2009-02-01 6:25 a.m.
This Rose has problems with Winter and Autumn...
"Who Killed Amanda Palmer" Video Series - Part 4: Runs In The Family from Amanda Palmer on Vimeo.
---Amanda Palmer is amazing. And I should not identify with/understand this song as well as I do. But it's still awesome. :)
I think I'm going to try to post in this about once a week. More than that just doesn't seem like it's going to happen, unfortunately.
Mainly because I have another journal/blog thing I use. Only my five closest friends have access to it. Actually, that's sort of a misnomer. My two closest friends and three good friends who I never see in person (and therefore don't care how stupid I look in front of them) can see it. In any event, it's really private.
I've been using that one a lot more, but...I dunno. I'm more honest there, but at the same time I lie more. Does that make sense? I tell more about my life, but a lot less about what I feel. Here, I obfuscate and blur, scrambling details into a delicate fiction that even I can hardly untangle without turning it into a snarling mess, but the truth isn't in the literal detail. It's in the emotion behind it all.
It's snowing really hard outside.
To be perfectly honest, this is - objectively - the coldest I've ever been in my life. I grew up in Los Angeles, and until I came to Britain, I've lived all but 8 days of my life in California's mediterranean, desert, and bay-area-coastal climates - all extremely mild and moderate, places where snow is more of a mental conception (and something you go to on vacation) than anything else. I can count the number of times I ever saw real snow in person before I came here on one hand. Strange to realize that something which is so much a part of everyday life for much of the world is a complete novelty for me.
I'll take pictures in the morning while I walk to class. Send them home to my family, who will all be "OOOOOH, BRITAIN IS PRETTY!" and thereby evade the real conversations.
So many real conversations we're not having, haven't had, and will never dare to have. So much of my life completely incommunicable.
My friends know. Well. They know most of it, in strictly emotional-neutral terms. But they know things are up. Things would have to be for my sleep patterns to be so severely interrupted (as they are) that R has taken to asking me first thing when we talk, almost as a greeting, when the last time I slept was, how long it lasted, whether I had nightmares, and why I'm not currently passed out in dreamland. It's because he worries about me.
I've known him less than a year, and he's practically my mommy. Jesus.
A, she doesn't do it so much. We hardly talk once midterm season hits anyway. R and I are both just mutually procrastinatory (...word?), so he gets more chance to (1) notice and (2) comment. I love him, I really do, but it gets obnoxious sometimes. I've been lying to keep him off my case.
[It's snowing really hard. Like, whiting out. So beautiful. I want to write a story/creation myth about snow for my fantasy series now.]
*sigh* I can't believe my life is coming to this. =/
I've been seeing a psychologist. I can't remember if I posted that here or not. In any event, I have. I'm not sure if it's helping. I'm half-thinking it might be making things worse. There's so much I'm avoiding.
(...run, Jack, run...)
I don't know. Like, we're talking about my growing-up years. And I've told him more than I've told anyone. Good ol' George. I call him Jorge in my mind, because Spanish is the language I feel more comfortable talking about my problems in (ironic, since it's my second language, and I've only ever used it in an academic setting, never personal) and I automatically translate people's names over if there's a cognate. Mary becomes Maria, John Juan, Elizabeth Isabel, Michael Miguel... and so on. But Jorge doesn't speak Spanish. He might speak French, I don't know, or German, the languages English students learn much more commonly than Spanish. But I don't speak any French and my German is only good enough to travel in when you take into account that almost everybody in the major German cities knows English fairly well at this point, thanks to the American and British military presence there from World War II onward.
I haven't even told Jorge that I have an easier time speaking in Spanish when it comes to these issues. He probably wouldn't want to go with that solution even if he could speak Spanish just because it's another wall to keep me from really actually owning and dealing with my problems.
Fuck that, I say.
Or at least I want to.
(...isn't that the point?...)
All these imaginary lines in the sand we're drawing... Except.
He told me point-blank at the end of our last appointment that, pretty much, the nancy-pansying about has to end. He was nicer about it. How did he put it? Oh, yes. There's enough background out in the open now to see that (1) I cope by avoiding problems, (2) that's not working anymore, (3) dealing with my problems directly tends to make me go into a crisis point - panic attack, crying spazz, general malaise, and (4) there's nothing really that can be done to help me move forward unless we wade into that churning morass of BAD. He held out the option to me that he "hoped" I'd come back. As if there were a question.
(...check and see if she's moving, alright?...)
Until he said it, I'd been committed to seeing it all through. But that little seed of doubt...which isn't his fault, it's been there forever. How was he supposed to know what years of being a victim of emotional piranhas would leave behind?
Coward. Not good enough. Not srong enough. Worthless. Waste of time. ...
(...I know when I'm wanted; I'll leave if you ask me to...)
I'm trying to convince myself to keep going. I don't want to, it hurts so much. But I know I should. R and K and A and everyone else think it's a good idea if I do because at least this way I'm dealing with things in controlled, navigable situations with the assistance of someone who's trained in this dealing, rather than waiting for it all to overwhelm me again. Which is true. But at the same time. I just feel like shit after each appointment. Horrible. I've blown off so many classes because they were after the appointment, and just the thought of being around people rubbed raw against my mental nerve endings. It's bad. I haven't told anybody about that side effect, either. But it's slowly turning up in my attendance records here. I just don't want to talk about it.
I'm still coping badly, honestly. Except that now it's this weird, bizarre, coping-with-problems-caused-by-dealing-with-my-failed-coping-mechanisms-kind-of-coping badly. -_-;
So not amused.
(...and why on earth would anyone practice self-destruction?...)
So yes. We haven't dealt with the Spanish hurdle. Or the tarot cards. I still rely on my cardboard friends for...something. I don't know. I don't believe they tell the future. But I do feel as though they can give a clear picture of events. I've had too many bizarre coincidences and far-too-close-for-the-comfort-of-coincidence-as-explanation experiences with them to just write them off.
But he doesn't know about those, either. Because they're superstitious. And I'm tired of not being taken seriously.
Exhibit A: R turning into a mommy when he talks to me these days. He's only 14 months older than I am. It's not like he has any special knowledge that I don't. Well. Relatively speaking.
What else is there we haven't really talked about?
Oh, yes. There's been lots about my home life. Very little about my friends. The funny thing is, right now, and pretty much since July, it hasn't been my home that's left me a gibbering mess.
It's been my friends. Or at least, people who I thought were my friends.
The fragmentation and dissolution of my group of friends has been exceedingly painful for me. It still hurts, and I keep poking at it like its a bruise or something, almost like I'm trying to see if it's better yet. It's not. I know it's not.
I'm still terribly angry. And I feel really betrayed. I was catching up with a couple other friends who had heard about the madness when it was beginning and missed some major developments, and I was filling them in, and I got so angry, and so hurt, and I was crying so hard while I was IMing them. They didn't know, of course, but it was there.
The problem is that it all made me question my value and worth as a friend - and my identity as a friend was the most unshakeable, solid, reliable part of my identity that I had. It's what I built all of my self-assurance on that, no matter how fucked things were, they weren't supposed to be that way and look how good they could be! But when it all came crashing down like a house of cards at a whisper of trouble, it shattered me in ways that I'm only just beginning to identify, and still can't begin to describe or name.
(...hello, I'm good for nothing; will you love me just the same?...)
And they've been back in contact with me. Claiming that they wanted to make things better. Stupidly, I thought that some progress had been made. But when I went back to look over what was said (I saved the IM conversation), I was appalled.
I still am.
I can't believe I was ever friends with...that. Especially given the deep value I place on friendship and loyalty. Really, it was only that value that ever persuaded me not to completely throw them out of my life out of hand.
I still, foolishly, hope for some sort of restoration. Even though I know it will never be right, never again. It's not so much that they've done such terrible things. Just that our priorities are so drastically out of line...and that they attacked my best friends and I over stupid idiotic details. It wasn't even anything serious. And then they refused to talk to us. And then they claim that we're the ones preventing a peace from being achieved!
The sickest part about it all, is that it's been like this forever. We just ignored it for so long.
(...now lie, just like you always do! You can fake it for the papers, but I'm onto you!!!!...)
I don't know.
They want anyone else but them to be responsible for what's happened.
I wanted to be responsible, when it first started, out of this misguided belief that if it were all my fault, at least then I could take steps to fix it.
I know that blame lies equally across the whole group. We were never really meant to be friends; it was an association of loneliness and convenience. So why did it hurt so badly when it split? Because we had convinced ourselves that it didn't matter. That, like a family, we were tied together with bonds that defied explanation.
Except all of my experiences with family are that family only end up hurting you. How's that for foreshadowing? Heh.
I want to be able to be blamed, in a really fucked up way. But I know that's not possible. If I were to take responsibility - like I always have! - it wouldn't really solve anything. The situation would just resurrect itself.
Strange that the one behaving the most sensible way is the one being accused of being most childish by the others. And I'm not talking about me, but rather my best friend, who has cut the other two out and won't even entertain their bullshit for a second because she can see right through it.
They say she's being immature. She's just doing what's best. This group was never meant to last. And if it were to be reunited, it would break again. The cracks would mar it, create new points of weakness. Gluing it back together will no more make it shiny and new than it would if it were a porcelain doll.
(...if you did it, say you did it; if you didn't, suck it up and say you did...)
Bleargh.
I thought I was more mentally stable than I am. Well. Mentally, I'm fine. It's emotionally. Different, I suppose. Although probably only different in the way that pink roses are different from yellow ones. Superficially, and only in shades of meaning. See the world in black and white and all that beautiful nuance vanishes.
Anyway. Whatever. I should be sleeping. I've been up all night, except that insomnia and emotasticness have hit again.
Maybe I'll go talk to R, except I'd better first come up with a reason why I'm still awake, because he'll definitely ask.
*sigh*
Loves to you, though. And thanks for putting up with my bullshit. ^^ Back | Older | Current | Next