are, by nature, very materialistic. We think in cold, calculating business kinds of ways. For instance, if I was ever dating someone rich and their parents offered me a million dollars to leave them, I would leave them in a heartbeat. After all, relationships usually don't last. I could do a lot with a million dollars. And yes, I realize how horrible that sounds. It's practical though.
What isn't so practical is when it comes to feeding spiritual needs with consumerism. That kind of 'if you throw money at the emptiness inside you, you'll eventually feel better.' I think this is the deepest, more despairing pitfall of how consumerism can screw us. And I have such a great personal example of this.
When I first started to explore paganism, I set up a shrine to Kali in my apartment. I would offer up flowers to wilt and sing to it. I kind of had no idea what I was doing. Eventually, I realized she probably wasn't that interested in wilting flowers and opted to stop.
Then I found a pagan book store. It was seriously the coolest place my little early twenties self had ever seen. I started using whatever spare cash I had to buy things. I would buy pendants of the goddess and crystals and wall hangings with fringe on them. I would buy candles and tarot packs and aroma therapy stuff.
Most of all, I would buy books. I bought books over Norse traditions and Irish traditions and fairy traditions and feminist traditions and Starhawk and just about anything else that struck me as very important to me. I felt so damned good about myself and my new religion.
But notice what my actions towards paganism amounted to here. I BOUGHT stuff. I spent three years deciding to walk away from the religion of my childhood and explore something that I felt would be more to how I saw the truth. My way of walking down this new life path was to . . . buy a bunch of shit.
I wasn't BEING a pagan. I was BEING what I had always been, a child of consumerism. I just happened to be purchasing pagan books now instead of obsessing over which bible cover would make me look the most devout. Buying a bunch of shit as a way to be a good pagan was about as counterproductive as buying a bunch of shit to be a good Christian. I had actually been better off giving wilting flowers to Kali than this nonsense.
This was one of those life lessons that I'm glad I caught in the midst of it happening, but I'm still really disheartened that it did happen. I learned a lot from it, but at the same time, I think it kind of stalled a lot of any kind of spiritual exploration I might have been doing. It's taken me a long time to even really feel emotionally ready TO consider that kind of stuff again. Even now I'm kind of hesitant. I just don't want to fall into the same traps.
The biggest trap is the high, you know? We are so conditioned to be happy when we spend money, that I honestly truly felt like a great little pagan when I would buy stuff. I felt like I was supporting the cause and helping other like minded people and learning stuff. Because, you know when you buy a book, you automatically know all the crap that is in it.
I suppose it's been good for me to learn this. It's helped me to be more critical about my choices to spend money on self-improvements. When I set up my steps, I found the idea of only spending around two dollars per paver be about where I needed to be on the project. Better than some super expensive thing that would probably break.
I know where a lot of this comes from for me. When I was a kid, you know I tended to feel pretty powerless. I was also very poor. Like most poor kids, I mistakenly believed that having more money would make my problems disappear. Some of them would have disappeared, but not all of them. Money became power to me. And any time I had some in my hands, I felt like I had this moment of being able to alter my circumstances, even if it was only for a few seconds.
The way our society is structured, yes, money can change a lot of things. It can't change everything though. THAT is the part I need to keep in mind.
I'm poor though, and even though I plan on one day not being so poor, I do plan on trying to live as frugally as possible. With this in mind, I've been trying to examine how consumerism has shaped my thoughts and actions. I'm not really doing this as a denouncement of our culture as a whole. It is what it is, as they say. This is more of a personal thing.
Honestly, it's not even overt consumerism that bothers me so much. For instance, I play Sims. Sims is a stupid addiction to virtual dolls who can have babies. Occasionally, they come out with expansion packs that make the whole thing even more expensive. It also gives me an easy thing to ask for during the holidays. It's my playtime and diversion and I'm not going to feel bad about it.
I'm talking about the deeper levels of consumerism. Capricorns are, by nature, very materialistic. We think in cold, calculating business kinds of ways. For instance, if I was ever dating someone rich and their parents offered me a million dollars to leave them, I would leave them in a heartbeat. After all, relationships usually don't last. I could do a lot with a million dollars. And yes, I realize how horrible that sounds. It's practical though.
What isn't so practical is when it comes to feeding spiritual needs with consumerism. That kind of 'if you throw money at the emptiness inside you, you'll eventually feel better.' I think this is the deepest, more despairing pitfall of how consumerism can screw us. And I have such a great personal example of this.
When I first started to explore paganism, I set up a shrine to Kali in my apartment. I would offer up flowers to wilt and sing to it. I kind of had no idea what I was doing. Eventually, I realized she probably wasn't that interested in wilting flowers and opted to stop.
Then I found a pagan book store. It was seriously the coolest place my little early twenties self had ever seen. I started using whatever spare cash I had to buy things. I would buy pendants of the goddess and crystals and wall hangings with fringe on them. I would buy candles and tarot packs and aroma therapy stuff.
Most of all, I would buy books. I bought books over Norse traditions and Irish traditions and fairy traditions and feminist traditions and Starhawk and just about anything else that struck me as very important to me. I felt so damned good about myself and my new religion.
But notice what my actions towards paganism amounted to here. I BOUGHT stuff. I spent three years deciding to walk away from the religion of my childhood and explore something that I felt would be more to how I saw the truth. My way of walking down this new life path was to . . . buy a bunch of shit.
I wasn't BEING a pagan. I was BEING what I had always been, a child of consumerism. I just happened to be purchasing pagan books now instead of obsessing over which bible cover would make me look the most devout. Buying a bunch of shit as a way to be a good pagan was about as counterproductive as buying a bunch of shit to be a good Christian. I had actually been better off giving wilting flowers to Kali than this nonsense.
This was one of those life lessons that I'm glad I caught in the midst of it happening, but I'm still really disheartened that it did happen. I learned a lot from it, but at the same time, I think it kind of stalled a lot of any kind of spiritual exploration I might have been doing. It's taken me a long time to even really feel emotionally ready TO consider that kind of stuff again. Even now I'm kind of hesitant. I just don't want to fall into the same traps.
The biggest trap is the high, you know? We are so conditioned to be happy when we spend money, that I honestly truly felt like a great little pagan when I would buy stuff. I felt like I was supporting the cause and helping other like minded people and learning stuff. Because, you know when you buy a book, you automatically know all the crap that is in it.
I suppose it's been good for me to learn this. It's helped me to be more critical about my choices to spend money on self-improvements. When I set up my steps, I found the idea of only spending around two dollars per paver be about where I needed to be on the project. Better than some super expensive thing that would probably break.
I know where a lot of this comes from for me. When I was a kid, you know I tended to feel pretty powerless. I was also very poor. Like most poor kids, I mistakenly believed that having more money would make my problems disappear. Some of them would have disappeared, but not all of them. Money became power to me. And any time I had some in my hands, I felt like I had this moment of being able to alter my circumstances, even if it was only for a few seconds.
The way our society is structured, yes, money can change a lot of things. It can't change everything though. THAT is the part I need to keep in mind.
End of Summer and the End of Crazytime
Okay, she was never a totally sane cat. She's always had her issues. She has lots of quirks. For instance, she sits on the litter box. Not in it, thank heaven, but on top of it. We have no idea how she can handle the smell. She also refuses to stick her tongue in the water bowl. She'll scoop water with her front paw and take it to her mouth. This usually makes quite a mess.
Anyway, during the summer, Rhiannon disappears. She goes under my bed and only comes out to tend to her basic kitty needs and when I vacuum under there. Aside from this, she is under there. We suppose her logic is that she is hiding from summer. It doesn't work that well, as under my bed is hot. Then again, one of the other cats tries to sit on us when he's hot. We suspect he confuses his 'sit on humans and get cooler' with the 'sit on humans and get warm' tactic that works during the winter.
There are nights when she will come out from under the bed and try to be social. She'll stand in my doorway and look at us. She might meow a couple of times or take a few steps towards us. However, if we pay too much attention to her, she runs back under the bed.
I think the cool thing about cats is even at their most crazy, they're still very adorable. It's so cute to watch how she'll give us the 'not all there' eyes and make strange little barking sounds at us. Although, I have to admit, it's not that fun when she's in crazymode and we have to give her a bath or deal with fleas. She urinates when she panics and has on more than one occasion clawed me quite badly.
It's starting to cool down though, which means there will soon be an end to the crazy. Once she has decided the hot weather is gone, she always comes out to be more social. In fact, on colder mornings, she's even spent some time sleeping on me. I don't really like being shocked awake by cat claws kneading me, but I guess I'll take what I can get.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Unknotting the Knots- Within- Knots Knots
I think for the moment, I'm going to stop with the School Daze posts. Delving into my past has been instructional and purging for me, but I think I need to take a break from it for a while. There is only so much of one's past vulnerabilities one can face at at time. I know I made progress though and progress in one area is always beneficial to all aspects of your life.
Sometimes I look at being alive the same way I look at those fifteen chords that are all twisted into a knot behind my computer. I'm one of those people who would really benefit from being completely wireless. Every chord I own is probably in that knot behind my computer, just finding new ways to twist and twist. T think there are even a couple of headphone chords back there.
The knot looks just about impossible to unravel. Quite often when you see a knot like that, you don't even know where to begin. Over the years, because I have so many, MANY damned knots I have to deal with, I've come up with some strategies.
1. Don't waste time trying to figure out where to begin. When it comes to knots (and life problems), one of the best ways to procrastinate is to sit around trying to plot the perfect place to begin to fix things. This is such a wickedly lovely deception, because you really do feel like you're being productive. You're not. You're just stressing yourself out and delaying.
Instead of doing this, just PICK a place to start working. You're a logical person. You will see have a fairly good idea where the knot is the easiest to manipulate. Begin there. You might have to start over a few times, but doing SOMETHING to fix the problem is better than doing nothing.
2. Unplug where you can. One of the tricky things about knotted up computer chords is that quite often they have no free ends. They are connected into things (which always makes me wonder how in the hell they got twisted in the first place) and being connected makes it impossible to unravel them. Now, there are some connections you can't undo (usually in my case this is because the chord is connected in some tricked up fashion and will fall into some abyss where I can never reach it if I let it go), but most of them CAN be severed, at least until the chords are undone.
The same is true for life's problems. When you are trying to fix whatever mess your life is in, there will be times when you have to 'unplug' from your connections. This may be over someone draining you too much when you're trying to grow emotionally or from someone who takes up too much of your time when you're trying to study and make a better life for yourself. For a while, it might be best to not have these people around. It may hurt their feelings and you may lose some of them in the process, but if it comes down to your mental and emotional well being, if they are a true friend, they will understand that the break is needed.
Oh, and remember this separation doesn't have to be forever. Once the chords are organized, you do plug them back into their respective devices.
3. If you take some time every day to undo the twists in the chords, the massive knots won't come back. I think I have the hardest time with this one. I know it's true, but maintenance can be a bitch. However, if you make it part of your routine to just turn things around and see that everything is still unraveled, you will save yourself the time and cussing it takes to do it once it's a big mess.
Again, I have the hardest time with this one in my every day life. I know that if I take some time every day to just let my emotions shift away from me, if I purposefully make sure to direct my thoughts towards happier and more pleasurable things, that I will have an overall better outlook in life. Like I said, I KNOW this. I just don't always do it.
So yes, life is like the big chaos of chords behind my computer. A mess of tangled stuff that is FIXABLE, but time consuming. It doesn't have to be SO time consuming if you allot for a bit of time each day to make sure the tangles don't come back. But when they do, don't worry about where to start fixing them, just DO fix them. Eventually, you'll be living in a knotfree world.
Sometimes I look at being alive the same way I look at those fifteen chords that are all twisted into a knot behind my computer. I'm one of those people who would really benefit from being completely wireless. Every chord I own is probably in that knot behind my computer, just finding new ways to twist and twist. T think there are even a couple of headphone chords back there.
The knot looks just about impossible to unravel. Quite often when you see a knot like that, you don't even know where to begin. Over the years, because I have so many, MANY damned knots I have to deal with, I've come up with some strategies.
1. Don't waste time trying to figure out where to begin. When it comes to knots (and life problems), one of the best ways to procrastinate is to sit around trying to plot the perfect place to begin to fix things. This is such a wickedly lovely deception, because you really do feel like you're being productive. You're not. You're just stressing yourself out and delaying.
Instead of doing this, just PICK a place to start working. You're a logical person. You will see have a fairly good idea where the knot is the easiest to manipulate. Begin there. You might have to start over a few times, but doing SOMETHING to fix the problem is better than doing nothing.
2. Unplug where you can. One of the tricky things about knotted up computer chords is that quite often they have no free ends. They are connected into things (which always makes me wonder how in the hell they got twisted in the first place) and being connected makes it impossible to unravel them. Now, there are some connections you can't undo (usually in my case this is because the chord is connected in some tricked up fashion and will fall into some abyss where I can never reach it if I let it go), but most of them CAN be severed, at least until the chords are undone.
The same is true for life's problems. When you are trying to fix whatever mess your life is in, there will be times when you have to 'unplug' from your connections. This may be over someone draining you too much when you're trying to grow emotionally or from someone who takes up too much of your time when you're trying to study and make a better life for yourself. For a while, it might be best to not have these people around. It may hurt their feelings and you may lose some of them in the process, but if it comes down to your mental and emotional well being, if they are a true friend, they will understand that the break is needed.
Oh, and remember this separation doesn't have to be forever. Once the chords are organized, you do plug them back into their respective devices.
3. If you take some time every day to undo the twists in the chords, the massive knots won't come back. I think I have the hardest time with this one. I know it's true, but maintenance can be a bitch. However, if you make it part of your routine to just turn things around and see that everything is still unraveled, you will save yourself the time and cussing it takes to do it once it's a big mess.
Again, I have the hardest time with this one in my every day life. I know that if I take some time every day to just let my emotions shift away from me, if I purposefully make sure to direct my thoughts towards happier and more pleasurable things, that I will have an overall better outlook in life. Like I said, I KNOW this. I just don't always do it.
So yes, life is like the big chaos of chords behind my computer. A mess of tangled stuff that is FIXABLE, but time consuming. It doesn't have to be SO time consuming if you allot for a bit of time each day to make sure the tangles don't come back. But when they do, don't worry about where to start fixing them, just DO fix them. Eventually, you'll be living in a knotfree world.
The Use of the Self Edit
Self editing. It's something I've had to learn. Restraint. Consideration before one speaks or types. A long, healthy projection of the consequences. It's good to have these. Assuming, of course, that you are aware that your thoughts and actions will have consequences. Maybe there are a lot of people out there who don't realize this. You should.
I know I have used this example before, but it works quite well.
I have cats and one of the big drawbacks to cats is that they are prone to puking. A cat will walk into the room, do a strange spasmy dance, then puke all over your floor/chair/shirt/or, sometimes, you. Once the cat has puked, it walks away like nothing happened. Well, okay, most of the time, the cat walks away, spasms again, and pukes more, but you get the idea. Once the cat has vomited, it no longer cares that the vomit is there. It's out of its system and that is all that matters.
The problem is, you as the owner of the cat still have to deal with the mess. It's this gross, festering nastiness on your floor/chair/shirt/you that you really can't ignore because it is way too gross. You have to clean it up. Now, if the cat possessed the ability to speak, it might tell you it was sorry for puking, but . . . that matters very little because it still walked away and you still have to clean it up.
When we are not calm and rational, most often what we say, do, and type is cat puke. We let loose with this huge nasty gross mess of verbage, everything we can to get it out of our system. Once our ranting is over, we feel better and we walk away.
However, like with the cat, we have left a mess.
As kind of a general rule, whenever you feel a lot of emotions about something in a negative way and you want to say or type many things about this, I want you to realize that you are basically vomiting on your audience/readers/friends/other loved ones. You are spewing all of your negativity onto them and leaving them with this barrage of emotional garbage once you're fine and decide to walk away.
I am completely guilty of this. In fact, there were some years when I was in more desperate straits that this was all I did. I just vomited up all the sadness and depression and bitterness onto other people. There have been times when I was so emotional about issues here on the blog that I just typed up a bunch of cat puke. I should actually probably go and delete those.
Thankfully I CAN delete them because they were just written and not spoken to someone. The things you say to people or yell at people or scream at people, those things can never be deleted. They stay with that person, slowly covering them on more and more emotional vomit until they finally drown under it. That's about the time this person decides they can no longer handle you. Ever again.
Unlike the cats though, we as humans have choices. We can choose NOT to allow our emotions to control us. We can choose NOT to verbalize every slight and scream about how unjust things are. And I'm not saying to bottle up all your emotions. You should certainly acknowledge them, but in a calm and respectful manner that doesn't make the situation worse for everyone. All that is going to accomplish is that everyone avoids you.
I'm writing about this because I've been intensely, almost insanely emotional about the latest GOP comments about rape. I find their comments to be laughably inaccurate and it scares me to no end that people elected them to hold office and make decisions for our country. I'm not even sure how that could happen. The whole thing makes me so heartsick I want to just go hide in the woods.
Because I am trying to NOT give in to my emotional triggers, I did not send off the crazyangry emails I wrote them. I did not scream about this on Facebook. I also, other than just this part here, did not blog about it for days and days and days. Although, believe me. I could have.
It's actually been difficult to NOT give in to my emotions on this issue. I've wanted to, OH how I've wanted to, but in the end, it wouldn't have helped anyone or educated anyone or changed anyone's mind. That isn't to say there aren't statements and arguments I could make about the issue that wouldn't change it. There are. It's just that when you're too emotional about an issue, your communication abilities get very, very low. You stop making valid points and mostly just say, "Hey, look at me, I'm a crazy angry person" over and over again. I'd really rather not be the crazy angry person.
So once I am more calm about the GOP and why we really should have never stopped sex education in schools, I'll blog about it. Of course, by that point, no one else will be talking about it so it won't feel important. Hah.
I know I have used this example before, but it works quite well.
I have cats and one of the big drawbacks to cats is that they are prone to puking. A cat will walk into the room, do a strange spasmy dance, then puke all over your floor/chair/shirt/or, sometimes, you. Once the cat has puked, it walks away like nothing happened. Well, okay, most of the time, the cat walks away, spasms again, and pukes more, but you get the idea. Once the cat has vomited, it no longer cares that the vomit is there. It's out of its system and that is all that matters.
The problem is, you as the owner of the cat still have to deal with the mess. It's this gross, festering nastiness on your floor/chair/shirt/you that you really can't ignore because it is way too gross. You have to clean it up. Now, if the cat possessed the ability to speak, it might tell you it was sorry for puking, but . . . that matters very little because it still walked away and you still have to clean it up.
When we are not calm and rational, most often what we say, do, and type is cat puke. We let loose with this huge nasty gross mess of verbage, everything we can to get it out of our system. Once our ranting is over, we feel better and we walk away.
However, like with the cat, we have left a mess.
As kind of a general rule, whenever you feel a lot of emotions about something in a negative way and you want to say or type many things about this, I want you to realize that you are basically vomiting on your audience/readers/friends/other loved ones. You are spewing all of your negativity onto them and leaving them with this barrage of emotional garbage once you're fine and decide to walk away.
I am completely guilty of this. In fact, there were some years when I was in more desperate straits that this was all I did. I just vomited up all the sadness and depression and bitterness onto other people. There have been times when I was so emotional about issues here on the blog that I just typed up a bunch of cat puke. I should actually probably go and delete those.
Thankfully I CAN delete them because they were just written and not spoken to someone. The things you say to people or yell at people or scream at people, those things can never be deleted. They stay with that person, slowly covering them on more and more emotional vomit until they finally drown under it. That's about the time this person decides they can no longer handle you. Ever again.
Unlike the cats though, we as humans have choices. We can choose NOT to allow our emotions to control us. We can choose NOT to verbalize every slight and scream about how unjust things are. And I'm not saying to bottle up all your emotions. You should certainly acknowledge them, but in a calm and respectful manner that doesn't make the situation worse for everyone. All that is going to accomplish is that everyone avoids you.
I'm writing about this because I've been intensely, almost insanely emotional about the latest GOP comments about rape. I find their comments to be laughably inaccurate and it scares me to no end that people elected them to hold office and make decisions for our country. I'm not even sure how that could happen. The whole thing makes me so heartsick I want to just go hide in the woods.
Because I am trying to NOT give in to my emotional triggers, I did not send off the crazyangry emails I wrote them. I did not scream about this on Facebook. I also, other than just this part here, did not blog about it for days and days and days. Although, believe me. I could have.
It's actually been difficult to NOT give in to my emotions on this issue. I've wanted to, OH how I've wanted to, but in the end, it wouldn't have helped anyone or educated anyone or changed anyone's mind. That isn't to say there aren't statements and arguments I could make about the issue that wouldn't change it. There are. It's just that when you're too emotional about an issue, your communication abilities get very, very low. You stop making valid points and mostly just say, "Hey, look at me, I'm a crazy angry person" over and over again. I'd really rather not be the crazy angry person.
So once I am more calm about the GOP and why we really should have never stopped sex education in schools, I'll blog about it. Of course, by that point, no one else will be talking about it so it won't feel important. Hah.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Hellday
While I was in the bathroom this morning, my roommate started calling out for me. All I heard was my name so I had no idea what he wanted. Once I was out, I noticed there were other people in the house. I wasn't too surprised by this because the internet people were supposed to be here to fix our internet. Hah.
You know, I'm still not sure on ALL the details of what happened. I know that somehow, the internet service got downgraded to what amounts to a crawl and I think it is possible we're being charged for digital cable. Possibly. I'm still not sure about that part.
Anyway, all together, my roommate, my landlord, and I have been on the phone with the internet company about ten times this morning. I have my speed back up, a modem has been replaced, the digital cable box that we didn't want/need/or ask for has been returned, and everyone is as exhausted and annoyed as they can be.
Really, I'm exasperated at this point. I think everyone is. The cable company is probably still charging us too much and I'm going to be looking for any possible alternative I can find. I'm just not sure what that will be at the moment.
You know, I'm still not sure on ALL the details of what happened. I know that somehow, the internet service got downgraded to what amounts to a crawl and I think it is possible we're being charged for digital cable. Possibly. I'm still not sure about that part.
Anyway, all together, my roommate, my landlord, and I have been on the phone with the internet company about ten times this morning. I have my speed back up, a modem has been replaced, the digital cable box that we didn't want/need/or ask for has been returned, and everyone is as exhausted and annoyed as they can be.
Really, I'm exasperated at this point. I think everyone is. The cable company is probably still charging us too much and I'm going to be looking for any possible alternative I can find. I'm just not sure what that will be at the moment.
Monday, August 20, 2012
School Daze: 4th Grade and Love
She needs you like she needs her tranqs
To tell her that the world is clean
To promise her a definition
Tell her where the rain will fall
Tell her where the sun shines bright
And tell her she can have it all
Today. Today.
"Alice" Sisters of Mercy
As much as I love the story of Labyrinth, for all of its David-Bowie-as-the-Goblin-King goodness, I really truly loathe the message of it. There is nothing that pisses me off that the 'oh little kid with the great imagination who lives in this great fantasy world needs to grow up and stop living in dream land.' Yeah, fuck you. For some of us, the world in our heads where the safest places. For some of us, they were how we survived.
In the identity post, I talked about how this is the age when I began to really define who I wanted to be and how I wanted my life to go. Hah. I also found that there were a lot of obstacles to this. However, I will always say the most important thing about fourth grade is that it is the time when I began to understand what I loved.
I'd always loved books and stories. I'd always liked fantasy and scifi stuff, but this is when I really began to love it as something that was a part of me. I would read as much of it as I could, devouring books like food, letting characters and places and magic legends fill me. They regenerated parts of me that I had lost during the years before, recreating my spirit and strength and whatever other intangible bits of me had died.
I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't see this as ideal. As I said, there is a whole fiction trope about how people shouldn't stay in fantasy land. Hmph. I think people who write that kind of thing are those darling creatures who never had to seek refuge in a foreign fictional land. The world around them must have been a nicer place than the ones in their heads. Awesome for them.
As I stumbled along through my fourth grade year, I most often did so in my head. I would talk to my friends, but I didn't get that close to any of them because I knew I would be leaving at the end of the year. I would interact with the adults when I had to. Most of the time though, I was off some where in my mind, completely detached from the world around me. I conspired with Morgan Le Fay (who was really the protagonist of the story) and wandered through the lost cites left by the Elves when they left this world.
This is how I survived, how I really found some joy. The other things I did, the moments of shutting down and the Secret Eating, that was all about just functioning from one moment to the next. It soothed me, but it didn't make me happy. But reading and drawing and writing, these things kept me happy. Books and music made all the difference in my life. And to this day, they are the two aspects of my life that have never hurt me, never drained me, and never betrayed me. Even now, they keep me hanging on.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
School Daze: 4th Grade and Broken Houses
As a hard and fast rule of life, this is how you should decide if someone stays around you. 1. Is this person a pleasure to be around. 2. If the answer to #1 is 'no,' then is this person useful?
If the answer to both questions is no, get rid of said person. No one should have to be around unpleasant people who serve no purpose.
My Second Stepfather (who will now very appropriately be called the SS)) was neither consistently pleasant nor useful. In fact, he is probably one of the least useful humans I have ever been around. The meager good qualities that I mentioned before were diminishing at a fast pace.
At the end of the first semester of school during my 4th grade year, I brought home grades that were all over the place. Some A's, a couple of B's a D, and the F in book reports. In no way did the bad grades reflect my intelligence. Actually, let's face it, grades NEVER reflect intelligence or even mastery of a subject. Grades reflect a student's ability to perform the required tasks that the teacher decided to use to measure the grades. That is ALL they reflect.
In this case, my teacher only marginally liked to give tests. She was far more concerned with homework assignments. For every subject during the day, we were given assignments to complete at home.
I could NOT work in the house. The atmosphere was just too toxic. My usual tactic for getting around this was to stop on my walk home and do the work. Sometimes I would sit on a rock fence, homework balanced on my Trapperkeeper. Sometimes I would stop at one of the small parks and work on assignments as I sat on a bench or in one of the swings.
On other occasions, I would go into a public restroom and hide in one of the stalls. I sit there for a couple of hours and work on my homework, trying to do my best to make sure no one noticed me, or at least that no one realized I was staying in there for so long.
I think if it had just been assignments I could do this way, I would have been okay. But my fourth grade teacher was into projects. She wanted us to bring things from home or build things or other bullshit and quite often that was just as damned impossible as trying to collect moon rocks or something.
For our social studies class, we were given an assignment to build a type of building from the past. I knew I needed to really knock this out of the park, because most of my 'projects had received less than favorable grades. I had a plan though and I knew it would be awesome.
I went to my convenience store and bought a bunch of boxes of sugar cubes and Elmer's Glue. I took an old flat piece of wood and began to build my castle. I knew the trick was just using small amounts of glue as to not melt the sugar. I did this, working on levels, doing my best to secure them.
Even though I hated working at home, I knew I had no choice with this project. So every night I would spend the better part of a couple of hours gluing my castle together. I even finished several days before it was due, which was good because it gave me time to let it dry. All of this, of course, was the easy part.
I remember the project was due on a Tuesday of the following week. I thought about how to approach this for several days before hand, almost asking quite a few times, but losing my nerve at the last moment. This is one of those things that really exemplifies how my life was. Here I was, a little kid, who needed something only the adults could provide. I felt so resented and unwanted in my situation that I was terrified to ask.
This was a big project though. The BIGGEST project of this first semester of school, so I had to ask. I remember walking into the living room where they were both watching TV. The SS was sprawled out on the couch and Mom was sitting in a chair near him. They didn't act like the noticed me and for a while, I just stood there, hoping they would. This continued for a while, until finally there was a commercial.
"Um . . ."
"What do you want?" The SS didn't even bother looking at me as he asked. As usual, my mother tended to not speak to us first, even though she was the real parent and she should have.
I shifted on my feet. "I have the castle and I need a ride to school on Tuesday."
"Your mother is working on Tuesday."
"Yeah, I know, but I was wondering . . .because we have the other car if maybe you could drive me on Tuesday?"
A minute or so passed by with no answer. I felt so horribly unwelcome that I almost just left. I worked so hard though, so I asked again. "I need a ride."
"You're supposed to walk to school because it will help you get over being so fay and lazy, " said the fattest, laziest man I had thusfar met in my life.
"I have to carry my castle and I don't think I can make it."
"Take the bus."
"I don't think I can get on the bus with the castle." I remember I was squirming so badly at this point I needed to urinate.
"You should have done something easier to carry." This was from my mother, who finally felt it was time for her to speak. Her voice had that nervous, angry edge to it that it always had when she felt like I was taking up too much . . . well, just too much anything. "Why didn't you THINK about that. You never THINK."
At this point, I started to cry. I had worked so hard on that project. I spent hours on it. I planned it out and I did my paper over it and glued and glued and glued for so many days. It looked good too and I knew it would be the best one. Why couldn't they see that? Why were they suddenly angry over this?
"Quit crying," the SS ordered. "I'll drive you on Tuesday."
"Yon don't HAVE TO," my mother said, because of course she would.
"No, no. It's FINE. Someone has to take her. and you will be at work."
"I could be late." I swear my mother had this perverse need to insure her husbands did as LITTLE in their lives as possible. It was almost like she believed if one of them actually put out effort, her hair would come out in clumps or something. "I'll just get her up early and drive her over to the school. She can wait there for a while." My mother had to be at work by seven and she lived an hour away. What she was suggesting involved me being at school two hours longer than needed. Remember it was starting to get cold by this point.
"Nope, that's okay. I'll take her." It was settled. I felt relieved about the whole thing, even though I also felt emotionally strung out by the process. I went to my room and actually relaxed for the rest of the weekend. I was even pretty calm on Monday.
Tuesday morning, my mom woke me up as she was leaving for work, as she always did. I took my bath and got ready. I fixed myself some cereal and waited for the SS to come waddling into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.
It never happened. I watched the clock, waiting for him to get up. He needed to be up soon so he could drive me. My fear grew by the second. After a while, I walked to their bedroom and sat down in the floor in front of the door, hoping he would hear me or at least that I could hear him awake. All I could hear was snoring. By this point, I was on the verge of tears again.
One of the first rules of the new living situation was that no one was allowed to wake the SS. He could sleep as long as he wished. While he was asleep, no one was allowed to make noise. No music, no TV, no screaming. IF you woke him, things would get very bad for you.
The project won over though. I stood and tapped on the door. I called out his name in a very small voice and told him we needed to go soon. The snoring stopped abruptly and I heard him curse. The bed creaked as he pulled himself off of it. I could hear him stomping across the room and considered running away, but then he flung the door open. His face was red with fury . . . and also red with the fact that it was always red because of his fatness.
"So you don't trust me?"
"I what?"
He yelled it this time, in that sarcastic, mildly amused at his own cruelty kind of way, "You don't trust me. YOU didn't think I was going to get up. I was awake. I was already awake."
"Okay . . ." He certainly was not awake. However, one of the many lessons kids in my situation learn is that you don't question the fucked up claims of reality from the adults.
"You just don't trust me. Well . . . fine. You walk to school."
"NO!"
He walked out of the room and pushed me against the wall. "Did you just tell me no? Did you say no to me?"
It was terrifying to have him so close to me. "I have to get to school. I have the castle and you promised."
He shook his head. "You need to learn respect. You're on your own. And you better hurry. It's a long walk to school."
He let me go and walked back into his room, slamming the door on the way. I stood there for a second in pure shock. I couldn't stand too long though. I had to walk to school and it was getting dangerously close to 8.
By the time I made it there, I was late. My project, unwieldy and too heavy for me to carry easily, was broken into pieces. I tried to tell my teacher it was "ruins" of a castle, but she wasn't buying it. I was told it was too destroyed for her to give it a grade, so that part of my assignment would be a 0. It sucked too, because my written part got an A. The project as a whole was a large part of our grade for that section.
One ride to school, one half hour of someone NOT being a complete asshole, and it could have made all the difference.
If the answer to both questions is no, get rid of said person. No one should have to be around unpleasant people who serve no purpose.
My Second Stepfather (who will now very appropriately be called the SS)) was neither consistently pleasant nor useful. In fact, he is probably one of the least useful humans I have ever been around. The meager good qualities that I mentioned before were diminishing at a fast pace.
At the end of the first semester of school during my 4th grade year, I brought home grades that were all over the place. Some A's, a couple of B's a D, and the F in book reports. In no way did the bad grades reflect my intelligence. Actually, let's face it, grades NEVER reflect intelligence or even mastery of a subject. Grades reflect a student's ability to perform the required tasks that the teacher decided to use to measure the grades. That is ALL they reflect.
In this case, my teacher only marginally liked to give tests. She was far more concerned with homework assignments. For every subject during the day, we were given assignments to complete at home.
I could NOT work in the house. The atmosphere was just too toxic. My usual tactic for getting around this was to stop on my walk home and do the work. Sometimes I would sit on a rock fence, homework balanced on my Trapperkeeper. Sometimes I would stop at one of the small parks and work on assignments as I sat on a bench or in one of the swings.
On other occasions, I would go into a public restroom and hide in one of the stalls. I sit there for a couple of hours and work on my homework, trying to do my best to make sure no one noticed me, or at least that no one realized I was staying in there for so long.
I think if it had just been assignments I could do this way, I would have been okay. But my fourth grade teacher was into projects. She wanted us to bring things from home or build things or other bullshit and quite often that was just as damned impossible as trying to collect moon rocks or something.
For our social studies class, we were given an assignment to build a type of building from the past. I knew I needed to really knock this out of the park, because most of my 'projects had received less than favorable grades. I had a plan though and I knew it would be awesome.
I went to my convenience store and bought a bunch of boxes of sugar cubes and Elmer's Glue. I took an old flat piece of wood and began to build my castle. I knew the trick was just using small amounts of glue as to not melt the sugar. I did this, working on levels, doing my best to secure them.
Even though I hated working at home, I knew I had no choice with this project. So every night I would spend the better part of a couple of hours gluing my castle together. I even finished several days before it was due, which was good because it gave me time to let it dry. All of this, of course, was the easy part.
I remember the project was due on a Tuesday of the following week. I thought about how to approach this for several days before hand, almost asking quite a few times, but losing my nerve at the last moment. This is one of those things that really exemplifies how my life was. Here I was, a little kid, who needed something only the adults could provide. I felt so resented and unwanted in my situation that I was terrified to ask.
This was a big project though. The BIGGEST project of this first semester of school, so I had to ask. I remember walking into the living room where they were both watching TV. The SS was sprawled out on the couch and Mom was sitting in a chair near him. They didn't act like the noticed me and for a while, I just stood there, hoping they would. This continued for a while, until finally there was a commercial.
"Um . . ."
"What do you want?" The SS didn't even bother looking at me as he asked. As usual, my mother tended to not speak to us first, even though she was the real parent and she should have.
I shifted on my feet. "I have the castle and I need a ride to school on Tuesday."
"Your mother is working on Tuesday."
"Yeah, I know, but I was wondering . . .because we have the other car if maybe you could drive me on Tuesday?"
A minute or so passed by with no answer. I felt so horribly unwelcome that I almost just left. I worked so hard though, so I asked again. "I need a ride."
"You're supposed to walk to school because it will help you get over being so fay and lazy, " said the fattest, laziest man I had thusfar met in my life.
"I have to carry my castle and I don't think I can make it."
"Take the bus."
"I don't think I can get on the bus with the castle." I remember I was squirming so badly at this point I needed to urinate.
"You should have done something easier to carry." This was from my mother, who finally felt it was time for her to speak. Her voice had that nervous, angry edge to it that it always had when she felt like I was taking up too much . . . well, just too much anything. "Why didn't you THINK about that. You never THINK."
At this point, I started to cry. I had worked so hard on that project. I spent hours on it. I planned it out and I did my paper over it and glued and glued and glued for so many days. It looked good too and I knew it would be the best one. Why couldn't they see that? Why were they suddenly angry over this?
"Quit crying," the SS ordered. "I'll drive you on Tuesday."
"Yon don't HAVE TO," my mother said, because of course she would.
"No, no. It's FINE. Someone has to take her. and you will be at work."
"I could be late." I swear my mother had this perverse need to insure her husbands did as LITTLE in their lives as possible. It was almost like she believed if one of them actually put out effort, her hair would come out in clumps or something. "I'll just get her up early and drive her over to the school. She can wait there for a while." My mother had to be at work by seven and she lived an hour away. What she was suggesting involved me being at school two hours longer than needed. Remember it was starting to get cold by this point.
"Nope, that's okay. I'll take her." It was settled. I felt relieved about the whole thing, even though I also felt emotionally strung out by the process. I went to my room and actually relaxed for the rest of the weekend. I was even pretty calm on Monday.
Tuesday morning, my mom woke me up as she was leaving for work, as she always did. I took my bath and got ready. I fixed myself some cereal and waited for the SS to come waddling into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.
It never happened. I watched the clock, waiting for him to get up. He needed to be up soon so he could drive me. My fear grew by the second. After a while, I walked to their bedroom and sat down in the floor in front of the door, hoping he would hear me or at least that I could hear him awake. All I could hear was snoring. By this point, I was on the verge of tears again.
One of the first rules of the new living situation was that no one was allowed to wake the SS. He could sleep as long as he wished. While he was asleep, no one was allowed to make noise. No music, no TV, no screaming. IF you woke him, things would get very bad for you.
The project won over though. I stood and tapped on the door. I called out his name in a very small voice and told him we needed to go soon. The snoring stopped abruptly and I heard him curse. The bed creaked as he pulled himself off of it. I could hear him stomping across the room and considered running away, but then he flung the door open. His face was red with fury . . . and also red with the fact that it was always red because of his fatness.
"So you don't trust me?"
"I what?"
He yelled it this time, in that sarcastic, mildly amused at his own cruelty kind of way, "You don't trust me. YOU didn't think I was going to get up. I was awake. I was already awake."
"Okay . . ." He certainly was not awake. However, one of the many lessons kids in my situation learn is that you don't question the fucked up claims of reality from the adults.
"You just don't trust me. Well . . . fine. You walk to school."
"NO!"
He walked out of the room and pushed me against the wall. "Did you just tell me no? Did you say no to me?"
It was terrifying to have him so close to me. "I have to get to school. I have the castle and you promised."
He shook his head. "You need to learn respect. You're on your own. And you better hurry. It's a long walk to school."
He let me go and walked back into his room, slamming the door on the way. I stood there for a second in pure shock. I couldn't stand too long though. I had to walk to school and it was getting dangerously close to 8.
By the time I made it there, I was late. My project, unwieldy and too heavy for me to carry easily, was broken into pieces. I tried to tell my teacher it was "ruins" of a castle, but she wasn't buying it. I was told it was too destroyed for her to give it a grade, so that part of my assignment would be a 0. It sucked too, because my written part got an A. The project as a whole was a large part of our grade for that section.
One ride to school, one half hour of someone NOT being a complete asshole, and it could have made all the difference.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
A Weekend Break
I've been hitting the Memory Lane stuff pretty hard and I thought I'd take a day or so away from it. Remembering my childhood can be rough. Sometimes when I finish one of those posts, I just feel like I ripped off all my skin and handed it to people.
At the same time, I feel like I'm learning so much about myself. I'm considering angles of how events came together and reexamining how all of this led to the person I am now. Our pain adds up and begins to grow deeper and deeper until it's like this vast marsh inside of us. We know we can sink in it if we wade too deep. We know that if we let it overwhelm us, it might just kill us.
I kind of see what I'm doing now with the childhood posts as a way to dig out some of the emotional muck. I'm kind of on the outside of it now, on somewhat firmer ground. Honestly, the best place to be where your pain is concerned is outside of it.
Heh! I just realized I wrote "pan" for pain in absolutely every instance. I'm glad I caught that or this post would have made absolutely no sense.
Anyway, the weather has cooled down and I'm able to get some sleep. You have no idea how awesome this is for me. I hope you're having a good weekend. Sleep well.
At the same time, I feel like I'm learning so much about myself. I'm considering angles of how events came together and reexamining how all of this led to the person I am now. Our pain adds up and begins to grow deeper and deeper until it's like this vast marsh inside of us. We know we can sink in it if we wade too deep. We know that if we let it overwhelm us, it might just kill us.
I kind of see what I'm doing now with the childhood posts as a way to dig out some of the emotional muck. I'm kind of on the outside of it now, on somewhat firmer ground. Honestly, the best place to be where your pain is concerned is outside of it.
Heh! I just realized I wrote "pan" for pain in absolutely every instance. I'm glad I caught that or this post would have made absolutely no sense.
Anyway, the weather has cooled down and I'm able to get some sleep. You have no idea how awesome this is for me. I hope you're having a good weekend. Sleep well.
Friday, August 17, 2012
School Daze: 4th Grade C. Frozen
As destructive as the secret eating could (and would) be, it was unfortunately not the only manifestation of my PTSD. Actually, it was only a small part of it, though there were characteristics of it that bled over into the other areas. The basic nature of the secret eating allowed me to enter a state of Shut Down. Emotionally and intellectually, I was not THERE. The extent to which I was an aware individual went away for a while and I just existed.
There were other areas in my life where this Shut Down began to happen that, quite frankly, baffled me. As a kid, I lacked the understanding of what was happening to me and had no idea how to stop it. The adults around me, guardians and teachers, did not find it needful to look for the root of why I was Shutting Down. Instead, they just opted to punish it.
I think the best example of this has to do with book reports. When we began the year, book reports weren't a part of how our grades were calculated. About the second six weeks of the first semester, however, our teacher decided that we would not only do book reports but that they would be a separate part of our grade. Her grade sheets were typed up already, so she just wrote 'book reports' at the bottom of the page in blue ink and would assign a grade accordingly.
I failed the book report line. I failed it because I could not bring myself to do them. Not WOULD NOT do them. I COULD NOT do them.
To this day, I am baffled by this. I was an avid reader. In fact, my stepfather had made the huge and very 1980s mistake of joining Science Fiction Book Club and I was pouring through books. When I would finish my work in class, I would pull out my book and read on it. Sometimes I would read through recess.
My teacher remarked on this one day. I was in the classroom before the bell rang, my book on my desk as I read. She watched me for a while and then sighed. I looked up a her and asked her what was wrong.
"I just don't GET you, Lilly," she said. "You are reading all the time. I know you understand what you are reading."
"Yes, I love reading."
"Then why won't you do the book report sheets? When you finish one of your books, you just need to fill out the book report sheet and you will pass this requirement. How can you be so lazy that you can't do that?"
Of course, she answered her own question . . . at least to the extent that she wished to consider it. She believed and my mother and stepfather believed . . . and therefore, I believed . . . that I was just too lazy to do the book reports. Just too lazy, as all fat children are lazy, to fill out a piece of paper talking about the book I read.
I started so many of those book reports. I would get the little form as had to fill out. I still remember them because they were photocopied sideways on a legal sized sheet of paper. I would begin to fill them out and I would feel so happy that I was making this effort to do them and that I wouldn't fail and . . .
And nothing. I would stop. Every time I tried to fill one out, I would Shut Down, stop, and never finish it.
I have no idea why.
Over the many years since then, I'm thought about this specific Shut Down and tried to figure out why it happened. My current theory kind of runs like this: at this point in my young life, I was so fucked up over chaotic situations and random bullshit that my mind, in order to protect me, would seek out structure and hold on for dear life.
When the school year started, my teacher explained how grades would be calculated and what was expected of us. My mind accepted this as the order and structure of things and felt a certain level of comfort. When she threw us this curve ball about book reports, it was OUTSIDE of the order and structure my brain had accepted. And, as school was one of the few places where I could find order, structure, and control, my brain basically refused to allow the changes to be made.
My mind would not accept the book reports because they were an alteration in the ordered reality. Because my brain would not accept them, my body could not do them. No matter how hard I tried to force myself to finish one of those reports, my mind would just shut me down, and I couldn't.
Of all the strange things in my life, I have to say that Shut Down mode is the most difficult for me to comprehend. It frightens me that my mind can do things like this to me. It also frightens me how unpredictable and destructive it can be. I almost screwed up college twice because I went into Shut Down about a couple of classes and wouldn't go to them, but wouldn't go drop them either. Like the book report thing, something in my mind triggered and past that, I couldn't force myself to make the physical motions needed to accomplish whatever it was. I simply COULD NOT do it.
Quite often, I hear people complaining about overzealous teachers who will call DHS on parents or people who will send kids to therapy over every little thing. It always kind of annoys me when they talk about how over-reactive these people are. It annoys me because when I think about my own childhood, I wonder how different things could have been had I been given a chance to have some serious therapy or if a teacher had noticed the signs of how truly damaged I was. Honestly, it could have made all the difference in the world.
Because when you are a teacher and you have a student sitting in front of you who is clearly bright and capable of doing the assignment and she isn't, it might be prudent for you to consider the why of this. If that teacher had paused for a moment past her conclusion of "must just be lazy" and started asking me questions about my home life, she might have saved me a lot of painful years.
There were other areas in my life where this Shut Down began to happen that, quite frankly, baffled me. As a kid, I lacked the understanding of what was happening to me and had no idea how to stop it. The adults around me, guardians and teachers, did not find it needful to look for the root of why I was Shutting Down. Instead, they just opted to punish it.
I think the best example of this has to do with book reports. When we began the year, book reports weren't a part of how our grades were calculated. About the second six weeks of the first semester, however, our teacher decided that we would not only do book reports but that they would be a separate part of our grade. Her grade sheets were typed up already, so she just wrote 'book reports' at the bottom of the page in blue ink and would assign a grade accordingly.
I failed the book report line. I failed it because I could not bring myself to do them. Not WOULD NOT do them. I COULD NOT do them.
To this day, I am baffled by this. I was an avid reader. In fact, my stepfather had made the huge and very 1980s mistake of joining Science Fiction Book Club and I was pouring through books. When I would finish my work in class, I would pull out my book and read on it. Sometimes I would read through recess.
My teacher remarked on this one day. I was in the classroom before the bell rang, my book on my desk as I read. She watched me for a while and then sighed. I looked up a her and asked her what was wrong.
"I just don't GET you, Lilly," she said. "You are reading all the time. I know you understand what you are reading."
"Yes, I love reading."
"Then why won't you do the book report sheets? When you finish one of your books, you just need to fill out the book report sheet and you will pass this requirement. How can you be so lazy that you can't do that?"
Of course, she answered her own question . . . at least to the extent that she wished to consider it. She believed and my mother and stepfather believed . . . and therefore, I believed . . . that I was just too lazy to do the book reports. Just too lazy, as all fat children are lazy, to fill out a piece of paper talking about the book I read.
I started so many of those book reports. I would get the little form as had to fill out. I still remember them because they were photocopied sideways on a legal sized sheet of paper. I would begin to fill them out and I would feel so happy that I was making this effort to do them and that I wouldn't fail and . . .
And nothing. I would stop. Every time I tried to fill one out, I would Shut Down, stop, and never finish it.
I have no idea why.
Over the many years since then, I'm thought about this specific Shut Down and tried to figure out why it happened. My current theory kind of runs like this: at this point in my young life, I was so fucked up over chaotic situations and random bullshit that my mind, in order to protect me, would seek out structure and hold on for dear life.
When the school year started, my teacher explained how grades would be calculated and what was expected of us. My mind accepted this as the order and structure of things and felt a certain level of comfort. When she threw us this curve ball about book reports, it was OUTSIDE of the order and structure my brain had accepted. And, as school was one of the few places where I could find order, structure, and control, my brain basically refused to allow the changes to be made.
My mind would not accept the book reports because they were an alteration in the ordered reality. Because my brain would not accept them, my body could not do them. No matter how hard I tried to force myself to finish one of those reports, my mind would just shut me down, and I couldn't.
Of all the strange things in my life, I have to say that Shut Down mode is the most difficult for me to comprehend. It frightens me that my mind can do things like this to me. It also frightens me how unpredictable and destructive it can be. I almost screwed up college twice because I went into Shut Down about a couple of classes and wouldn't go to them, but wouldn't go drop them either. Like the book report thing, something in my mind triggered and past that, I couldn't force myself to make the physical motions needed to accomplish whatever it was. I simply COULD NOT do it.
Quite often, I hear people complaining about overzealous teachers who will call DHS on parents or people who will send kids to therapy over every little thing. It always kind of annoys me when they talk about how over-reactive these people are. It annoys me because when I think about my own childhood, I wonder how different things could have been had I been given a chance to have some serious therapy or if a teacher had noticed the signs of how truly damaged I was. Honestly, it could have made all the difference in the world.
Because when you are a teacher and you have a student sitting in front of you who is clearly bright and capable of doing the assignment and she isn't, it might be prudent for you to consider the why of this. If that teacher had paused for a moment past her conclusion of "must just be lazy" and started asking me questions about my home life, she might have saved me a lot of painful years.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
School Daze: 4th Grade B. PTSD Corndogs
Even though I felt I had a new lease on life due to my very deliberate change in identity, there were some things I couldn't control. The last husband and all of the hell that happened because of him left me with a lot of emotional scarring. Over this next year, a lot of that would begin to manifest.
This happened played a deeply significant role in my future struggles with obesity. As I have mentioned before, one of the control/abuse tactics of my mother's second husband involved a strict list of things I was allowed to eat. I was a fat kid and he didn't think I was sexy enough for him, so he wanted me to slim down. My weight had been a big issue in their marriage and I suffered a lot because of it. When someone is abusing you and trying to control every bite that you put in your mouth, you can do two things . . . you can submit to them and lose your will completely . . . or you can bide your time and then rebel when at all possible.
When we moved to the new town, I soon discovered there were some drastic changes in my living situation. The new stepfather was a bastard, but he was also a deeply, deeply lazy bastard, so that curbed a lot of his shit. My mother was usually working, most often two jobs. When she wasn't at work, she was drinking or asleep. We had a woman living with us (kind of randomly) who tended to babysit my brother.
All of this factored into me having a strange level of personal freedom. So long as I didn't bother anyone and I was home by the time it was dark, I could roam around the town as much as I wanted.
Now part of this was just basic willful neglect on the part of the adults. We lived fairly far away from the elementary school, but close enough that I could walk without too much difficulty. There were buses, but in case I haven't mentioned it, I loathed school buses and wanted to avoid them if possible. The first few days of school, Mom walked with me. After that, well, I guess she had other things to do and I was on my own. And if I could walk to school by myself, they really couldn't justify letting me walk around the rest of the town.
This freedom was delicious to me. Because I had to share a room with my brother, I really had no personal private space in the house. The best way for me to get away from everyone was just to stay out of the place as much as possible. And I did. I would walk everywhere in that town. I would visit friends. I would play in the park. I would walk by the older houses and enjoy their architecture. These hours alone were rather joyful for me.
They were not, however, the best part of this new freedom. See, there was a convenience store a few blocks from my house. It sold the usual convenience store foods . . . corn dogs, burritos, pizza pockets, etc. These foods became, and I am not exaggerating here, THE BEST THING about my life.
See, after several years of my eating being a matter of pain and cruelty, I had developed a very real kind of Food Anarchy Complex. There was nothing more important or joyful to me that walking into that store, buying my dollar's worth of toxic food, and eating it in secret. To me, those high fat, horrible for you treats were the most delightful things I had ever tasted. I would buy them and then walk outside of the store, swing around to the alley, and eat them where no one could watch me.
The secrecy was a big part of the enjoyment. I felt like I was getting away with something, pulling some major coup on the universe, because I was eating this and no one knew. It was my food, my decision, and I was able to do it with no one hitting me or screaming at me or otherwise punishing me.
After I would eat the secret food, I would feel this rush of pure bliss coursing through my body. My mind, ever a strange little place, had chosen to reinforce the secret eating by rewarding me with happy brain chemicals. That, of course, became the best part.
And thus, I transcended from a little girl with a bit of a weight problem into a full-on food addict. When things would get too stressful or when I just needed to rearrange my brain chemistry, I would eat something in secret. It became my way of coping with the hell around me. The more unhappy I am in a situation or the more miserable I feel during the day, the more I will eat.
You know, even now, the biggest thing I struggle with is secret eating. I honestly worry more about that than I do about the number of calories or whatever I eat in a day. The calories can eventually be worked off. The fat can eventually be worked off. But the joy and elation I feel from secret eating is harder to shake, because, quite frankly, there is nothing else in my life that compares to it.
And if you're in my life, don't be offended by that statement. It isn't to say I don't love you. I do. It isn't to say I don't have fun with you. I do. And I've felt the rush of happy brain chemicals from other things as well. The first time I completed Nano I felt deep accomplishment. When I got my scholarships to college, I felt deep accomplishment. Hell, when I can pull myself up from a chair using muscles instead of my hands, I feel deep accomplishment. It's an awesome feeling.
I have to be honest though, it doesn't compare to the rush after secret eating. Love doesn't. Happiness doesn't. Nothing does. Secret eating is freedom and comfort and safety and sneakiness and pure out defiance and total happiness. There have been times that it was the savior of both my sanity and my life.
As I am in this place where I'm trying to carve out a healthy lifestyle, this is the hardest part of the struggle for me. Walking is painful. Doing steps is rough. But nothing is as difficult as forcing myself not to go get The Secret Piece of Pie or the Secret Expensive Ass Coffee. Every time I manage to resist it, I remind myself I am doing the right thing.
And every time I remind myself of this, a fourth grade version of me whispers back that "doing the right thing" is total bullshit.
This happened played a deeply significant role in my future struggles with obesity. As I have mentioned before, one of the control/abuse tactics of my mother's second husband involved a strict list of things I was allowed to eat. I was a fat kid and he didn't think I was sexy enough for him, so he wanted me to slim down. My weight had been a big issue in their marriage and I suffered a lot because of it. When someone is abusing you and trying to control every bite that you put in your mouth, you can do two things . . . you can submit to them and lose your will completely . . . or you can bide your time and then rebel when at all possible.
When we moved to the new town, I soon discovered there were some drastic changes in my living situation. The new stepfather was a bastard, but he was also a deeply, deeply lazy bastard, so that curbed a lot of his shit. My mother was usually working, most often two jobs. When she wasn't at work, she was drinking or asleep. We had a woman living with us (kind of randomly) who tended to babysit my brother.
All of this factored into me having a strange level of personal freedom. So long as I didn't bother anyone and I was home by the time it was dark, I could roam around the town as much as I wanted.
Now part of this was just basic willful neglect on the part of the adults. We lived fairly far away from the elementary school, but close enough that I could walk without too much difficulty. There were buses, but in case I haven't mentioned it, I loathed school buses and wanted to avoid them if possible. The first few days of school, Mom walked with me. After that, well, I guess she had other things to do and I was on my own. And if I could walk to school by myself, they really couldn't justify letting me walk around the rest of the town.
This freedom was delicious to me. Because I had to share a room with my brother, I really had no personal private space in the house. The best way for me to get away from everyone was just to stay out of the place as much as possible. And I did. I would walk everywhere in that town. I would visit friends. I would play in the park. I would walk by the older houses and enjoy their architecture. These hours alone were rather joyful for me.
They were not, however, the best part of this new freedom. See, there was a convenience store a few blocks from my house. It sold the usual convenience store foods . . . corn dogs, burritos, pizza pockets, etc. These foods became, and I am not exaggerating here, THE BEST THING about my life.
See, after several years of my eating being a matter of pain and cruelty, I had developed a very real kind of Food Anarchy Complex. There was nothing more important or joyful to me that walking into that store, buying my dollar's worth of toxic food, and eating it in secret. To me, those high fat, horrible for you treats were the most delightful things I had ever tasted. I would buy them and then walk outside of the store, swing around to the alley, and eat them where no one could watch me.
The secrecy was a big part of the enjoyment. I felt like I was getting away with something, pulling some major coup on the universe, because I was eating this and no one knew. It was my food, my decision, and I was able to do it with no one hitting me or screaming at me or otherwise punishing me.
After I would eat the secret food, I would feel this rush of pure bliss coursing through my body. My mind, ever a strange little place, had chosen to reinforce the secret eating by rewarding me with happy brain chemicals. That, of course, became the best part.
And thus, I transcended from a little girl with a bit of a weight problem into a full-on food addict. When things would get too stressful or when I just needed to rearrange my brain chemistry, I would eat something in secret. It became my way of coping with the hell around me. The more unhappy I am in a situation or the more miserable I feel during the day, the more I will eat.
You know, even now, the biggest thing I struggle with is secret eating. I honestly worry more about that than I do about the number of calories or whatever I eat in a day. The calories can eventually be worked off. The fat can eventually be worked off. But the joy and elation I feel from secret eating is harder to shake, because, quite frankly, there is nothing else in my life that compares to it.
And if you're in my life, don't be offended by that statement. It isn't to say I don't love you. I do. It isn't to say I don't have fun with you. I do. And I've felt the rush of happy brain chemicals from other things as well. The first time I completed Nano I felt deep accomplishment. When I got my scholarships to college, I felt deep accomplishment. Hell, when I can pull myself up from a chair using muscles instead of my hands, I feel deep accomplishment. It's an awesome feeling.
I have to be honest though, it doesn't compare to the rush after secret eating. Love doesn't. Happiness doesn't. Nothing does. Secret eating is freedom and comfort and safety and sneakiness and pure out defiance and total happiness. There have been times that it was the savior of both my sanity and my life.
As I am in this place where I'm trying to carve out a healthy lifestyle, this is the hardest part of the struggle for me. Walking is painful. Doing steps is rough. But nothing is as difficult as forcing myself not to go get The Secret Piece of Pie or the Secret Expensive Ass Coffee. Every time I manage to resist it, I remind myself I am doing the right thing.
And every time I remind myself of this, a fourth grade version of me whispers back that "doing the right thing" is total bullshit.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
School Daze: 4th Grade A. The First Identity Shift
I'm having to divide the next several years of school up into parts because a lot of stuff happened. This time period is very complex for me in terms of emotional and intellectual development. I really became ME during these years, which is kind of ironic considering I shifted who I was a couple of times.
My fourth grade year coincided with us moving to a new town on the other side of Oklahoma so that we could suffer as my mother's new husband failed at things. All of my mother's husbands possessed the trifecta of lazy, arrogant, and controlling. This seemed to be the qualities she looked for in men.
Her third husband was unique amongst her husbands for two very headfucking reasons. For one thing, he was smart and, when he wasn't being a totally cruel and sadistic bastard, rather fun to be around. He had good taste in music, books, movies, and comics. He encouraged my interests in these things, mostly so he had someone to talk to about the stuff. He encouraged my mother as well, and was probably the first of her husbands to recognize how intelligent she was. He wanted her to go to college (once he was finished) and bought her books over stuff that interested her.
Of course, this was all in the midst of the trifecta of horrible. He couldn't hold a job, but Mom worked. He never did anything at ALL around the house, but thought that we should. He felt he was in charge of everything and could use any means he deemed needed to make sure we fell into line. So yes, he was still a completely awful person . . . just one who happened to be likable at times, which only made it worse.
The other unique thing about this marriage was that he came with a family. Well, okay, my father came with a family too, but of all the stepfathers, he is the only one who brought family into the mix. When they married, we also got new grandparents, an aunt and uncle, a great-grandmother, and a bunch of great-aunts and great-uncles and tons of cousins.
The crappy thing is, I really LIKED these people. I think they really liked us. It's just that when things fell apart with this stepfather, they fell apart so badly that we just could NOT be around his family anymore. It hurt, but it was necessary. To this day, I still kind of regret it.
Anyway, how all this factors into the school thing, aside from the fact that I would be starting a new school in a new town for the first time in my life, is that the stepfather and his family (mostly his family) were making plans to have him adopt my brother and me. It was decided to save the confusion of everyone later in the year that my brother and I would start using his last name instead of the one we currently had.
On the surface, changing your last name doesn't seem like much. You are still you, after all. You still have the same first name. However, and maybe this is why I will always believe Numerology has some validity, it does CHANGE things. You now have a new identity. I went from being this one girl who had been treated one way and suffered certain things to being this new blank person. This was completely liberating to me. And I decided that I was going to erase all the Bad that had happened before.
Because I deemed the so much of my life and past would no longer matter to me, I had to find new things to grasp onto. I dove headlong into music. It was the early 1980s, so it was a very good time to do this. My mother had an old stereo system in the dining room and I would spend almost all of my time in there. I would listen to music, dance, sing, write my own songs, and dance more. I loved it.
The New Me also was going to be a writer. Despite everything else I allowed to shed away from me, my love of books and writing did not go away. The New Me began to work on plays and stories. I started my old hobbies of drawing out characters and designing worlds. I read everything I could get my hands on.
When I went into the new school, I did so with the new foundation I had connected to the new name. Sure there were things I couldn't change. I was still a fat kid. I was still poor. But now I had more direction. I had a stronger voice and I knew that no matter what happened during this school year, my voice would not leave me. The old person with the old last name might have suffered under the teachers she had, but the new person would not.
Interestingly, even though I eventually returned to my father's last name (because I never got adopted thank fuck and yeah kinda spent like three years using a false name, heh . . .), I still retained everything that I built into my new identity. When I returned to the old name, I did not return to the old girl.
You know, years later, I'm a person who truly dislikes it when people change their name when they get married. I hate it because I feel like you're sublimating your identity to become this new married THING. But any time I start to get too critical of it, I remember how liberating it can be to change your identity. Sometimes it isn't about making a family or being traditional. Sometimes changing your name is about shedding your skin and seeing what lies underneath.
My fourth grade year coincided with us moving to a new town on the other side of Oklahoma so that we could suffer as my mother's new husband failed at things. All of my mother's husbands possessed the trifecta of lazy, arrogant, and controlling. This seemed to be the qualities she looked for in men.
Her third husband was unique amongst her husbands for two very headfucking reasons. For one thing, he was smart and, when he wasn't being a totally cruel and sadistic bastard, rather fun to be around. He had good taste in music, books, movies, and comics. He encouraged my interests in these things, mostly so he had someone to talk to about the stuff. He encouraged my mother as well, and was probably the first of her husbands to recognize how intelligent she was. He wanted her to go to college (once he was finished) and bought her books over stuff that interested her.
Of course, this was all in the midst of the trifecta of horrible. He couldn't hold a job, but Mom worked. He never did anything at ALL around the house, but thought that we should. He felt he was in charge of everything and could use any means he deemed needed to make sure we fell into line. So yes, he was still a completely awful person . . . just one who happened to be likable at times, which only made it worse.
The other unique thing about this marriage was that he came with a family. Well, okay, my father came with a family too, but of all the stepfathers, he is the only one who brought family into the mix. When they married, we also got new grandparents, an aunt and uncle, a great-grandmother, and a bunch of great-aunts and great-uncles and tons of cousins.
The crappy thing is, I really LIKED these people. I think they really liked us. It's just that when things fell apart with this stepfather, they fell apart so badly that we just could NOT be around his family anymore. It hurt, but it was necessary. To this day, I still kind of regret it.
Anyway, how all this factors into the school thing, aside from the fact that I would be starting a new school in a new town for the first time in my life, is that the stepfather and his family (mostly his family) were making plans to have him adopt my brother and me. It was decided to save the confusion of everyone later in the year that my brother and I would start using his last name instead of the one we currently had.
On the surface, changing your last name doesn't seem like much. You are still you, after all. You still have the same first name. However, and maybe this is why I will always believe Numerology has some validity, it does CHANGE things. You now have a new identity. I went from being this one girl who had been treated one way and suffered certain things to being this new blank person. This was completely liberating to me. And I decided that I was going to erase all the Bad that had happened before.
Because I deemed the so much of my life and past would no longer matter to me, I had to find new things to grasp onto. I dove headlong into music. It was the early 1980s, so it was a very good time to do this. My mother had an old stereo system in the dining room and I would spend almost all of my time in there. I would listen to music, dance, sing, write my own songs, and dance more. I loved it.
The New Me also was going to be a writer. Despite everything else I allowed to shed away from me, my love of books and writing did not go away. The New Me began to work on plays and stories. I started my old hobbies of drawing out characters and designing worlds. I read everything I could get my hands on.
When I went into the new school, I did so with the new foundation I had connected to the new name. Sure there were things I couldn't change. I was still a fat kid. I was still poor. But now I had more direction. I had a stronger voice and I knew that no matter what happened during this school year, my voice would not leave me. The old person with the old last name might have suffered under the teachers she had, but the new person would not.
Interestingly, even though I eventually returned to my father's last name (because I never got adopted thank fuck and yeah kinda spent like three years using a false name, heh . . .), I still retained everything that I built into my new identity. When I returned to the old name, I did not return to the old girl.
You know, years later, I'm a person who truly dislikes it when people change their name when they get married. I hate it because I feel like you're sublimating your identity to become this new married THING. But any time I start to get too critical of it, I remember how liberating it can be to change your identity. Sometimes it isn't about making a family or being traditional. Sometimes changing your name is about shedding your skin and seeing what lies underneath.
Monday, August 13, 2012
School Daze: Third Grade
I'm sure you can guess that by the time I arrived in third grade, I was fairly much over this whole school thing. I was jaded about it and, quite frankly, going through so much stuff at home that school was the last thing on my mind. And this, of course, was part of the problem.
My teacher was a middle aged woman with large round glasses and that short tightly curled do favored by many women of middle years with curly hair. On some of them, it looks exotic and carefree. Not on most. She was one of the most. I really can't tell you a lot about her because she made no effort to be important.
This was a year of major transitions for me. My grandparents had left the area where we lived and I felt abandoned and very alone because of this. Once they were gone, my stepfather's behavior grew worse and worse. I experienced things and witnessed things during this time that no child should have to go through. Most of the time, I just went through the motions of life. I was a zombie.
The only good thing about him getting worse is that he eventually got so bad that even my mother realized this was fucked up. See previous post about eating convenience store food on the morning she left him. Hmm. I might have even gotten my age wrong during that post. Stupid memory. Anyway . . .
Third grade was one of those times when my mother's fuckery and my school years overlapped. When she left the bastard, she didn't feel safe going back to our house so we moved in with my grandparents. As I have mentioned before, my grandparents lived in another state so clearly my going to school became an issue. My mother saw no reason to transfer me into the school where they were living, because she knew we wouldn't be here for very long (because she already had another husband lined up....and planzzzz).
This might have been a problem, but my grandparents came up with a solution. Our preacher's wife (who also lived in the same town) taught at my school. It was arranged that I would ride to and from school with her. I agreed to this because I just couldn't handle the thought of going to different school for less than a year before Mom moved us again. At first this was all I saw it as. Then I met Mr. Riley.
Mr. Riley lived in town too and commuted with the preacher's wife. He taught sixth grade and was the only male teacher in the elementary. You'll notice he's the first teacher I've mentioned by name. That's because he's the first one who I feel deserves one. In fact, even though I never had Mr. Riley actually AS my teacher, he is the first teacher who really, truly made a difference in my life.
He seemed tall to me, though I think he was about average height. He was slightly heavy and had gray hair and glasses. He also had a gentle demeanor and a kind smile. His voice was strong and gravely. It reminded me of the way coffee smells, warm, rich, and inviting.
On the first day he met me, he looked me in the eyes and smiled. He bent down and shook my hand and called me by my name as he said he was pleased to meet me. I am pretty sure he had been given the details of my situation, because as I have grown older and been around people who who work with kids from screwed up situations, they handled the kids with the same gentleness.
Most of the time, as I rode in the back of the car, I was content to just be quiet and listen to the adults talk. I liked the lull of their voices. Both of them were pleasant and relaxed, not something I was used to. I remembered thinking how this was how sane adults should act. It's something I still hold onto even now.
The interesting thing was, I never felt left out. They didn't include me in every conversation, but I never felt ignored from them. They would tell me stories about their school years. They would recommend books to me. In fact, Mr. Riley even brought me books from time to time to read. I was always really careful with them and read the books as quickly as I could. The best days would be the days we would discuss the books as we drove home.
As far as I am concerned, between 8-3, I was just a kid at a desk. I wasn't being taught anything. I was just going through the motions of obeying the rules and doing the worksheets. However, in the hour or so on the way to school and the hour or so on the way home from school, I WAS being taught. Perhaps for the first time since I started school, I was really being taught things.
And those hours were invaluable to me. I think that commute was the best thing that happened during my first several years of school. It is, truthfully, the ONLY purely happy experience I had during those years in an academic sense. And I believed it really saved me in terms of how I would view education and myself.
Mr. Riley wasn't someone who saw teaching as "just a job." I really believe that to him, it was a vocation. He seemed to understand that teaching was something that didn't just happen in his classroom and it didn't just happen because he had a degree and could tell little kids to open a book. He knew that teaching happened because he TAUGHT. He could develop a rapport with people, knew how to create a relaxed and pleasant environment, and how to engage students into really exploring the world around them.
It's really ironic that I only became a part of those commutes because of my mother's further-husband-plans. It was just the easiest thing for HER. However, it became the best thing for me and I am so grateful for that time. I wish I could have been in the area when I could have had Mr. Riley as my teacher and I was very sad when he passed away.
So yes, I will say my third grade year of school was good for me. Not because of anything that happened in my third grade class, but because of something that happened outside of it.
My teacher was a middle aged woman with large round glasses and that short tightly curled do favored by many women of middle years with curly hair. On some of them, it looks exotic and carefree. Not on most. She was one of the most. I really can't tell you a lot about her because she made no effort to be important.
This was a year of major transitions for me. My grandparents had left the area where we lived and I felt abandoned and very alone because of this. Once they were gone, my stepfather's behavior grew worse and worse. I experienced things and witnessed things during this time that no child should have to go through. Most of the time, I just went through the motions of life. I was a zombie.
The only good thing about him getting worse is that he eventually got so bad that even my mother realized this was fucked up. See previous post about eating convenience store food on the morning she left him. Hmm. I might have even gotten my age wrong during that post. Stupid memory. Anyway . . .
Third grade was one of those times when my mother's fuckery and my school years overlapped. When she left the bastard, she didn't feel safe going back to our house so we moved in with my grandparents. As I have mentioned before, my grandparents lived in another state so clearly my going to school became an issue. My mother saw no reason to transfer me into the school where they were living, because she knew we wouldn't be here for very long (because she already had another husband lined up....and planzzzz).
This might have been a problem, but my grandparents came up with a solution. Our preacher's wife (who also lived in the same town) taught at my school. It was arranged that I would ride to and from school with her. I agreed to this because I just couldn't handle the thought of going to different school for less than a year before Mom moved us again. At first this was all I saw it as. Then I met Mr. Riley.
Mr. Riley lived in town too and commuted with the preacher's wife. He taught sixth grade and was the only male teacher in the elementary. You'll notice he's the first teacher I've mentioned by name. That's because he's the first one who I feel deserves one. In fact, even though I never had Mr. Riley actually AS my teacher, he is the first teacher who really, truly made a difference in my life.
He seemed tall to me, though I think he was about average height. He was slightly heavy and had gray hair and glasses. He also had a gentle demeanor and a kind smile. His voice was strong and gravely. It reminded me of the way coffee smells, warm, rich, and inviting.
On the first day he met me, he looked me in the eyes and smiled. He bent down and shook my hand and called me by my name as he said he was pleased to meet me. I am pretty sure he had been given the details of my situation, because as I have grown older and been around people who who work with kids from screwed up situations, they handled the kids with the same gentleness.
Most of the time, as I rode in the back of the car, I was content to just be quiet and listen to the adults talk. I liked the lull of their voices. Both of them were pleasant and relaxed, not something I was used to. I remembered thinking how this was how sane adults should act. It's something I still hold onto even now.
The interesting thing was, I never felt left out. They didn't include me in every conversation, but I never felt ignored from them. They would tell me stories about their school years. They would recommend books to me. In fact, Mr. Riley even brought me books from time to time to read. I was always really careful with them and read the books as quickly as I could. The best days would be the days we would discuss the books as we drove home.
As far as I am concerned, between 8-3, I was just a kid at a desk. I wasn't being taught anything. I was just going through the motions of obeying the rules and doing the worksheets. However, in the hour or so on the way to school and the hour or so on the way home from school, I WAS being taught. Perhaps for the first time since I started school, I was really being taught things.
And those hours were invaluable to me. I think that commute was the best thing that happened during my first several years of school. It is, truthfully, the ONLY purely happy experience I had during those years in an academic sense. And I believed it really saved me in terms of how I would view education and myself.
Mr. Riley wasn't someone who saw teaching as "just a job." I really believe that to him, it was a vocation. He seemed to understand that teaching was something that didn't just happen in his classroom and it didn't just happen because he had a degree and could tell little kids to open a book. He knew that teaching happened because he TAUGHT. He could develop a rapport with people, knew how to create a relaxed and pleasant environment, and how to engage students into really exploring the world around them.
It's really ironic that I only became a part of those commutes because of my mother's further-husband-plans. It was just the easiest thing for HER. However, it became the best thing for me and I am so grateful for that time. I wish I could have been in the area when I could have had Mr. Riley as my teacher and I was very sad when he passed away.
So yes, I will say my third grade year of school was good for me. Not because of anything that happened in my third grade class, but because of something that happened outside of it.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
School Daze: Second Grade
My first impression of my second grade teacher had to do with her hair. Her hair was set . . . as in, she went to the salon once a week and they worked some kind of voodoo to make her hair not move and somehow not stink for the whole week. Her specific set was something not quite wide enough to be a fro and not quite tall enough to be a beehive. It was somewhere kind of in the middle of both of them while failing at both of them.
In the beginning, I was somewhat hopeful that she would be better than the last two bitchfests. She was an older woman, close to retirement, and had a kind voice. You know it's kind of heartening that even despite the hell I had experienced by this age, I still had a nice little concept of naive optimism.
The woman wasn't as blatant about her cruelty as the last two, but she certainly possessed cruelty in abundance. She didn't use her paddle that often, though she did on occasion. I'm guessing by her age she was just too frail to bother. That stupid bullshit of "this will hurt you more than it hurts me" might actually be true if the person has weak bone density.
Her preferred method of pain came in the form of humiliation. She loved to belittle her students and delighted in finding ways to do so. There was a boy in our class who had very little hand control and his handwriting was pretty bad. Every time we would have a handwriting lesson, she would tack his on the bulletin board and have all of us go up and look at it. "Now you see what he did? You see how he refuses to try and write in a better way? I want all of you to go up to him and tell him you know he can do better than this."
Yes, that's right. Instead of having the kid tested to see if he had developmental issues or sitting with him and working on his handwriting herself, she did THIS. One time instead of putting his work on our class bulletin board, she tacked one of his assignments to the board in the lunch room for the whole school to see.
My personal bit of hell with this woman happened a few weeks before Thanksgiving break. We were supposed to be working in our phonics books while she zoned out or plotted how to sell our souls or something. In a rare, rare, like insanely rare moment of ambition, I had taken my book home the night before and not only finished the assignment we were supposed to do, but the work I guessed we would be doing for the next day as well.
I did this because once we were finished with our assignments, we could do whatever we wanted . . . so long as it involved sitting quietly at our desks. Was working on this story in my head and wanted to spend the time drawing my characters. Logically, if we finished early we would have a little bit of time, if we finished the night before, we would have ALL the time.
So there I was, drawing my characters. From what I remember, the story revolved around some Amazonian type culture where all the warrior women worked to protect their lands from all evil males. This was how my little brain was processing the step-father abuse at home. Plus, I got to draw cool helmets. I was in the middle of working on an elaborate helmet when my teacher walked over to my desk.
"What are you doing?" she asked in her sweet old lady voice.
"Oh, I'm drawing."
She smiled that kind of fake smile adults smile when they really want to smash in a child's brain. "I think you know you have an assignment."
I nodded, so proud of myself. "I know. I'm already finished."
She frowned. "No you're not. I just gave out the assignment."
"Yes, I am." I started to pull my workbook out of my desk but she stopped me.
"You are lying."
"No, I'm not lying. I did it."
Her eyes grew cold. "Stand up. Come with me."
I was completely confused, upset, and just a little scared by this point, but I did as she instructed. She marched me out the door of the classroom and down the walkway to the first grade door. She knocked and when my evil first grade teacher answered, I swear the woman smiled at me like they'd planned this whole thing, even though I can't imagine how they could have.
"Hello, may we come in and see your class?" My first grade teacher said we could, and I was taken in front of the students. They all stared at me, some of them even giggled a little.
"Now, you had little BHB last year, did you not?" my teacher asked.
The first grade teacher looked at me for a long moment, as if she was trying to remember if she had me or not. "Why, I do believe I did."
"And when she was in your class, did she tell lies?"
"Why I don't think she did. It's very disappointing that she lies now. No one likes a liar, do they children?" And all the children in the first grade class agreed.
I felt such completely and utter humiliation at this moment. Two teachers discussing me and having everyone talk about how much no one would trust me. I knew all the kids in this class would talk about this, to other students, to their parents, to everyone.
And the worst part was that it wasn't even justified. I did the assignment. I did it before I was supposed to, but it was finished. She didn't even check to see if it was finished. She just believed what she wanted to believe and acted accordingly.
I'm not sure exactly what I was supposed to learn from this. Oh, wait. I guess it was to not lie. Or something. Anyway, what I DID learn was that some people are so set in their routines and ways of seeing things that if you dare to challenge them in even the smallest and most innocent of ways, they're going to do what they can to crush your spirit. Hmm, you know, the best thing I can say about elementary school is that I survived with my spirit uncrushed, DESPITE their best efforts to destroy it.
In the beginning, I was somewhat hopeful that she would be better than the last two bitchfests. She was an older woman, close to retirement, and had a kind voice. You know it's kind of heartening that even despite the hell I had experienced by this age, I still had a nice little concept of naive optimism.
The woman wasn't as blatant about her cruelty as the last two, but she certainly possessed cruelty in abundance. She didn't use her paddle that often, though she did on occasion. I'm guessing by her age she was just too frail to bother. That stupid bullshit of "this will hurt you more than it hurts me" might actually be true if the person has weak bone density.
Her preferred method of pain came in the form of humiliation. She loved to belittle her students and delighted in finding ways to do so. There was a boy in our class who had very little hand control and his handwriting was pretty bad. Every time we would have a handwriting lesson, she would tack his on the bulletin board and have all of us go up and look at it. "Now you see what he did? You see how he refuses to try and write in a better way? I want all of you to go up to him and tell him you know he can do better than this."
Yes, that's right. Instead of having the kid tested to see if he had developmental issues or sitting with him and working on his handwriting herself, she did THIS. One time instead of putting his work on our class bulletin board, she tacked one of his assignments to the board in the lunch room for the whole school to see.
My personal bit of hell with this woman happened a few weeks before Thanksgiving break. We were supposed to be working in our phonics books while she zoned out or plotted how to sell our souls or something. In a rare, rare, like insanely rare moment of ambition, I had taken my book home the night before and not only finished the assignment we were supposed to do, but the work I guessed we would be doing for the next day as well.
I did this because once we were finished with our assignments, we could do whatever we wanted . . . so long as it involved sitting quietly at our desks. Was working on this story in my head and wanted to spend the time drawing my characters. Logically, if we finished early we would have a little bit of time, if we finished the night before, we would have ALL the time.
So there I was, drawing my characters. From what I remember, the story revolved around some Amazonian type culture where all the warrior women worked to protect their lands from all evil males. This was how my little brain was processing the step-father abuse at home. Plus, I got to draw cool helmets. I was in the middle of working on an elaborate helmet when my teacher walked over to my desk.
"What are you doing?" she asked in her sweet old lady voice.
"Oh, I'm drawing."
She smiled that kind of fake smile adults smile when they really want to smash in a child's brain. "I think you know you have an assignment."
I nodded, so proud of myself. "I know. I'm already finished."
She frowned. "No you're not. I just gave out the assignment."
"Yes, I am." I started to pull my workbook out of my desk but she stopped me.
"You are lying."
"No, I'm not lying. I did it."
Her eyes grew cold. "Stand up. Come with me."
I was completely confused, upset, and just a little scared by this point, but I did as she instructed. She marched me out the door of the classroom and down the walkway to the first grade door. She knocked and when my evil first grade teacher answered, I swear the woman smiled at me like they'd planned this whole thing, even though I can't imagine how they could have.
"Hello, may we come in and see your class?" My first grade teacher said we could, and I was taken in front of the students. They all stared at me, some of them even giggled a little.
"Now, you had little BHB last year, did you not?" my teacher asked.
The first grade teacher looked at me for a long moment, as if she was trying to remember if she had me or not. "Why, I do believe I did."
"And when she was in your class, did she tell lies?"
"Why I don't think she did. It's very disappointing that she lies now. No one likes a liar, do they children?" And all the children in the first grade class agreed.
I felt such completely and utter humiliation at this moment. Two teachers discussing me and having everyone talk about how much no one would trust me. I knew all the kids in this class would talk about this, to other students, to their parents, to everyone.
And the worst part was that it wasn't even justified. I did the assignment. I did it before I was supposed to, but it was finished. She didn't even check to see if it was finished. She just believed what she wanted to believe and acted accordingly.
I'm not sure exactly what I was supposed to learn from this. Oh, wait. I guess it was to not lie. Or something. Anyway, what I DID learn was that some people are so set in their routines and ways of seeing things that if you dare to challenge them in even the smallest and most innocent of ways, they're going to do what they can to crush your spirit. Hmm, you know, the best thing I can say about elementary school is that I survived with my spirit uncrushed, DESPITE their best efforts to destroy it.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
School Daze: First Grade
The main thing I remember about my first grade teacher was how she looked and how much I hated her. She was a plain woman with a doughy body who dressed in what she believed to be very fashionable things. She was short and had short, unattractive brown hair that lacked any kind of describable style beyond just . . . short. She favored pastel colors. I think this was some kind of deception, a way to lull people into thinking she was soft and passive and easy. She was none of these things. She was a little bully.
My short, plain first grade teacher was married to a man who also taught in the school. Her husband, as I recall, was also short and plain and lacking in the hair department. However, because he was a man in a school primarily ran by women, he commanded a certain level of respect. Because my teacher was his wife, she felt she commanded this respect as well. Every school has a level of elitism to it. Richer students have status. Smart students have status. Teachers had status and teachers with ties to other teachers possessed even more status.
In every pond, no matter how small, one will find the big fish. When said pond IS very small, said big fish know it. They hate their small pond and hate that their importance is based only on the size of the pond. There is a kind of perfect storm in people who are aware of their on insignificance but in a position of power over others. They are, in some ways, the worst kind of people. My first grade teacher was a perfect example of this.
My first grade teacher, in her small town, small school, small pond kind of way, was an insecure elitist to the highest degree. She lorded over our class with an air of aristocratic irritation. She acted as if we should consider ourselves lucky that she taught us . . . which, as I recall, she barely did. Most of the time, we were given photocopied worksheets that she would require to have finished by the end of the day. The following day, each worksheet would be handed back to us, with whatever grade she felt we deserved.
Her aura of indifference was only broken when she became irate with one of us. When any child acted in an unruly manner, her look of smug boredom would be replaced by one of outrage. We would be pulled from our seat and paddled in front of the whole class. Most teachers would take you outside for a paddling, or at the very least remove you to a discrete corner of the room. Not this woman. She would paddle you in front of everyone.
I also remember her paddling the hardest of all the teachers I had. She would always leave bruises, because there was no real restraint in what she did. She never paddled after she had calmed down from her anger. She always paddled at the height of it. She never paddled a set number of swats. Instead, she would paddle to whenever her arm began to tire. This was usually seven or so swats, given rapidly and furiously. I remember almost feeling ill due to the pain of sitting down after she did this.
And oh yes, I was paddled. I was paddled many times during her class because I would break the rules on the days when her whims dictated that broken rules required physical punishment. There were no set rules of what level of discipline would be used. Some days, and depending on what students were causing problems, she might decide to do nothing. On other days, even the smallest infraction might gain her wrath.
For instance, one day during an indoor recess, I playing a board game with some of the other girls. The boys, including her son who was in our class, wanted to play the game instead. They wouldn't leave us alone and I yelled at them. I realize indoor voice is an important thing, and I know some level of punishment probably should have happened (though also to the boys, because they wouldn't leave us alone, but that is a whole other can of worms).
She walked over and told me to go to the front of the class. Even then, I didn't expect to be paddled. I thought she was just going to talk about Indoor Voice again. Instead, she walked back with her paddle, her eyes stormy and angry. She had me to bend over and swatted me six times. They were fast and very, very hard. Four fell on my ass, the rest on my upper portion of the back of my legs.
The thing about any act of violence is that even when you know it's coming, you're never exactly prepared for it. I was stunned during the punishment and afterwards. I'm never sure what people expect others to think when they act in a violent way to them. Maybe they expect some kind of respect or awe. All I ever felt was anger. All of my life, if one thing has held true, it is that the more anger and violence I see from you, the more I despise you.
She told me to go sit down and in tears, I told her I couldn't. I was in too much pain. She looked at me and for a second I thought maybe it occurred to her that what she had done was very wrong, that she was a horrible person, and that she shouldn't be teaching children. Maybe this did occur to her, but instead of her apologizing like she should have, she spun me around again and swatted me four more times. Then she got in my face and with teeth showing, she growled that she could do this all day and that if I didn't want to be spanked more, I should get to my seat.
The rest of the day was deeply painful for me. The seats were plastic and had absolutely no give to them. I couldn't concentrate on anything but being in pain. I kept wiggling in my chair because there was no comfortable place. And as bad as it was on my ass, the worst part was where my legs fell against the edge of the chair, because she'd managed to hit me there too.
You know, as an adult looking back on this, when I think about what was going on in my life at that time, I realize that the worst thing about this woman wasn't her crazy want to hurt little kids. The worst thing about her, especially in terms of her being a teacher, was that elitist indifference she possessed.
This was during a time when I was literally being tortured at home. My mother's husband was horribly violent to us. I know that when I went to school, there was no way she could have missed the bruises on my body. There is no way she couldn't have seen the suffering I was going through. She was a trained professional and she should have been able to see all the signs of the abusive homelife I had. As a teacher, she should have taken steps to get me out of there.
And it's not like the woman was stupid. Things like child abuse are pretty obvious. She just really didn't care.
My short, plain first grade teacher was married to a man who also taught in the school. Her husband, as I recall, was also short and plain and lacking in the hair department. However, because he was a man in a school primarily ran by women, he commanded a certain level of respect. Because my teacher was his wife, she felt she commanded this respect as well. Every school has a level of elitism to it. Richer students have status. Smart students have status. Teachers had status and teachers with ties to other teachers possessed even more status.
In every pond, no matter how small, one will find the big fish. When said pond IS very small, said big fish know it. They hate their small pond and hate that their importance is based only on the size of the pond. There is a kind of perfect storm in people who are aware of their on insignificance but in a position of power over others. They are, in some ways, the worst kind of people. My first grade teacher was a perfect example of this.
My first grade teacher, in her small town, small school, small pond kind of way, was an insecure elitist to the highest degree. She lorded over our class with an air of aristocratic irritation. She acted as if we should consider ourselves lucky that she taught us . . . which, as I recall, she barely did. Most of the time, we were given photocopied worksheets that she would require to have finished by the end of the day. The following day, each worksheet would be handed back to us, with whatever grade she felt we deserved.
Her aura of indifference was only broken when she became irate with one of us. When any child acted in an unruly manner, her look of smug boredom would be replaced by one of outrage. We would be pulled from our seat and paddled in front of the whole class. Most teachers would take you outside for a paddling, or at the very least remove you to a discrete corner of the room. Not this woman. She would paddle you in front of everyone.
I also remember her paddling the hardest of all the teachers I had. She would always leave bruises, because there was no real restraint in what she did. She never paddled after she had calmed down from her anger. She always paddled at the height of it. She never paddled a set number of swats. Instead, she would paddle to whenever her arm began to tire. This was usually seven or so swats, given rapidly and furiously. I remember almost feeling ill due to the pain of sitting down after she did this.
And oh yes, I was paddled. I was paddled many times during her class because I would break the rules on the days when her whims dictated that broken rules required physical punishment. There were no set rules of what level of discipline would be used. Some days, and depending on what students were causing problems, she might decide to do nothing. On other days, even the smallest infraction might gain her wrath.
For instance, one day during an indoor recess, I playing a board game with some of the other girls. The boys, including her son who was in our class, wanted to play the game instead. They wouldn't leave us alone and I yelled at them. I realize indoor voice is an important thing, and I know some level of punishment probably should have happened (though also to the boys, because they wouldn't leave us alone, but that is a whole other can of worms).
She walked over and told me to go to the front of the class. Even then, I didn't expect to be paddled. I thought she was just going to talk about Indoor Voice again. Instead, she walked back with her paddle, her eyes stormy and angry. She had me to bend over and swatted me six times. They were fast and very, very hard. Four fell on my ass, the rest on my upper portion of the back of my legs.
The thing about any act of violence is that even when you know it's coming, you're never exactly prepared for it. I was stunned during the punishment and afterwards. I'm never sure what people expect others to think when they act in a violent way to them. Maybe they expect some kind of respect or awe. All I ever felt was anger. All of my life, if one thing has held true, it is that the more anger and violence I see from you, the more I despise you.
She told me to go sit down and in tears, I told her I couldn't. I was in too much pain. She looked at me and for a second I thought maybe it occurred to her that what she had done was very wrong, that she was a horrible person, and that she shouldn't be teaching children. Maybe this did occur to her, but instead of her apologizing like she should have, she spun me around again and swatted me four more times. Then she got in my face and with teeth showing, she growled that she could do this all day and that if I didn't want to be spanked more, I should get to my seat.
The rest of the day was deeply painful for me. The seats were plastic and had absolutely no give to them. I couldn't concentrate on anything but being in pain. I kept wiggling in my chair because there was no comfortable place. And as bad as it was on my ass, the worst part was where my legs fell against the edge of the chair, because she'd managed to hit me there too.
You know, as an adult looking back on this, when I think about what was going on in my life at that time, I realize that the worst thing about this woman wasn't her crazy want to hurt little kids. The worst thing about her, especially in terms of her being a teacher, was that elitist indifference she possessed.
This was during a time when I was literally being tortured at home. My mother's husband was horribly violent to us. I know that when I went to school, there was no way she could have missed the bruises on my body. There is no way she couldn't have seen the suffering I was going through. She was a trained professional and she should have been able to see all the signs of the abusive homelife I had. As a teacher, she should have taken steps to get me out of there.
And it's not like the woman was stupid. Things like child abuse are pretty obvious. She just really didn't care.
Friday, August 10, 2012
School Daze: Kindergarten
It's the beginning of a new school year and I thought it might be fun to rehash some of my memories of my own K-12 experiences. By fun, I mean probably awkward, painful, and fraught with stuff I can tell my therapist! Enjoy.
Kindergarten:
It's actually so funny how excited I was about the first day of school and how despairing I was by the time that day was over. My naive little self thought this school thing would rock, and I would rock because I could already read and write. I was so wrong.
I also thought it would be cool because my teacher, although no relation to me, had my last name. I suppose in my 5 yr old mind, having the same name gave us some kind of magical connection that would keep us in synchronicity. Again, I was wrong. That woman was an irrational bitch who should have been allowed no where near children. And I knew this by the end of the first day.
I've talked about some of her evil shenanigans before (heads on the desk, paddling me, bitchery over my creative talents), so I'll just discuss this thing she did to me on the first day of school. When I was dropped off for the day, I was told that my grandmother would be picking me up. I was to wait on the playground and leave with her, and then she was going to drive me to the nearby town where we would have a nice dinner to celebrate my first day of school.
The problem was, while I was told this, no one bothered to tell my teacher. As the school day ended, she began to sort us all into what lines we needed for our bus routes. I told her I wasn't to be put into line because my grandmother was picking me up and I started to walk off to the place where I was told to wait.
The teacher grabbed my arm and jerked me back into the line. She got down on my level and hissed at me that I would do as I was told. I tried to explain to her that while this might be the case later on, today it was not so.
I like to consider how this sounded given my 5 yr old speaking skills and the fact that I was crying due to the arm pull.
"B-but . . . Gran is pickin me UP and they pointed to there to wait." All of this would be said through tears and sniffling. It's one of those situations that a small child, having just met one of the most evil people in the world, as some difficulty in communicating.
Were this conversation happening to me as I was older, it would not have been the case. "Excuse me, Miss Evil, but I do believe there has been a misunderstanding. As this is my first day of school, my step-grandmother has plans for me in which we shall celebrate. I would very much like it if you let me go stand where I was told to stand so that I may go with her and my impressions of my first day of school would not be all the disheartening and borderline abusive things you have done, but a pleasant afternoon with someone I love."
Even through tears, I think she would have gotten that. Although, to be honest, I think "Bitch, let me go and get the fuck away from me" is closer to what she deserved. Yes, I know no one likes it when kids cuss their teachers. This one needed it.
Because, the story doesn't end with my clambering into the bus with my little hurt arm. It also doesn't end with the next two hours of fear because this bus driver wasn't going anywhere remotely near my house (though he finally did). Nor does it end with now wretchedly carsick I got on the trip.
The story ends with the fact that my grandparents on my mom's side knew I would be with my other grandmother, so they decided to drive into town and get some shopping done. My parents were both at work and wouldn't get home until almost eight. My grandmother, having never found me after school, assumed plans had changed and that she hadn't been told, so she went to visit her mother.
When I got my little five year old self off of that bus at my grandparents' house, they weren't home. My parents weren't home. Our nearest neighbors lived too far away for me to walk to their house to call. So until almost seven that evening, I sat on my grandparents' porch, alone, confused, a bit scared, very hungry, and weeping.
Needless to say, my first day of school and its various levels of pain, humiliation, and torment had a strong and lasting impression on how I would view school as a concept and teachers in general. All excitement and wonderment I had about going to school died as I was sitting on that porch. It would be many, many years before I regained an positive feelings about the educational experience.
Kindergarten:
It's actually so funny how excited I was about the first day of school and how despairing I was by the time that day was over. My naive little self thought this school thing would rock, and I would rock because I could already read and write. I was so wrong.
I also thought it would be cool because my teacher, although no relation to me, had my last name. I suppose in my 5 yr old mind, having the same name gave us some kind of magical connection that would keep us in synchronicity. Again, I was wrong. That woman was an irrational bitch who should have been allowed no where near children. And I knew this by the end of the first day.
I've talked about some of her evil shenanigans before (heads on the desk, paddling me, bitchery over my creative talents), so I'll just discuss this thing she did to me on the first day of school. When I was dropped off for the day, I was told that my grandmother would be picking me up. I was to wait on the playground and leave with her, and then she was going to drive me to the nearby town where we would have a nice dinner to celebrate my first day of school.
The problem was, while I was told this, no one bothered to tell my teacher. As the school day ended, she began to sort us all into what lines we needed for our bus routes. I told her I wasn't to be put into line because my grandmother was picking me up and I started to walk off to the place where I was told to wait.
The teacher grabbed my arm and jerked me back into the line. She got down on my level and hissed at me that I would do as I was told. I tried to explain to her that while this might be the case later on, today it was not so.
I like to consider how this sounded given my 5 yr old speaking skills and the fact that I was crying due to the arm pull.
"B-but . . . Gran is pickin me UP and they pointed to there to wait." All of this would be said through tears and sniffling. It's one of those situations that a small child, having just met one of the most evil people in the world, as some difficulty in communicating.
Were this conversation happening to me as I was older, it would not have been the case. "Excuse me, Miss Evil, but I do believe there has been a misunderstanding. As this is my first day of school, my step-grandmother has plans for me in which we shall celebrate. I would very much like it if you let me go stand where I was told to stand so that I may go with her and my impressions of my first day of school would not be all the disheartening and borderline abusive things you have done, but a pleasant afternoon with someone I love."
Even through tears, I think she would have gotten that. Although, to be honest, I think "Bitch, let me go and get the fuck away from me" is closer to what she deserved. Yes, I know no one likes it when kids cuss their teachers. This one needed it.
Because, the story doesn't end with my clambering into the bus with my little hurt arm. It also doesn't end with the next two hours of fear because this bus driver wasn't going anywhere remotely near my house (though he finally did). Nor does it end with now wretchedly carsick I got on the trip.
The story ends with the fact that my grandparents on my mom's side knew I would be with my other grandmother, so they decided to drive into town and get some shopping done. My parents were both at work and wouldn't get home until almost eight. My grandmother, having never found me after school, assumed plans had changed and that she hadn't been told, so she went to visit her mother.
When I got my little five year old self off of that bus at my grandparents' house, they weren't home. My parents weren't home. Our nearest neighbors lived too far away for me to walk to their house to call. So until almost seven that evening, I sat on my grandparents' porch, alone, confused, a bit scared, very hungry, and weeping.
Needless to say, my first day of school and its various levels of pain, humiliation, and torment had a strong and lasting impression on how I would view school as a concept and teachers in general. All excitement and wonderment I had about going to school died as I was sitting on that porch. It would be many, many years before I regained an positive feelings about the educational experience.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
A Good Day
Today started out with some irritations, but in the end it was a great day. For one thing, my roommate got an issue settled that has been bothering him for well over two weeks now. I'm very happy it is settled because it had to do with medications and that is never an area where one wants things to mess up.
Second of all, despite having no predictions for it to do so, it rained. It rained for hours and cooled things down and made the whole world feel normal again. I get to sleep in a nonhot room and have nonhot sleep, which makes me almost giddy.
So I'm ending this day feeling very grateful. This isn't going to be a long post, but that's okay. I think at this point sleep is more important than verbose blogging. However, I did want to note how very thankful I am for this reprieve in the Holy Hell it's Hot days of August. Sometimes nothing is better than unexpected reprieves.
Second of all, despite having no predictions for it to do so, it rained. It rained for hours and cooled things down and made the whole world feel normal again. I get to sleep in a nonhot room and have nonhot sleep, which makes me almost giddy.
So I'm ending this day feeling very grateful. This isn't going to be a long post, but that's okay. I think at this point sleep is more important than verbose blogging. However, I did want to note how very thankful I am for this reprieve in the Holy Hell it's Hot days of August. Sometimes nothing is better than unexpected reprieves.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
GRRM's VC Andrews' Fanfics
Note: This post is intended in good humor and not meant to be taken seriously.
You know, it's always bothered me that George R. R. Martin is uncomfortable with fanfiction about his work. On just a general level, I think this is a mistake because fanfics, even the bad ones, are an avenue to inspire readers to keep with your story. They can also help to hone the skills of people who will one day become writers themselves.
In GRRM's case though, I'm even more confused. How can a man claim to hate fanfiction, when part of the very foundation of his most famous work has its roots in fanfic. After all, if it was not for VC Andrews and GRRM's very evident love for her psychosexual young adult horror novels, A Song of Ice and Fire might not exist.
Don't believe me?
You know, it's always bothered me that George R. R. Martin is uncomfortable with fanfiction about his work. On just a general level, I think this is a mistake because fanfics, even the bad ones, are an avenue to inspire readers to keep with your story. They can also help to hone the skills of people who will one day become writers themselves.
In GRRM's case though, I'm even more confused. How can a man claim to hate fanfiction, when part of the very foundation of his most famous work has its roots in fanfic. After all, if it was not for VC Andrews and GRRM's very evident love for her psychosexual young adult horror novels, A Song of Ice and Fire might not exist.
Don't believe me?
Okay, I want us to examine what we see in these two pictures. The first picture is the inside cover of VC Andrews' book Petals in the Wind. In this picture, we see three blonde people. One is a little person who is rather unhappy about the whole situation. Then there is a plotting and scheming pretty girl who seeks vengeance against her enemies. She has many enemies. She will do whatever she has to in order to make her plans work. There is also a beautiful male who loves her more than anything . . . and just happens to be her brother.
In the second picture, we see an Entertainment weekly pic of characters from Game of Thrones, the HBO show adapted from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Although the show has dulled the men's hair out, what we should have here are three blonde people. The first one is a little person who is rarely happy about any situation. There is a plotting and scheming beautiful woman who seeks vengeance against her enemies. She has many enemies. She will do whatever she has to in order to make her plans work. There is also a beautiful male who loves her more than anything . . . and just happens to be her brother.
What does all this tell us, oh my brothers and sisters? Why, it tells us that GRRM is a great fan of the Flowers in the Attic stories. He felt inspired by the story of the earnest and lustful Chris Dollenganger, the angry and revenge driven, yet motherly and graceful Catherine Dollenganger, and the dark plight of the tragic twins Carrie and Corey.
Big fat tears of sorrow must have rolled down his cheeks and into his beard as he read how they were trapped in that attic and poisoned by their own mother. Like all of us, he felt confused by the fact that even though Chris rapes his sister in the first book, we're all very happy when they marry at the end of the second book (because yeah, that's a twisted damned feeling). He felt so much injustice over the fact that Carrie lost her twin, never grew any taller, and died a very broken woman.
Conflicted by all of these fucked up emotions, he decided to right the wrongs . . . or rather, he decided to WRITE the wrongs. And in this moment, the Lannister family was born.
It was horrible that one twin would be lost, so instead of having the younger children be twins, he assigned the twinship to the older two and just cut Corey out completely. Instead of making Carrie a sad victim of circumstance, he transformed her into Tyrion, a wisecracking, well-read, complex man who is one of the main protagonists of his series.
Despite his rapey and incesty nature, Chris Dollenganger was a fairly flat and goody-twoshoes character (yes, I'm not sure how that works. Andrews is twisty like that). GRRM wanted him to have more complexity, so he created Jaime, a man blessed with looks, talent, and riches. Then he marred the character with a complexly conflicted sense of honor and a tainted past. He left the incest part though, because as Chris main motivation for life was his sister, so would be Jaime's . . . at least for a while.
His greatest tribute is with Cersei Lannister, his very own Catherine Dollenganger. He blessed Cersei with the one thing Cathy never had, her brother's children. Cathy had three kids, but two were from other men and the girl was adopted. He kept the same ratio of kids though. One girl, one boy, one badshit evil child so horrible no one could ever redeem him.
Like Cathy, Cersei is desired by almost every man who sees her. When the need arises, she uses this lust to her advantage. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Cathy and Cersei are both wronged as young women and put into situations where they are basically prisoners. Once they are free, they use their minds and charms to find as many ways to gain justice as they can. In the end though, both of them make some missteps and it almost proves to be their undoing. No one is perfect.
In my mind, I can so clearly see George R. R Martin back when he was a 13 yr old girl. He would be sitting on his bed, wearing his pink pjs and purple mules, listening to NKotB as he reads tattered old paperback copies of VC Andrews' work. He would bite his lip as he wrestles with his feelings about why rape is wrong by fucking Andrews manages to make seem OKAY when Cathy realizes that her brother's destructive sexual obsession for her is the purest form of love she will ever know.
I can see him toying with a pigtail as he pulls out his pink glittery notebook and starts writing his own version of the story. Instead of an attic, they're in a castle. Instead of an evil old grandma and a slutty widowed mother, there is a honorbound Hand of the King and a drunken fat monarch. Instead of being poisoned, it just so happens that their captors are the ones who get poisoned.
At this point, GRRM smiled to himself and knew his story would grow. Maybe he would even have some racy scene IN an attic . . . no, better yet, a TOWER. Once he threw some kid out the window for good measure, he knew the whole thing was golden.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Steps and Progresses
Today I upped the number of steps I'm doing by five on one set (the harder set) and ten on the second. It almost done me in, I tells ya. As my roommate said though, as rough as it was, I still managed to do it. Progress. Yay. I may be talking about the steps a lot. For one thing, it's the most intense work out my 38 yr old/500+ lbs self has done in many many years . . . possibly ever! Secondly, as much as it hurts, I'm seeing some quick results. I'm fairly happy about that. Third, I'm just so bemused and happy about how LITTLE money was spent on this. I absolutely adore that part.
For one thing, I don't have a lot of money TO spend on exercise equipment. I don't have a lot of money to spend on ANYTHING, really, but certainly not on stuff like this. And really, I have this theory that work out equipment really isn't designed to be used. I think most of it is designed to look inspiring enough for someone to go and fork over money to own it. Then I think the idea most companies have is that it will get pushed into a corner with some good intentions wistfully thrown its way, collect dust, and eventually get sold at a yard sale.
If someone actually is ambitious enough to start using the equipment on a regular basis, they will soon find themselves with broken equipment. If this person is even the slightest bit self-conscious about their weight, there is no way in HELL they are going to tell anyone they broke the exercise machine. That would just lead to too much emotional trauma.
Anyway, I thought I would show you some pictures of my setup. My roommate took the pics for me. I thank him for that. Oh, and before someone accuses me of karma whoring, yes, I realize I am not the person who came up with the idea of using pavers for steps. In fact, I'm not even the one in my HOUSE who suggested it. That was my roommate. I'm just trying to show anyone who is interested what this pavers/for/steps set up is like.
The first pic is an above view of the pavers. He put a brick and a spoon on them for a size visual. I personally find it to be very visually appealing, as there are basically tone on tone of grays and brick colors then this small bit of white. We even get leaves in there for movement.
The pavers are a good size for stepping. They're not so narrow as to cause me to stumble and miss my footing, nor are they so wide that I risk only stepping half way off and falling because of that. Both of these factors are very important to me because I'm not the most graceful of people and falling is one of my biggest fears where the work out is concerned.
You also get a nice view of the rock wall along my porch.
Finally, this is the front view of the pavers. They actually stay on top of each other fairly well. I think tomorrow I'll need to even them up again, but doing so once a week isn't that much of a hassle. When choosing pavers, it is VERY important to make sure they have a texture that isn't slippery. Safety should be a major concern when you're doing something like this for yourself. After all, if you fall and injure your legs, you'll soon lose all the progress you've gained.
And I will tell you, every day before I go out there to do the steps, my brain tries to talk me out of it. It gives me a million excuses as to why it shouldn't happen. after my first set of steps, my brain tries to convince me to go back inside. I did a little bit. Why bother with more? It does this after the second set and the third set as well.
By the time I walk inside, breathless, exhausted, kind of sick, and in pain, my brain is full of glee because the steps are OVER. And at that very moment, my brain starts trying to talk me out of doing them the next day. I know this is going to happen and I've accepted it's just part of whatever fucked up wiring I have. At the same time, unless I truly am sick or injured, there is no reason for me NOT to go out there and do my steps. I really hope this "don't do it" battle isn't a forever part of my work out experience, but it may well be.
I am admitting to this because I'm guessing a lot of other people probably go through that as well. Don't listen to your brain and don't think you're alone in this struggle. I'm right there with you, fighting every step of the way against my own self-sabotage and self-destruction. I'm also pretty sure I'm going to win.
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