Noel Veva

Via The Bad Dominicana. Same here. The women the men I've known have predominately been attracted to are of the sort that are willing to sit and marinate in perpetually frustrated silence in exchange for the 'privilege' of being owned by them. They deserve better.

2012-03-17T11:36:00.003-07:00

Free yourselves from the desire to be the sexual/social 'property' of these jerks, women.

Via The Bad Dominicana. Bearing witness is the absolute least white assholes can do. Myself very much included.

2012-03-17T11:30:00.001-07:00

READ IT AND ACT, WHITE ONES.

Via Jaki Griot Productions. This lit my freaking skin cells on fire. The universe ASTOUNDS.

2012-03-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

Or women could collectively, en masse, simply stop having routine PIV with men. I know it would be weird/hard/uncomfortable for many and impossible for some, but it is, in fact, an option that has not yet been explored. And one that, if implemented, would have a near-100% success rate.*

2012-03-13T23:51:00.002-07:00

Because it works.

I'm no religious, right-wing, anti-orgasm/heterosex asshole.

I'm as liberal, leftist, feminist and pro-women as one can be (or at least, this one).

But heterosex does NOT HAVE TO EQUAL PIV.

And as it stands, right now, MOST OF IT DOES.

And I'm telling you, and I will keep telling you, I don't think it's a good idea for women to be engaging in routine PIV with men. It's flat fucking dangerous...and has real, expensive and often catastrophic consequences for many of us.

I gave it up. It wasn't easy.

It's a fucking chemical addiction.

IT'S A FUCKING CHEMICAL ADDICTION.

And a destructive/damaging one, like any/many others.

And it is, in fact, sadly, a non-negotiable, deal-breaking REQUIREMENT in most heterosexual romantic relational scenarios.

We all know this. We are all painfully aware that 95% (or more) of 'happy' heterosexual couplings would vanish into thin fucking air in the absence of PIV-on-effective-demand.

Nobody wants to talk about it, and understandably so. It's hard as fuck to admit, to deal with, to accept.

But it's true.

Look, I know this isn't a popular viewpoint. But I think this avenue is one that feminists, womanists, leftists of all types and stripes should seriously start considering traversing, or at least thinking about considering traversing.

Men have, do and will continue to use PIV sex to control women's bodies and lives. They are not going to stop. Ever.

There is really only one way out of this mess.

And it's not fun.

And it's not easy.

And it's not painless.

And it's going to involve a lot of loss and discomfort and social rejection and hardship for many thousands of women.

But I think it's probably the only truly effective way of eradicating reproductive coercion and control.

*For the inevitable shitty, violent and otherwise scary and non-consensual outcomes that would most certainly occur in the event of realization of said paradigm shift.

Comment left on We Eat Flesh

2012-03-13T23:22:00.001-07:00

Original post here.

"Treys -

*Nodding like mad* I'll take my kid, my blog and my dog. I think I am a loner. I think being alone, liking to be alone, preferring to be alone, being satisfied/content with being alone or not being able/particularly inclined to manage the hectic silliness of culturally enforced multiple relationships is just.fucken.fine.

Loving you is central. It has to be. I think the hyper-focus on having many others around you at all times speaks to the general lack of real self-love in most people's lives. Do they loathe themselves that much, that the thought of being alone/mostly alone is so horrible, so frightening, so intolerable, so unspeakable, so something to be avoided at any and all cost?

What about wholeness of your own accord? What about the transcendent beauty of profound, engrossing, pure, true, solitary silence?

This path is not an easy one. But a more worthwhile endeavor than loving yourself, being fully in, with and of yourself, for yourself, BY yourself, does not exist.

It is difficult. It is painful. It can be incredibly frightening.

But it's the challenging gifts that offer the deepest clarity, the most satisfying pleasures, the glorious contentment of the hard-won, hard-lived, risks taken, courage properly tested and earned.

So often when reading your words I feel the euphoric tingle of recognition. I appreciate the shit out of that, and you.

Keep running.

Noel."

Via The Bad Dominicana. Used to be one of my personality traits, too...has been partially excised by way of constant, unrelenting shaming. I'll get it back. :)

2012-03-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

I want to scream this one from my balcony, naked and covered in raspberry chocolate liqueur. Because WHY NOT?

Via The Bad Dominicana. Nods Undeniable.

2012-03-12T14:08:00.002-07:00

"Veganism is not a 'white' thing but 'Indigenous/Original People's' Thing": Hood Health breaks it down from Sistah Vegan on Vimeo.

Hesitation, doubt and denial can, and do, kill...(sorry, via Jaki Griot Productions)

2012-03-11T00:55:00.002-08:00

*Nods* Yep.

Via (another) Shakesville commenter. Needed to hear this today. I'm pretty much exactly the person I want to be, too.

2012-03-09T00:45:00.000-08:00

We live very different lives, have very different backgrounds, wildly divergent abilities and more, but I see a lot of myself in her writings/life experiences. Plus, trademark angsty shit. I know you've been waiting. ;)

2012-03-06T03:36:00.000-08:00

Independence can mean a lot of different things, and can manifest in a lot of different ways. Support is crucial. Trust is crucial. Respect is crucial. Understanding that a 'life worth living' takes many forms and that no set of experience/way of seeing/being in the world is superior, better or more worthy is absolutely fucking vital.

I am autistic. I am most definitely and absolutely on the spectrum.

I don't need a fucking doctor to tell me that. Thanks, I've lived this way for 33 years *and* am perfectly able to read, draw inferences and make logical conclusions based on the information presented to me.

Ryo is autistic. He is most definitely and absolutely on the spectrum.

I don't need a fucking doctor to tell me that. Thanks, I gave birth to him, have been paying close attention since then, have lived this way for 33 years AND CAN FUCKING READ, DRAW INFERENCES AND MAKE LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS BASED ON THE INFORMATION PRESENTED TO ME.

That's all doctors are doing when they 'diagnose' someone. Drawing inferences and making logical conclusions based on information presented to them. Nearly all people are capable of this.

I am capable of this.

You are almost certainly capable of this.

Trust yourself.

What being autistic, being on the spectrum means for me and Ryo is that we have a hard time relating to other people, in certain ways. Amongst a hundred billion other things.

For me, it's an issue of rapid exhaustion at the prospect of trying to maintain a relationship of any sort, for any length of time. For one of a hundred billion ever-shifting, sometimes creepingly enlarging reasons.

There's more involved, at play here than just autism, but it's a major factor.

Googled a bit on 'symptoms of adult autism' and was freshly reminded, smacked in the face even, with the particular ways in which I have difficulty trying to understand what the fuck other people want from me, what's 'appropriate', what makes sense, what is 'supposed' to be happening, is expected to happen in all manner of social interactions at times.

Troubles with 'getting' humor/irony/sarcasm? Interpreting things literally most others catch onto quickly as humorous/ironic/sarcastic on a consistent basis? Yep.

Also, echolalia. I have this. Big time. I incessantly repeat things I hear. Phrases, patterns of vocal intonation, bits of conversation, one-liners from movies, one-liners from jokes, things my parents said to me, things former friends have said, former lovers, former co-workers, strangers, one-liners I make up out of thin air (not strictly echolalia, but related) things pieced together from memories of other things, etc. I can't stop myself.

Stimming. For me, it's picking, scratching, staring off into space (once heard it described on a television show as 'zooming', which struck me as remarkably descriptive and totally accurate, at least in terms of what I do). Almost totally outside my ability to control as well.

The loss of language/ability. I have this on a relatively minor scale, but it's there and it can seriously hamper my ability to communicate/function/certainly perform routine tasks of all kinds, especially in a workplace environment.

For example, I lose words. Words I otherwise use on a daily basis. That normally come easily and readily. That flow from my lips, or had the day (sometimes sentence!) before. Just...gone. I'll be in the middle of speaking and suddenly be at a total loss as to how to express a particular thought with a particular word. It isn't nervousness or lack of vocabulary or simple forgetting. It's...gone. Like I've never heard it before, never used it before. Like the word never existed at all.

I have been in the position of having to look up particular words, simple words I have literally used a hundred thousand times to express an idea in the dictionary as though I had no knowledge of them whatsoever, more times than I can count.

(Same thing with keys, wallets, jackets, scarves, shoes, bags, stuff I'm not used to having with me at all times, anything I'm not particularly inclined to learn, etc)

I get very, very attached to certain routines (though abhor them in general, which is symptomatic of another condition) and incredibly attached to certain places (apartments, restaurants, certain buildings, certain cities or parts of certain cities, etc).

For example, the other night I cried my ass off at the prospect of leaving Long Beach. Just bawled like a baby, for no good reason (was considering moving to another place for work, just considering. The actual moving, if it even takes place, won't happen for several more months). The mere *thought* of leaving my city, my precious, precious city with all the sidewalks I walk on, the places I walk past and frequent, the smells and the sounds made my heart break to the point of explosive tears. Like someone had died. I was grieving. I was panicked.

I must do (some) things in certain ways, in a certain order. For instance, I must use the same route to get to a certain place, whether by foot, car, bus or train. I must take the same bus/train, even though another goes to the same place. I must find information online in the same way, login to the computer in the same way, sit in the same chair, have my open windows arranged in a certain way, etc.

If I try to deviate/do things differently, it can make me so anxious that I have to stop what I'm doing and remember to breathe.

Yep. Really.

Sleep (not totally sure this is autism-related, but I suspect it is).

I wage this fucking war every damned day. Especially when I'm working.

I will.not.sleep. unless I am past the point of total exhaustion and am physically incapable of staying awake any longer.

Doesn't matter if I have work in the morning, have a job interview, or if the goddess herself is coming to tea in two hours and expects the place to be presentable and me coherent. I will not sleep until I collapse, until my body forces me to.

And no amount of reasoning with myself, intellectualizing, remembering my 'responsibilities', shaming, guilting or emotional blackmailing will change that. It's just what I do.

Other things, like I hate, and I mean despise, filling out paperwork/dealing with the acquisition/relaying of certain types of information very, very far past the point of reasonableness. Like, I will completely fucking freak out if I am made to deal with accessing my bank account online when I don't feel like it (I have lots and lots of issues surrounding money/dealing with money in particular), or completing a job application when I can't deal with trying to remember all that redundant information and writing it down/typing it out (which is often, and a really significant roadblock to obtaining employment...I won't apply to a lot of places due to a near-complete refusal/ability to handle being forced to remember/log so much information not readily/easily accessible in my brain. I can never remember certain things, and worse, never remember where to find certain information and it makes.me.fucking.crazy), and so on.

I'm not sure I've ever written about this before, specifically, if I've ever really stopped and listed the things I struggle with in this respect.

(I may have. I tend to have problems remembering things I've said/done, as well as things other people have said/done. Noticed yet? ;))

Ryo has a significant language delay. He is nearly six and still cannot speak clearly, in full sentences or with proper grammar/syntax (in English or Spanish, both of which he should be reasonably fluent in by now. He understands [both?] perfectly, but there's a glitch in his communication apparatus, and it's very obvious). He mispronounces and misuses a lot of words, and gets extremely frustrated by his inability to express himself verbally.

(Sound familiar? ;))

(There isn't shit I can do about this, and yes, I've tried. Over and over and over. His father will.not.listen.to.me, or anyone else [re: his teachers, who for sure must have noticed and commented/expressed concern by now...not that I'd know for certain, as this is apparently privileged information. Yeah. It's awful. I live in the ninth circuit appeals court of hell], and refuses to acknowledge that he has difficulties with learning/language. We're doing the best we can to address it in the time/space we have. Yes, I know this is going to have serious consequences/repercussions down the road. I'm not stupid. I *live* this, remember? I have no power/control in this situation, I'm swiftly going stark raving mad because of it and am dealing to the best of my ability. Consider carefully before you pounce/run your mouth in this regard)

He does not relate to other children well. He bosses them around automatically, very unselfconsciously, directs them, almost as if they are pieces on a chessboard. He commands them (I did this as a child as well...in fact, this was my primary method of relating to/dealing with other kids/my peers for a very, very long time. Well into my twenties, in fact). He doesn't seem to understand fully that they are separate individuals with their own ideas, wants, needs, likes and dislikes.

(YES, THIS SCARES THE FUCKING CRAP OUT OF ME, ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING THAT HE IS MALE. EVEN MORE ESPECIALLY AS HIS CURRENT BEST FRIEND AT SCHOOL IS A GIRL)

Have I mentioned that I am often, and severely, and I mean cripplingly and to the point of paralysis, triggered by my own kid?

Consider it mentioned, if not.

Back to symptoms. Ryo plays with parts of toys, and usually only with certain toys, and usually only in certain, rote, scripted, redundant ways.

Check.

He doesn't seem particularly inclined to draw, and will only do so when encouraged/required to do so, and even then only long enough to complete a single (very simplistic) image.

Check.

He is obsessed with writing his (first) name, and doing so over and over again is his primary method of 'drawing'.

Check.

He only beginning to be able to say his full name (first, last. Doesn't seem to remember he has a middle name most of the time) clearly and consistently.

Check.

He says the same things, in the same ways, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Check.

He cannot pay attention to much of anything for longer than a few minutes' time, unless he is extremely interested in it (and sometimes, not even then).

Check.

He is utterly obsessed with video games (which he has been playing since the age of 3, thanks to an incredibly poor series of choices on his father's part. We are *all* suffering for it now). When I ask him how he's doing/what he's been doing at home with his father, they are literally all he talks about. When he wants to talk/tell me about things, it almost always centered on video games. His favorite toys are characters from his favorite games, which he plays with as though he is playing the games themselves and not imagining the characters doing different things/acting in different scenarios.

Check.

He is almost totally incapable of relaying the day's activities in any meaningful way. When I ask him about school and what he does/learns there, he tells me he learns, he plays and sometimes a nearly incoherent bit about something his teacher said/did. He can't tell me *what* he learns, *what* games he played and who with, or any real specifics in any real detail. When his father calls him when he is with us, he can't tell him about how we've been spending our time without help from me/prompting.

Check.

He tends to gravitate towards older children/adults, not because he is more mature/'advanced', but because he is less so and seeking guidance/a certain level of patience/care that children his own age cannot provide.

Check.

He does not ask children for their names/any information about them when playing with them. He does not ask to be included in games or if he can play. He inserts himself and plays whether they want him to or not. Not out of aggressiveness or stubbornness, but because he does not understand that such things are expected, and necessary. It's outside his reality.

Check.

And so on.

All the signs, all the flags are present and perfectly visible, flashing wildly. It doesn't take a doctorate or special training to see them or to understand what they mean.

Not in Ryo's case, and not in mine.

We are autistic. We are on the spectrum.

Trying to parent from this angle, knowing what I know and having experienced what I've experienced, with almost no knowledge/access to information about what, exactly, is going on in most of my son's life, who knows what, who's doing what, who's saying when...both because his father shuts me out and because Ryo is not able to let me in, and with even less control/say about what happens, is nothing short of screwy. And impossibly painful.

And simply impossible. It can't be done. My role now consists primarily of constant damage control. Clean-up crew.

Juan makes the messes, Ryo does his best to adapt (as children do), and I do everything I can to clean up/pick up as much slack as I can.

The situation is intolerable. But it must be tolerated.

Why?

Because any attempt to alter it will result in an outcome, in something much, much worse for all of us.

Why?

Because Juan will see to it that it does.

So that's how we live. That's how we (I) manage. I don't know what goes on in my own child's head, his life because his father doesn't want me to and he can't tell me yet. All I know is what I see, and what comes with him through the door every other weekend when he comes back.

The last weekend he was with us, we went to a shopping center in another city. We passed by a shop window with a plastic baby in a rocking baby seat, rocking rhythmically like a parent would rock their child. An auto-rocker.

"Aww, how cute. I like that, mama", he told me.

Charmed, I said, "You do? Aww. You like babies, sweetie?"

"I like girls", he replied.

Pause. I was trying to think of how to address that statement in a way that would get across that all babies are not girls and that all things baby-related are not necessarily girl-related, without shaming him or making him feel like he'd said/done something wrong, when he hit me with the following:

"I like you, mama. You have chi-chis (spanish slang for breasts)."

Frozen. Mouth agape. Utter horror. Frantic mental gymnastics, holding back tears and bile and trying desperately to regroup (hooray hoorah for triggers!), to respond. After a moment, all I could muster was:

"Well, I hope you like me because I'm your mama. Am I a girl because I have chi-chis? Is that what you mean?"

"Yeah. Girls have chi-chis", he replied matter-of-factly.

Coming down a bit from the ledge, less freaked, I continued:

"Boys have chi-chis, too, you know." I gestured towards his chest.

In flat, informational-relay mode, he said:

"Yeah, but yours are bigger."

Now smiling, relaxed and charmed once more, I replied:

"Yes, mine are bigger. And they make milk. But both boys and girls have chi-chi's. Yours just don't make milk, because you're a boy."

"Yeah, mine don't make milk. Boys don't make milk", he stated firmly.

"Not usually, anyway", I said, in a clumsy and over-simplified attempt at inclusivity (we do try).

By then we'd reached the bathroom and the conversation, such as it was, had turned to the coolness of the family facilities and the kid-sized toilet/related.

But that little exchange, that jarring, jabbing instant of acute recognition of my lack of involvement, understanding, influence, control? Of my son being taught things about women/women's roles/women's bodies/an entire worldview of reducing them to body parts/identification/valuing on the basis of those body parts/those roles, in direct conflict with my belief system, with my values, with my worldview based on recognition of women as whole, complete, human beings, capable of taking on many roles, kid-related, sex-related and not?

Just one in an ever-expanding, tumultuous, oily sea of misinformation, outrageous bullshit, bald-faced lies, intentional misrepresentations, flagrant betrayals and deliberately concealed agendas on his father's part.

With no end in sight. With no recourse available.

Ryo is being groomed to mirror his father. To extend his reach. To hurt, terrorize and further abuse me. That's the objective.

It's happening right out in the open. He's not even trying to hide it. It's deliberate and it's unbearable.

And I can't stop it.

Yeah. Live through this.

I'm not sure I can.

Not again.

Via Fuck Yeah Feminism, Via Museum of Sex

2012-03-06T00:55:00.000-08:00

Men are flat fucking jealous of the glory of female sexuality/reality. The erasure of our bodies/lives/minds/experience spans all disciplines, all modes of thought, including and especially the medical industry. This is irrefutable proof.

With that in mind, via The Bad Dominicana, via Dumb Things White People Say. :)

2012-03-05T20:45:00.000-08:00

Superb.

Why have I suddenly become Captain Of The Re-Blogs?

2012-03-05T20:07:00.001-08:00

I don't know.

-Maybe it's because, for the moment, I'm tired of talking about my personal struggles/perceptions and feel the need to absorb others' experiences/offerings as a way of better understanding/accepting/putting into perspective my own.

-Maybe it's because I've committed to posting more often and have decided that sharing the work of other bloggers is an efficient, relatively painless means of doing so.

-Maybe I'm not particularly chatty at this precise point in my existence.

-Maybe I need to hear music more than I need to hurl myself headlong into Suffering Seething Canyon.

-Maybe I'm feeling lazy.

-Maybe I'm taking shortcuts.

-Maybe I'm avoiding dealing with some things.

-Maybe it doesn't matter.

-Maybe it's just perfectly okay to do whatever I want with this, my own personal blogular space.

Have a kitten.

Via Crunk Feminist Collective. So, so, so beautiful. :)

2012-03-05T19:51:00.002-08:00

Also via Fuck Yeah Feminists. Big freakin' grin. :)

2012-03-05T05:27:00.000-08:00

Yes!

Via Fuck Yeah Feminists. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? ;)

2012-03-05T05:25:00.003-08:00

Some of us, apparently, haven't evolved much since then, either...

So few films interest me these days due to the utter lack of 3-dimensional, engaging, humanly portrayed, non-stereotypical, non-heterosexual/non-conformist/unconventional/anything-other-than-white-femme portrayals of women. It's terrifying how few representations of our real, human selves exist in any form of media whatsoever...women are ghosts...

2012-03-05T05:15:00.000-08:00

Comment left on recent post at Femonade

2012-03-04T16:42:00.001-08:00

Original post here.

C -

I know it sounds, and is, awful, but I’ll probably always be grateful that I had a son for this reason, and this reason only…raising a girl-child in this world full of traps, snares and wolves waiting to hurt her is a horror I can’t even begin to imagine living. My body and mind frost over with immobilizing anxiety at the thought.

(Then again, they do the same when considering the distinct possibility that my boy-child could grow up to *be* one of those wolves himself…I really don’t know which is worse sometimes for the female parents involved…)

You have my empathy, my support, and my admiration. Keep talking. Keep fighting. Though she may reject you in youth, she will likely come to deeply respect and seek out your counsel/commiseration later in life (a hope female parents of sons have no realistic expectation of realizing, ever).

Best of luck.

Via Shakesville. Tingly, heart-stopping, breathtaking.

2012-03-04T14:58:00.001-08:00

El Cielo de Canarias / Canary sky - Tenerife from Daniel López on Vimeo.

Via Crunk Feminist Collective

2012-03-01T17:42:00.003-08:00

This makes a lot of sense to me, and validates many of my feelings about some of my more impulsive sexual experiences, with men in particular.

There's nothing 'wrong' with casual sexual encounters based solely/primarily on mutual sexual attraction and little/nothing more, respectfully and ethically engaged in. These things can be fun and a much-needed release. They have been for me, in some ways.

But for some of us, and for me, something crucial is missing. Respect and ethics are not enough.

Care.

To have sex, make love, even fuck, for it to be a fully enjoyable and completely satisfying/worthwhile release, there must be an element of human caring. Of genuine human acknowledgement of the other parties involved.

Not love. Not romantic attachment or any of its conventional variations.

Care.

Care, respect, acknowledgement, honoring of each parties' humanity, their personhood. Their individual needs, wants, desires, likes, dislikes, insecurities, tenderness, vulnerability.

Before the sex/making love/fucking, during the sex/making love/fucking, after the sex/making love/fucking.

There's definitely a number of things to be said about the commodified/commercialized/capitalist-model-profit-inspired/transactional mainstream feminist way of looking at/thinking about/talking and writing about/dealing in general with sex/making love/fucking.

These connections, or opportunities for connections and caring and respecting/acknowledging each other's humanity with and through sex/making love/fucking, have been co-opted, oversimplified, distorted and used against us and our better interests/our woman-freeing, woman-centering objectives, is what I can think to say right now.

That, and this somewhat cements my contentedness (in a way) with continuing to satisfy my own needs in this respect...as I love, care for, and trust myself to recognize, respect, acknowledge and honor my own humanity when having sex/making love to/fucking myself.

Which is an acceptable, even desirable, alternative for some of us.

Via Jaki Griot Productions. I LOVE THIS.

2012-03-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

MY BODY IS MINE. YOUR BODY IS YOURS. WE BELONG TO OURSELVES.

Now in my sidebar. Fuck yes.

Pulled from fetlife, which I've recently joined. There exist no men who fit this description, and there never will, but it's a nice sentiment.

2012-02-29T21:11:00.000-08:00

Attributes of a Gentleman:

Intelligence: a gentleman should be well-read in multiple fields of literature, able to competently discourse about the news of his time, and possess an intellectual curiosity that respects the beauty of interdisciplinary thought. As a corollary, he should also be versed in language(s) to such fluency as will allow him to express his thoughts succinctly and elegantly.

Humor: every gentleman should have in his repertoire the spear of wit, the club of pun, and the blade of irony--for what is the meaning of a life without laughter?

Humility: despite striving for excellence in all he does, a gentleman will never show arrogance. He will never assume the cloak of superiority above another, instead accepting that he will always have much to learn. Vaunts are unacceptable and unnecessary, as prowess married to finesse has a voice of its own.

Compassion: a gentleman should be sympathetic and empathetic to the plights of others, and possess the refined sensitivity to detect discomfort even when not explicitly expressed.

Generosity: a gentleman should be giving of his time and efforts to others. He should be quick to offer aid of all forms without prompt, although in balance he should possess the faculties to carefully judge priorities so as not to commit beyond his means.

Punctuality: a gentleman is always early unless courted by such overwhelming forces as could not be foreseen and accounted for--for instance, serving as sole witness to an accident while en route to a previously planned rendezvous.

Courage: throughout his life, a gentleman will cultivate aptitude both physical and mental such that he may possess the daring to face challenges and tackle obstacles with confidence.

Wisdom: while a gentleman should be passionate, he should possess a temperament cool enough to realize there are occasionally limits, as well as boundaries that should not be crossed. He should understand that anger solves nothing, that recklessness leads to demise, that excess leads to greedy sorrow, and that human bonds should be treasured above all else.

Aura: the most subtle of qualities, and intangible*--a true gentleman has about him an inexplicable air of quiet strength, a chivalrous feel that commands and gives respect, and an undeniable sense that there is far more than meets the eye.

Love: I have saved the best attribute for last--a gentleman loves his family, his friends, and life. This love is the driving force of all his other qualities, and he will defend it to his dying day.

Via 1TBM, Via Polyamorous Misanthrope...

2012-02-29T02:50:00.000-08:00

I very much needed to read this post today. Much gratitude to the author.

I struggle and struggle and struggle again with mad, massive insecurity. I'll be sure to keep this close and re-read as often as necessary, because I think it will actually help.

Here's to hoping the same is true for you, readers.

Via Shakesville commenter. AbsoFREAKINGlutely brill. :)

2012-02-28T20:07:00.000-08:00

Via Body Impolitic, authored by Esther D. Rothblum

2012-02-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

EDITORIAL

Why a Journal on Fat Studies?

ESTHER D. ROTHBLUM

Editor, Fat Studies

Fat studies is a field of scholarship that critically examines societal attitudes about body weight and appearance, and that advocates equality for all peo- ple with respect to body size. Fat studies seeks to remove the negative associations that society has about fat and the fat body. It regards weight, like height, as a human characteristic that varies widely across any population. Marilyn Wann (2009), one of the first activists to use the term “fat studies,” stated, “Unlike traditional approaches to weight, a fat studies approach offers no opposition to the simple fact of human weight diversity, but instead looks at what people and societies make of this reality” (p. x). Fat studies scholars ask why we oppress people who are fat and who benefits from that oppres- sion. In that regard, fat studies is similar to academic disciplines that focus on race, ethnicity, gender, or age.

The size acceptance movement began in 1969 when William Fabrey founded NAAFA, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (ini- tially the National Association to Aid Fat Americans, see naafa.org). In the 1970s in Los Angeles, a group of fat women formed the Fat Underground as a way to organize against discrimination of fat people by the medical profes- sion via diets and medical practices. Two of their members, Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran wrote the Fat Liberation Manifesto (1983), which demanded respect and equal rights for fat people.

NAAFA and the Fat Underground both used the word “fat” instead of “obese” or “overweight.” In English, medical terms (e.g., “obese”) tend to be based on Greek or Latin terms, and as oppressed groups organize they often replace the former medical or clinical diagnosis (e.g., “homosexual”) with more descriptive or catchier terms (e.g., “gay”), sometimes reclaiming words that have been used against them or that had derogatory mean- ings (e.g., “queer”). Similarly, fat activists felt that the terms “overweight,” “underweight,” and “normal weight” all imply that there is an attainable “ideal” weight when in fact there is great diversity in weight.

Fat studies scholars realize that weight needs to be examined within the context of gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and sexual ori- entation. Because weight is so strongly correlated with income in western nations, being fat is often synonymous with being poor (e.g., fat peo- ple don’t join health clubs can be understood as poor people don’t join health clubs). Although it is illegal to discriminate based on gender, race, and ethnicity in most institutions, only a handful of places—the U.S. state of Michigan and the cities of Washington, DC; San Francisco and Santa Cruz, California; Madison, Wisconsin; and Binghamton, New York; as well as Victoria, Australia—currently have legislation prohibiting discrimination based on weight.

In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers from the size-acceptance movement tended to be trained in health-related disciplines such as medicine, public health, nutrition, and exercise physiology. Their research examined and cri- tiqued the health risks of fatness and the effectiveness of dieting. In the 21st Century, fat studies has become more interdisciplinary. The Popular Culture Association and the National Women’s Studies Association have fat studies tracks. The Smith College conference Fat and the Academy in 2006 focused on fat studies as an academic discipline, and the New York Times focused on fat studies in academia later that year (Ellin, 2006). Fat studies became the focus of research in literature, cultural studies, theatre, film and media studies, and the fine arts (see Rothblum and Solovay, 2009). Scholars have examined fat characters in short stories, novels, television sitcoms, films, and plays.
Paralleling fat studies, the Health at Every Size© (HAES) movement is a public health initiative that focuses on health for all people, regardless of body weight.

HAES emphasizes improving nutrition and enjoying food, and also on the joy of movement instead of adherence to a structured exercise program (see Bacon, 2008; Burgard, 2009). HAES clinicians strive to end bias against fat people, and underscore the fact that we cannot tell people’s health or fitness level just from looking at them. Health is defined as physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, and HAES clinicians focus on everyone appreciating their body and its appearance. HAES is also concerned with the broader social issues (e.g., stigma, discrimination, weight bias, social isola- tion) that affect individuals’ health, as well as the iatrogenic illness caused by programs aiming to “prevent” and “treat” fatness.

Fat Studies is an international and interdisciplinary journal that accepts original research as well as theoretical overviews. It will periodically pub- lish overviews about advances in fat studies in specific disciplines (e.g.,
medicine, nutrition, social sciences, history, economics, literature, popular culture, pedagogy, art, media studies, activism) by experts in those fields. It will occasionally publish thematic issues that focus on a specific topic, as well as book, film, and media reviews.

REFERENCES

Bacon, L. (2008). Health at Every Size: The surprising truth about your weight. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books.
Burgard, D. (2009). What is “Health at Every Size”? In E.D. Rothblum and S. Solovay (Eds.) The fat studies reader (pp. 42–53). New York: New York University Press.
Ellin, A. (November 26, 2006). “Big people on campus.” The New York Times. Freespirit, J., & Aldebaran. (1983). Fat liberation manifesto. In L. Schoenfielder and B. Wieser (Eds.) Shadow on a tightrope: Writings by women on fat oppression
(pp. 52–53). San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. Rothblum, E.D., & Solovay, S. (Eds.) (2009). The fat studies reader. NY: New York
University Press. Wann, M. (2009). Fat studies: An invitation to revolution. In E.D. Rothblum and
S. Solovay (Eds.) The fat studies reader (pp. ix–xxv). New York: New York University Press.

Episode 2 - More On Paid Work

2012-02-28T00:00:00.002-08:00

You should really, really, really be reading this blog.

2012-02-27T19:22:00.001-08:00

Why I oppose porn/prostitution and all other variations of the commercial sex trade...

There are literally MILLIONS of women and girls like her. Millions.

Raped/mutilated/tortured into insanity/near-insanity, raped/mutilated/tortured into silence/submission, then thrown away.

Like trash.

These women and girls are human. What has been done to them, what is being done to them as I type this is unspeakable. It is human suffering, misery, abuse and degradation on a truly unimaginable (for some of us) scale. It is genocide, of the mental/emotional/psychological, AND literal sort.

It must be stopped. Now.

I am a porn/prostitution/sex trade abolitionist.

You should be, too.

Triggers

2012-02-27T14:26:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, yes.

I've done (and still do) this, and most (if not all) white feminists I've known/known of do this as well.

It's terribly tempting to take our righteous hurts and understandable confusion and rage and (attempt to) hand them to other people, especially those we may perceive as being primarily there for our coddling, our education, our amusement and our well, use.

It's so easy to do this. We're encouraged to do it. We're made excuses for. We're stroked and massaged and petted and praised when we send difficult, productive conversations into space with our whining, our childishness, our micro-aggressions, our ignorance and our self-serving pity.

It's easier than taking hold of our pain, sitting with it, processing it to the best of our own abilities as we are able and asking for help only when we truly need it (and only from those whose help/guidance/perspective it would be appropriate/non-oppressive to ask for), not just when it would be so much more comfortable/convenient for us to not have to do these things ourselves.

White women, especially, are conditioned to behave like helpless, broken dolls (not all respond/respond in exactly the same way to this conditioning, but it's there). Largely for the benefit of men, but also for the benefit of themselves/their own privilege and status...and used to that effect quite a bit more often than any of us is willing to admit.

Then there is simple laziness, immaturity, sociopathy, aggressiveness and stupidity. Those play a (huge) part, too.

White women must hold themselves and each other accountable. Always. At all times. Especially in mixed conversations and groups (and especially in non-mixed conversations and groups. ALWAYS, without fail). We have all manner of distractions, derailments and dishonest maneuvering at our disposal, gifted to us by a mercilessly oppressive culture hell-bent on maintaining the superior status of our white husbands, brothers, male friends, boyfriends, male fuck-buddies, male colleagues, male coworkers, male bosses, fathers, uncles, male cousins, etc.

That is to say, there are triggers and there are triggers. True triggers are serious and must be handled maturely and appropriately, away from those who are not responsible for them.

False triggers are a nasty domination tactic, and must be called out/expelled from conversations and communications where they rear their ugly heads.

There is a collective false white consciousness, a delusional alternate reality created by and for and for the exclusive benefit of white /white identified people. It is a consciousness, a reality seen (as anything shoved constantly in the faces of others like so much excrement could not help but be noticed), but not necessarily shared by those outside of it.

Triggers/trigger warnings, as they are currently understood, spoken about and utilized (in the discourse with which I am most readily familiar), are a part of that false consciousness, that self-serving constructed white supremacist, american, middle-to-upper class reality. I don't think they're understood, spoken about, utilized, lived the same way in the real, actual world.

Because in the real world, there's too much to get on with. There's no time for the insanity of constant triggering, constant falling apart, rocking in corners, weeping on cue. There's no space for it. No allowances made. No coddling. No excuses. No warm circle of understanding and support.

There's move forward, find a way to keep going, or die.

The real world is made up of many people, most of whom are collectively oppressed/controlled by whiteness, by white notions of truth, of false, of good, of right, of wrong, of bad, of useful/useless, of real and illusion.

It's quite impossible enough to navigate, to tolerate, to survive without the imposition of white-constructed, white-benefitting/centering pathological fragility at every turn, in every interaction, in every conversation.

Note to self.

This made me laugh out loud, which was greatly needed and appreciated. :)

2012-02-22T23:19:00.000-08:00

The ignorance of others can, indeed, be a tool for sharpening/strengthening our own defenses, both light-hearted/humorous and otherwise.

Response to a message received on OKC. The truth. Not sexy/particularly alluring to most, but to me, it's everything.

2012-02-22T23:06:00.000-08:00

T -

Thanks for writing. :)

Sigh. Responding to these types of messages is often fraught with danger/difficulty for me, but I didn't want to wait any longer to reply, so here goes.

First off, I am not 'brave'...at least not in the way I'm assuming (apologies, conversational shorthand, let me know if I'm off here) you mean. I strongly dislike being called 'brave', to be honest, as I've found that it's almost always employed as a distancing tactic (and though I'm certain that's rarely intended, and not your intention here, intent is not magic and the distancing and resulting frustration/difficulty/pain are no less so because of it). I am strong in some ways, weak in others, and have on rare occasions displayed some manner of courage, however fragmented and dilute.

In short, I'm very, very human. Powerful and resilient, but no less needing/deserving of care, consideration, compassion and empathy than any other person (which unfortunately has often been the automatic, if unconscious, assumption made in most dealings with me). I am less willing to conform/tolerate a lot of things, but incredibly flawed and fragile all the same, guilty of many, many, MANY ethical transgressions I will regret until the day I die, and full of all the requisite holes and hurts endemic to a life/immediate surroundings filled with highly complex, morally ambiguous and more often than not, agonizingly painful circumstances.

That said, I do appreciate your compliments as to my writing and (some of) my life/style choices. It is nice to be validated once in a while. :)

I often attract what I refer to as 'closet cases'...both platonic and otherwise. Those who may hold certain deep-seated radical beliefs hidden away somewhere far from the view of their less mindful, less principled, less seeking friends/family/social units, but whom tend to forgo certain sorts of progress for a certain level of safety, of acceptance.

It's absolutely understandable, and I've been there. But I'm past that stage now. I've paid the price for being 'out' in terms of my worldview, I've lived the consequences and no longer fear them, nor let them control what I do, where I go or how I get there (for the most part. As mentioned, I'm very human ;)).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't know what exactly, if any, the next step would be from here...but if my past experience is anything to go by (and I do tend to heed it often as it's served me well), communications/relationship with me will likely put you in the position of having to 'come out', to choose between your progress and your safety/acceptance in some major way.

Historically, that has been something very few people I've met/known (with an exception or two) have been willing to do. It's an incalculably hard and scary decision...and once you make it, once you cross that line, there is no going back. Your life changes forever, and not always (or even often) for the 'better'...that is to say, nothing is ever really the same, comfortable, familiar again. What was once beautiful/innocuous/funny/interesting/normal becomes hideous/horrifying/evil/transparently inane/freakish. The blinders are removed, the rose-colored taint stripped away and the world is permanently altered. You learn to see it/yourself/define your wants, needs and aspirations differently, you find new beauty, new happiness, a personal alternate-reality sort of 'normal', but I'm not going to lie. It's frightening to live this way, it's uncharted territory and can be very hard to cope with...especially if you define your self-worth exclusively/near-exclusively in terms of whether or not you are 'likeable', 'loveable', 'acceptable' in the conventional societal sense (which I did for a very, very long time. Letting go of that bit of conditioning in particular, that overwhelmingly intense and lifelong grooming to be everybody's friend/mami/lover/otherwise all-easy and ever-pleasurable distraction/resource is the task of a lifetime, and is never really finished. Resistance is crucial, but nonetheless brutal and exhausting).

T, all of that has to be okay with you, a risk you're willing to take if you want to proceed. If it isn't, that's fine. I understand completely. But you must consider carefully whether or not you are truly willing to put much of what I imagine you hold dear on the line, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to take as much time as you need to do that before going any further.

Again, thanks for the message. You seem like you are on your path and I hope you find whatever and whomever it is you seek.

(Also, your dogs are adorable :))

Take care,

Noel.

Touch-starvation (of the decidedly non-gay persuasion).

2012-02-22T01:27:00.000-08:00

Everything feels tight and suffocating, the tears won't come and even if I'm typing to the void, even if all that ever comes of my writing here is that someone, somewhere, for an instant or so understands what I'm feeling and is somehow able to send some manner of commiseration/validation by way of telepathy or confirming energy, it's better than the tightness, the inability to take deep breaths and the sense that if I DON'T FUCKING GET THIS OUT OF MY FESTERING, FRENZIED MIND RIGHT THIS VERY FUCKING SECOND, I will implode.

Touch-starvation has always been an enormous problem for me. I simply cannot accept living without loving, gentle, intimate, passionate, skillful sexual touch for longer than around a year or so. It's like starving to death. I become obsessed with it, with being fed. I think about it day and night. I fantasize constantly to the point of catatonia.

I must. be. touched. And by someone who knows how to touch me, in the ways that suit/please me best. What to say, what to do, what not to say, what not to do.

I want it. I need it. I have to have it and I have reached the point where I am willing to do ridiculously embarrassing things, like watch awful, schmaltzy, vanilla, flat, heteronormative, white supremacist, homophobic, misogynist, conservative, oppressive 'romantic comedies'/the like just to see two people touching each other in a non (or less, anyway) pornographic, passionate, loving way.

If I can't have it, at least I can see it. But watching bullshit propaganda cinema is a (very) temporary, transient solution...which often has the extremely unfortunate side-effect of amplifying the already utterly overwhelming urge to lay my famished fingers on the first motherfucking penis-bearer I see.

Historically, once I have reached this point, I have found/been found by some dude and 'fallen in love' with him in order to be touched on a regular basis and not have to live with this insatiable pit of desire gnawing at me all hours of the fucking day.

Lots and lots of horrendously, life-alteringly awful catastrophies have come about as a result of this, obviously...and I have no intention of repeating that pattern now.

So why men? Why not seek out a woman to connect with on some level, seeing as I currently identify as a lesbian?

Because I have traditionally always sated myself with men's attentions in this regard. Because it's a well-worn groove in my sexual/psychological body memory, a burning, itching thing that feels so motherfucking good to scratch sometimes.

And because using another woman for sex is simply not ethically acceptable to me, period.

It's monstrous, this state. It's deranged. I don't know where it comes from, why it happens, how to combat it, work with it, deal with it, even understand it at all. It comes out of nowhere, takes complete control and tortures me until I satisfy its rabid, rapacious demands.

It would definitely fit the traditional definition of addiction, that's for certain. I'm a junkie on a rampage.

I could give a flying fuck about all the attendant relationship nonsense that comes along with the touching I so desperately, desperately, frantically, dangerously, scandalously crave...the stupid, banal, route machinations I used to call 'love'. I just want the touch. The heat. The energy. The deep, breathless kisses, the mindless sighs, the guttural moaning, the moving together as one, the screams, the sweat, the fiendish grinning, the clawing, biting, pushing, pulling, the general holistic physical/mental/emotional release of a good, long, hard (but emotionally present) fuck.

I want to play. With a man.

Lesbian or no, practical or no, wise or no, mature or no.

Does this mean I'm bisexual? Does this mean I'm otherwise not-gay, not-lesbian?

I DON'T GIVE A FUCK. JUST GIVE ME WHAT I WANT NOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOWNOW.

How's that for straightforward?

Alright, universe. You've brought an essentially perfect means of acquiring money to my table (or not, but thanks for trying). Thank you. I'm forever grateful.

I know I'm being really, really greedy and presumptuous by asking for more, but...

I need a good screw. And it would probably be better if I chose not to take advantage of another woman in this way.

So, please, please, please universe...let dick be the next thing on the menu.

Because I am dog-hungry for it.

Found on an OKC profile I once ran across that no longer exists...best, and most me-applicable, quote I've ever read. Oh, and exciting updates.

2012-02-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting...holy shit...what a ride! - Mavis Leyrer

SPEAKING of skidding in sideways, totally worn out, shouting something or other:

I.HAVE.A.JOB!!!

I.WORK.FROM.HOME!!!

No joke, no lie, no smoke and mirrors. It's a real job, from home. The pay is shit, but there will BE NO MORE ANGRY/RUSHED MORNING COMMUTES, NO MORE WASHING AND WEARING UGLY UNCOMFORTABLE CLOTHES THAT I HATE, NO MORE PACKING LUNCHES, NO MORE OFFICE POLITICS, NO MORE WORKPLACE BULLYING, NO MORE HIDING IN THE BATHROOM TO GET AWAY FROM PEOPLE, NO MORE RIDICULOUS MEETINGS, NO MORE EXHAUSTED/DEFLATED EVENING COMMUTES, NO MORE SCRAMBLING TO GET THINGS DONE IN THE FEW PRECIOUS HOURS A DAY I HAVE TO MYSELF, AND NO.MORE. DRAGGING MYSELF OUT OF BED EVERY MORNING AT UNGAWDLY HOURS.

I've done it. I've made it. This is where I have *always* wanted to be. If I have to work, let it be like this. Forever.

*Crosses fingers* *Pinches self* *Squeegasms*

Not sure if I've mentioned that Eddie found a job himself a few weeks back, but he did.

So, monetarily speaking anyways, for the moment, we are fine.

The entire rest of my life is in perpetual shambles, but at least I have this. :)

UPDATE 2.24.12 -

*Sigh* Not so much. I'll elaborate later.

Deep breath

2012-02-17T02:17:00.000-08:00

Two nights in a row I have been threatened on the street after dark.

This time, I didn't make it two blocks away from my building.

A man was approaching me on the sidewalk. He was swinging his arms angrily, walking fast, and generally seemed like an unsafe person to be in close proximity to.

I crossed the street.

When I looked back across the street at him, he was standing at the door of his car, glaring at me.

I said, loudly and pointing at him: "Leave me alone, dude. Seriously." I took out my phone so that he knew I was ready, willing and able to call the police.

This, historically, has been enough of a deterrent.

But my number was apparently up this time.

He got into his car, drove down the street, made a u-turn at the next light, pulled over to the side of the street I was walking on (about half a block away), and got out of his car.

I crossed the street again as he was in the process of doing this.

He followed, and started screaming.

I ran like hell in the direction of my apartment building, called Eddie and told him what was happening, and to get his ass downstairs. I tried to call 911, but my touch pad wasn't dialing properly (probably because my hands were shaking like crazy and I was running like mad).

When I looked back again, the man was gone, but I kept going.

Eddie had just gotten out of the shower and was at the courtyard gate by the time I reached our building, half dressed and holding his wooden practice sword. I was out of breath and white with terror.

I told him what happened, spent a few minutes looking around for the man and/or his car, then completed the call to 911.

To the operator's credit, she (and I'm immeasurably glad that she was a she, and am certain that that is precisely *why* she took things seriously) took the situation seriously, asked for all appropriate information and told me an officer would be at my building as soon as possible.

About 15 minutes later, he (of course) showed up.

He exited his car slowly. He didn't even shut off the engine to his vehicle. When I made it clear that I wasn't willing to remain downstairs because I didn't feel safe, he seemed obviously annoyed at the prospect of having to shut off his engine and talk in a place I felt comfortable (in the apartment, with Eddie present).

Pretty obvious from the beginning that this dude did *not* take the situation seriously, but it gets worse.

The first thing he asked, on the stairs on the way up, about was the make and model of the man's car. When I wasn't able to tell him and was having trouble remembering car brand names (still kind of shaken up at the idea that I could very well have been killed, raped or worse not 20 minutes prior), he seemed smugly amused (which is, naturally, an entirely appropriate attitude to have under such circumstances).

Smug amusement, in fact, was how I would characterize this asshole's demeanor during the entirety of our conversation (because obviously, what happened to me was incredibly funny/completely unimportant/not at all serious).

He didn't take down my information (he didn't even ask me my name, or give me his). He didn't ask what the man looked like or what he was wearing, or what happened (unlike the operator, I had to offer the information). No report was filed.

What he (and his colleague, who came up a few minutes later) DID do was stand in my doorway with filthily condescending looks on their faces as I described what had happened. After which Asshole #1 (Asshole #2 never said a word, just stood around looking bored) saw fit to lecture me about being out at night alone, without dogs or pepper spray. He also saw fit to explain why these things were necessary, and that they wouldn't deter anyone serious about hurting me (no...really?), but might make them more apt to 'go after my neighbor' (I'm assuming he meant someone else unfortunate enough to be within range of the same predator and the same time, a charming sentiment I immediately rejected), or buy me a few seconds time to run away.

He also told me to get a bike (because nobody can hurt you on a bike!), asked why I was walking in an area where not many people were around (because it's obviously the fact that I was in a certain area by myself, not that this guy was a nasty predator looking for someone to victimize, that was to blame for this 'misunderstanding'), said he wouldn't be out at night 'after 10:30', even though there 'wasn't much violent crime in the area' (which makes perfect sense), criticized my choice of walking routes (because walking in certain places will guarantee you never run into a predator! There's invisible walls/forcefields that keep them away, plus it's totally okay to insinuate that this was somehow my fault because of something I did/didn't do, and not the fault of the fucker who CHASED ME DOWN THE STREET WITH THE OBVIOUS INTENT OF HARMING ME for the high crime of being VISIBLY, AND RIGHTFULLY, AFRAID OF HIM).

How anyone with half a fucking brain (not to mention 1/4 of a functioning heart) could respond in this way to my obvious fear and distress, could treat me this way, honestly assume that a woman in her 30s would have no knowledge of pepper spray or the strategy of walking with dogs, walking in lit areas with a lot of foot traffic let alone how they worked, why people sometimes utilized them or that they were options at all, or would think this form of vile victim- blaming was an appropriate way to address the situation, is not beyond me. This is how patriarchy works. This is what it looks like, sounds like, feels like.

Women are brainless infants who must be protected from themselves, and 'bad' men (who are very, very, very rare, can always be easily identified, are always strangers, jump out of bushes in broad daylight, are almost always brown/black, only live in certain neighborhoods, don't hurt people who have dogs or pepper spray, can't manage to kill, rape, or drag you away in the 15 seconds it would take to call 911 and stay within striking range so that you can 'prove' they are trying to hurt you and not just chasing you down the street because that's how they say hello or ASK FOR DIRECTIONS [which is actually what this fucker suggested I do, no lie], etc) by 'good' men who lovingly mansplain to the little darlings that the world is dangerous, and that it's so much safer for them to stay inside (where only their husbands/fathers/brothers/friends can attack/rape/abuse/harm them), and that not to worry our precious little empty heads, but the big men in uniforms and our husbands and dads and brothers (who are far more likely to harm us than nonexistent strangers in bushes) will keep us safe, but if we absolutely MUST leave our cages after the sun goes down (which is pretty much asking for/deserving any and all possible negative outcomes that could result from someone taking advantage of the fact that we are not in our cages after dark, and that people assume that women who do not obey the 'rules' and remain in their cages after dark are automatically 'asking' to be hurt, assaulted, raped, kidnapped, hassled, harassed, murdered, mutilated, or just SCARED TO FUCKING DEATH, or even if they aren't, even if they are perfect virginal sainted white housewives who never uttered a word out of place their entire lives, they deserve it anyway), to make sure to have some strategy for protecting ourselves. Because the world (re: MEN, all of them, everywhere, all the time) is dangerous, don't you know that, little lady?

But most importantly of all: women are completely, totally and 100% responsible for everything bad that happens to them, 100% of the time. When we aren't busy 'making up stories for attention' or 'overreacting' about things that are 'no big deal'.

This is not the first time I've had abusive, ignorant, awful, frighteningly indifferent/blatantly misogynistic dealings with the police, but I'm definitely hoping it's the last.

And yes, as I said in my twitter feed and above, this asshole really did assert, out loud, that perhaps this person who was obviously and maliciously menacing me and chasing me down the fucking street screaming just wanted to ask me for directions, and that I was somehow misconstruing his actions (as if I could POSSIBLY confuse the body language associated with someone ASKING FOR INFORMATION with that of someone BEHAVING IN A HORRIFYINGLY AGGRESSIVE AND PREDATORY MANNER) and as if that made any fucking sense at all with respect to the specific circumstances of this incident.

Because chasing people down the street at night screaming is apparently an acceptable, and normal, way of going about asking strangers, especially female strangers, for information. On the street. At night.

I wonder how this shitbag would've felt if he would've been the one being chased by a perfect stranger screaming at him.

Or maybe, just maybe, his reaction and 'advice' were due to me being a pesky, complaining woman who didn't make his job easier by being placidly calm about/downplaying what happened/accepting his patronizing bullshit or not sticking around long enough to be killed, raped, mutilated, dragged away, beaten, robbed, otherwise further hurt/harassed by someone who clearly intended to hurt me, not 'ask for directions'.

Us pesky, complaining, self-aware women with intact and readily, unapologetically utilized survival skills? So much easier to deal with when we're dead.

This is no fucking way on this earth that this man's intentions could have possibly been misconstrued, by anyone. I did not 'overreact'. I have never been so frightened in my entire fucking life.

I've experienced a lot of scary shit at night. I have never felt inclined to immediately run away from someone I've encountered on the street like that, never been pushed to blind panic so quickly by any other situation. Every cell in my body knew that I was in imminent, mortal danger, and reacted accordingly.

That's what it's supposed to do.

I'm thankful as FUCK for my instincts, for my feminist consciousness and predisposition to ball-busting bitchiness and unapologetic self-protection, because they literally just saved my fucking life. And not for the first time.

If I'd have 'remained calm', given this monster the 'benefit of the doubt', assumed he meant me no harm because gawd forbid I embarrassingly assume otherwise? I'd probably be dead right now.

Seriously, my knees are shit. I have damaged tendons, missing cartilage and have trouble walking/standing/kneeling on a daily basis. I cannot adequately convey how fast I sprinted away from this man. I cannot remember the last time my legs moved that fast, and have never been so exceedingly grateful for the numbing anesthetic effects of adrenaline, because I'll be paying physically, in addition to psychologically/mentally/emotionally, for this shit for weeks to come.

Humans are animals. We have a fight-or-flight response for a reason. It's protected generations of us, women included and especially. It's insured the survival of our species until this point. Women are born, raised, live and die in a world that is highly hazardous to us. In which we risk out lives every freaking time we walk out our front doors, or back through them. We have no safe spaces. We have an understanding of danger and it's possible/probable consequences no man ever will.

We have been conditioned to ignore, to laugh off, to question/doubt our inborn, animal, human ability to detect dangerous people and situations, amplified and made all the more necessary by our status as women in a virulently woman-hating world, but it's there...and when it kicks into overdrive and we are able to listen, it's like a jet engine. It roars. You don't question it. You react. You RUN.

After his victim-blaming verbal diarrhea diatribe, I told the police officer that I was an adult, and that I shouldn't have to/wasn't planning on hiding inside when the sun went down. I told him that anybody who fucked with me was going to get fucked with in return. With that, he and his associate shrugged and went on their smug, condescending, amused, useless, disgusting way.

So yeah, I'll be armed from this point forward when I leave the house. And not likely to call the police ever again, for any reason. I'll also be taking some self-defense classes.

One thing I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER do is be a prisoner in my own motherfucking house, hide inside, let my fear take over or accept that the world of men is such a woman-hating SHIT VORTEX that the only answer is to hide inside your home and hope that the men you live with, if any, are some of the 'good ones', and able to 'protect' you from the entire rest of the fucking world.

(Or buy pepper spray, or expect my fucking CHIHUAHUAS to intimidate anyone)

Also, we're probably moving...because this fucker knows where I live. And my instincts? They are telling me to get as far away from this fucking place as fast as possible.

And I'm going to listen to them, because they serve me well.

Part 6 of Smart/Strong/Human Women...

2012-02-16T20:59:00.001-08:00

Part 5 of Smart/Strong/Human Women...

2012-02-16T20:57:00.001-08:00

Part 4 of Smart/Strong/Human Women...

2012-02-16T20:39:00.001-08:00

Part 3 of Smart/Strong/Human Women...

2012-02-16T20:29:00.001-08:00

Part 2 of Smart/Strong/Human Women...

2012-02-16T20:27:00.001-08:00

I'll just go ahead and rename this series Smart/Strong/Human Women since they seem to have forgotten to do so...

2012-02-16T20:16:00.000-08:00

British Squatters/Lefties/Feminists/Revolutionaries of the 1970s. Interesting, revealing, sobering, honest, familiar in some ways and somewhat hopeful.

2012-02-16T20:03:00.001-08:00

Insufficient words for how much I love this site. THANK YOU FOR MAKING SPACE FOR YOURSELVES AND FOR THE REST OF US, SISTER-FRIENDS!

2012-02-16T18:13:00.000-08:00

Episode 1 - Why My Life Looks The Way It Does

2012-02-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

Test #2 and some thoughts about an encounter with a black man on the street...

2012-02-16T02:15:00.000-08:00

Test video #1 for possible web series project...

2012-02-16T01:12:00.001-08:00

Ryo as a baby. :)

2012-02-16T01:01:00.001-08:00

Fantastic, eerie, surreal...(I want to live in that house).

2012-02-15T19:57:00.000-08:00

Freshly texted despair and what comes next.

2012-02-08T19:39:00.000-08:00

Update 2/23/12 -

PLEASE NOTE:

*Extreme* trigger warning for despair, helplessness, loneliness, trauma and suicidal ideation. Proceed with caution.

This post was written a few weeks ago at a critically low point. I am feeling better, but the underlying conditions that inspired its creation persist, and will continue to persist. I have made the choice to survive at the behest of those who love me, though I honestly doubt the wisdom of doing so.

Clinical depression and crippling anxiety have plagued me for over a decade. Living/functioning from underneath their suffocating weight is a constant, unrelenting struggle that has worn down and thoroughly exhausted me, that would wear down and thoroughly exhaust anyone. I'm not a superhero, I'm not a rockstar and my life isn't some fascinatingly engaging indie movie in which I play the part of the ever-brave, ever-enduring, titanium-strong protagonist, where everything works out in the end despite the obstacles and pain, making the indescribable suffering somehow worthwhile, somehow honorable, somehow lovely. For much of what I must endure, there is no remedy. There are no answers. There will be no relief. It's gratuitously meaningless, it's degradation of the lowest sort, it's uglier than you can possibly imagine.

There is nothing glamorous, sexy, exciting or enviable about living the nightmare of disassociation, dread and damage I must face every morning in order to stay alive.

In short, this isn't some beautifully tortured art form, some darkly enticing fiction. It's my life. It can be, and often is, literal hell. Please remember and respect that in your reading, thinking and discussion of it, and me. Thank you.

"I am a sad panda today. I want my band of misfits. I want allies. I want community. I want my chosen poly family. I want my kid back. I want my sexuality, my pain, my strength, my intelligence, my creativity, and my limitations/boundaries recognized, respected and my precious, strong, wounded, sobbing, striving, hoping, chronically unloved/uncared for, sweet, surviving inner child cherished and treasured like the gorgeously unique and priceless gift she is.

IS THAT REALLY SO FUCKING MUCH TO ASK?!"

Sigh. I don't mind being alone most of the time. I'm very, very used to it. Perhaps a bit too used to it. I'm not terribly social to begin with. Never really have been.

BUT (this) WOMAN CANNOT SURVIVE ON BLOGS, SILENCE AND FEVERISH, FRENZIED DREAMS/DESIRES/IDEAS/ART ALONE. Not forever.

It's been so. fucking. long.

When I say 'desire', I don't mean sexual/romantic desire. Though there's plenty of that to be had/managed/lamented as well some days.

When I say 'dreams', I'm not talking about any lofty 'WATCH ME BE SOMEBODY THE WORLD/MAINSTREAM CULTURE SEES AND CARES ABOUT IN WHATEVER WAY' goals...though even I've got my issues with feeling guilty/obliged to BE SOMETHING/SOMEONE sometimes.

What I'm talking about right now, what I desire is a house/life full of complicated, thinking, respectful, searching, challenging, awake and aware people pushing themselves and encouraging those they love around them to evolve, to grow, to change, to open more, see more, do more to make space for themselves/each other in a productive, just, good-hearted, assertive, non-violent, non-abusive, non-coercive, more-or-less functional and socially conscious way.

What I'm talking about right now, what I dream about is people who will listen. Who understand. Who care. Who diligently work on their shit, not endlessly talk about working on it or promise to work on it or make excuses about not being able to work on it. And not because it earns them points with whomever they think is cool/will hand them privilege/rewards for it or because they have a savior complex/shit they need to work out by way of 'helping' other people, but because it's right. Because it's natural for them. Because they WANT to, no matter how difficult or sticky or not-fun or frustrating or time-consuming or unpopular or exasperating or ever-a-not-quite-finished-work-in-progress the process/result is.

Intention matters a lot here, to me. If your intentions/assumptions/expectations/motivations are a mess, chances are any 'good work' you're intending to do will do far more harm than good.

That shit has to be, MUST BE straightened out first. Way, way before anything else. Which is where/why I keep getting stuck.

My fucking intentions/assumptions/expectations/motivations are a frogdamned spectacularly delusional/disconnected ejaculatory MESS.

This is really, really difficult stuff. It's work most people don't want to touch, think about or deal with...in themselves or anyone else. Me included. Lots of crap comes up while doing it, even for the most 'healthy' and 'well-adjusted' among us. It can be incredibly triggering and hope/faith-destroying even for the strongest/most stable.

For the damaged, the mentally/emotionally/physically/sexually/socially/racially/economically/otherwise compromised? The weak? The faith-starved, the hopeless, the least stable?

A never-ending sucking vortex of bitter, gagging tears, sleepless nights, hopeless, heartbreaking resignation, straining to keep going even when you are literally MENTALLY/EMOTIONALLY STARVING TO DEATH, force-feeding yourself the tasteless, non-nourishing conventional platitudes/one-dimensional placations/cliches that seem to work so well for everyone else but do EXACTLY JACK-FUCKING SHIT FOR YOU/OFTEN MAKE THINGS MUCH WORSE, sewing/gluing/stapling/folding/holding/stringing tiny, tattered, filthy bits of hope, encouragement, inspiration, strength, comfort, distraction, ANYTHING THAT WORKS together to keep from freezing, from going numb, from losing contact with the solid surface of reality, from a swift, paralyzing spiral into a blind, deaf, speechless, drooling, moaning, clawing, silent screaming madness.

At least, that's how it is for me.

Whatever works for the day, you know? Sometimes watching a movie will suffice. Sometimes jerking off. Sometimes a nap. Sometimes staring at the wall/out the window. Sometimes taking a walk/listening to music/fantasizing about how you desperately, desperately wish/want things to be, pretending to yourself in carefully camouflaged waves of euphoric, anesthetizing fantasy. Because the world as it is was not made for you, in fact the world as it is was made to DO AWAY WITH YOUR UNWANTED, DESPISED PRESENCE AS QUICKLY/EFFICIENTLY/BRUTALLY as possible.

Sometimes, more and more often lately, nothing works. Nothing at all. I spend hours out of days jumping at shadows left and right, inside and out, waiting for it to stop, wishing for it to stop, begging for it to stop.

Only it amplifies. It swells. It grows and grows and grows and grows and grows until I'm walking around in circles from room to room, searching frantically for something, ANYTHING that will keep it from crushing/suffocating me.

Frequent fantasizing, for me, is the only way to survive the knowledge of that hideous hole that opens up underneath me and threatens to consume me almost every other day. To even begin to tolerate/accept the knowledge that I am so deeply, deeply, deeply abhorred and thoroughly rejected by THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD.

But the anesthesia wears off quickly. And the lows/pain afterward are far, far lower/hurt way, way more and are much, much scarier/harder to manage/come back from. The hole becomes an asteroid-sized crater and engulfs everything and everyone around me.

Those are the worst days.

That is the kind of day I'm having right now.

People have their limitations, you know? You can't carry on forever under this kind of pressure/with this kind of pain ripping at you all hours of every motherfucking day. Not without support. Not all alone in an apartment with no furniture, room with no bed, an empty heart with a child-shaped hole in it where your baby used to be and not a damn thing to be done about it, life bereft of the love and care you NEED MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD BUT CANNOT FIND TO SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE. Even the strongest, the bravest, the most self-assured, clever and adaptive (which I am very much not on all counts) will eventually crack. Will eventually break.

Will eventually die of a broken heart, disintegrated mind, decimated life and no way out/no way to make things better.

You can be left alone for too long. You can be hurt too much/too often. You can be hated and ridiculed, mocked and attacked and lied about/lied to, taken advantage of, bullied, abandoned and ignored and demonized and demoralized and dehumanized only so many fucking times before it's one time too many and the gun is in your mouth, the noose is around your neck, the blade is at your wrist, the pills are in your hand, the car is perched on the cliff/veering violently to one side of the bridge, before you're staring down from the roof of a very, very tall building with your toes on the ledge, your arms out wide and tears of sweet, long-awaited relief streaming down your face as you realize with a swelling happiness and peace you have not experienced in so long you can't even remember anymore THAT THANK THE FUCKING APATHETIC, PURPOSELESS UNIVERSE, YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO ENDURE THIS NEVER-ENDING NIGHTMARE OF TRAUMA/DISAPPOINTMENT/WORTHLESSNESS/AGONY/DESPAIR/LONELINESS/DISMAY ONE.MORE.FUCKING.DAY.

For some of us, readers, I'm more sad and angry than I know how to say that IT DOES NOT GET BETTER.

For some of us, readers, I'm more disappointed and horrified than I know how to convey that IT ONLY GETS WORSE.

WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE. No matter what you do/don't do. Who you interact with/don't interact with. What you say. What you write. What you try. What you don't try.

It's true. I wish to shit that it wasn't. I want so fucking badly for there to be hope for me/my life, for there to be a way to find my kindred, to be loved, to give love, to find love, real love, love that lasts, love that's meaningful and honest and healthy and intelligent. The feeds, nourishes, sustains, challenges, encourages, protects, nurtures, cherishes, respects, guides, supports, engages and inspires me.

I've wanted and wished and longed and searched and grasped and hoped and prayed and pleaded and reached and played the game/not played the game, danced the dance and not danced the dance. 'Done the right things' and not 'done the right things'. Pretended I didn't care. Pretended I didn't need. Pretended I didn't feel.

It's all led here. The place in the corner with the nails on all three surfaces and the acid on the floor, the choking smoke in the air and the roof caving in above. Torturous, irreversible injury and damage is imminent. There's only thing left to do.

Where the fear of continuing to live finally surpasses the fear of death.

That's where I'm standing. That's what I'm facing.

I cannot be left alone anymore. I cannot be hated anymore. I cannot be rejected or abandoned or demonized or gossiped about/laughed at anymore, called a liar, called a whore, told I'm worthless/stupid/not worth listening to, that 'everything is always my fault', that I'm 'creating my own problems', that I'm 'untouchable', not worth paying attention to, loving, befriending, caring about. I cannot be ignored or treated like excrement/garbage anymore.

I cannot be tolerated anymore.

I cannot stand the pain anymore.

This is the place from which you do not return. This is the thing that you do not survive.

This is what the end looks like.

For me.

Via Body Impolitic. I stand for the eradication of all discrimination based on arbitrary physical distinctions, or anything else, too.

2012-02-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

I STAND! from Jennifer Jonassen on Vimeo.

Via I Blame The Patriarchy. YES.

2012-02-08T10:06:00.001-08:00

Alright alright, last one...for now. Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

2012-02-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

New burrito-eating theme song...

2012-02-02T22:50:00.001-08:00

Not even to save myself from hostile aliens would I deign to waste the perfect food...

2012-02-02T22:46:00.000-08:00

IT SPEAKS

2012-02-02T22:44:00.001-08:00

See? SEE?

2012-02-02T22:43:00.001-08:00

This blog has officially become a Youtube video repository. There's just too much good shit out there...

2012-02-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

Imagine what the world would be like, what life could be like for all of us if we embraced and enacted these stupendously wise words...

2012-02-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Unschooling from Luke Bessey on Vimeo.

EVERYBODY WATCH!

2012-02-01T22:01:00.001-08:00

Thoughts on black feminism/gender/sexuality/presentation/polyamory/aging/femininity/racism/white supremacy/queer culture/queer politics/radical politics/more from black feminists

2012-01-31T14:53:00.000-08:00

I really, really liked this video. I liked that this woman was speaking conversationally for the most part, not academically, that she seemed like she was working things out as she went along and that she very bravely invited discourse.

I liked that her analysis wasn't neat, wasn't cleanly articulated, wasn't tied up in a pretty standardized bow at the end, that it was open-ended. I like that she read passages from a black feminist text. I liked that she bounced from topic to topic, subject to subject, used ambiguous wording.

I like that the camera was shaking, that it was not a slick commercialized experience. It was like being in the room with her.

I liked that her presentation was somewhat androgynous as well, but that's problematic coming from a white woman privileged both in the past and present to be afforded certain benefits according to being born into a position of being 'assigned' superior treatment based on 'inherent' gentle, good-natured, soft, submissive, worthy-of-protection and certain-types-of-love-and-affection feminine, attractiveness.

To that end, (highly) suggested reading on the notions of black queer feminism, gender, femininity and a whole host of other lived (particular) black, queer, polyamorous, radical, parenting, older female experiences...

This blog really should just be required reading for anyone and everyone who says or even thinks they are anti-racist, queer positive, polyamorous, radically political or left-of-center in any way.

Full disclosure:

The writer of said blog is the woman I think of as one of my true life-loves, the one I have mentioned having (virtual) relationship and interactions with here. I'm very much enamored of her in many ways, AND her reasoning and thoughts are radically sound, insightful and of incredible importance.

This is a really thick, complicated, infinitely layered examination/critique of gender, parenting, sexuality, presentation, white privilege, queer white privilege, white femininity, black femininity, queer black femininity, black masculinity, internal/external transgender realities, aging from a black, queer, polyamorous, radical, femme, intolerant-of-white-supremacy-and-machinations-and-hierarchies perspective, radical political culture, queer academic elitism/exclusionism/language, queer white supremacist culture, the sexual, social, political, domestic, personal, daily, lived realities of parenting, living, fucking, thinking, living, surviving and moving through the world as someone racialized, devalued, invisibilized, miscategorized, mistreated, ignored, invalidated, misunderstood, demonized as a sexual, social, political, parental being...even by those who claim to be on the same social/political/ideological 'side', who purport to be allies. Indeed, especially by them.

There is definitely a gigantic tendency in leftist/queer/radical culture to very rigidly replicate the hierarchies they seek to, or allegedly seek to escape (I've often thought myself that these sorts really have no intention of abandoning the elitist principles of their 'conservative' counterparts, only employing them in different contexts/to slightly different ends primarily to their own advantage...whole post on that as it relates to me specifically to come). Especially by the whitest and most privileged members.

I can't really do justice to/for either with my words. Just watch, read and be educated, be rattled, be challenged, be made aware. When you're done, go do something productive about it.

Stupid will not save you. Stupid makes it worse. STOP. BEING. STUPID.

2012-01-30T19:40:00.000-08:00

There is no freedom. You are not free. This is not a great country. Your 'leaders' do not care about you.

You are livestock. You are bought and paid for. You are owned.

You are a slave.

Pretending that this is not the case makes your life harder, not easier. Stop it.

WAKE THE FUCK UP. DO SOMETHING.

STOP. READ THIS.

2012-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Questions you should be asking yourself

1. Should I be here?
2. Have I been asked to stop visiting?
3. Is my presence here making things more difficult/more painful for Noel?
4. If I've been asked to stop visiting, what are my motivations for continuing to visit?
5. Is Noel a human being who deserves to have her feelings and wishes respected?
6. Am I a raging asshole/an inconsiderate jerk for continuing to visit despite Noel's stated (and repeated) wishes that I not visit?

Answers

1. If you have to ask, the answer is probably no.
2. If the answer is yes, leave, and don't come back.
3. If you've been asked to stop visiting, the answer is yes. Leave, and don't come back.
4. You're a raging asshole/an inconsiderate jerk.
5. YES.
6. YES.

Look, I pay very close attention to my traffic feed (and I installed it for a reason). I'm well aware that people I've asked REPEATEDLY not to visit here are still visiting. I'm not amused, I'm not flattered, I don't feel cared for or looked after by your utter disregard for my feelings.

I feel violated. YOU ARE VIOLATING ME BY CONTINUING TO COME HERE. IT HURTS AND SCARES ME.

I've already lost one blog to this shit. I don't want to lose another one.

I'm asking you to stop. Please, stop. I don't want you here. You're not welcome. This is my space and I have a right to ask you to leave. I'm asking you to leave. Your presence here causes me pain. Every single time I see certain locations pop up in my feed, I feel attacked. I feel unsafe. I feel terror.

If you care about that, if you care about me, then leave. Now. Don't come back.

Thank you.

(If you would like to have a straightforward discussion with me about something *other* than this blog, if you have questions or need to talk to me, my email is in the About section and I'm open to that. I am not open to people coming here when I've asked them not to. It is disrespectful. It is a violation. It needs to stop)

Universal Plume and other old blogging haunts

2012-01-25T06:28:00.000-08:00

I've decided to upload the archives of Universal Plume (should I happen to locate them anytime soon).

I need there to be a starting point; if only to make sense of the journey so far and to get a better sense of where I'm going/getting stuck.

Universal Plume was in some ways a really different blog, borne of different motivations and remnant of an altogether vanished life and extinct worldview/politic. It was also my first real blog, my first genuine attempt at understanding and incorporating (radical) feminisim/expanding my outlook beyond the suffocating, dusty vacuum bag I'd always known.

If I can manage to scrounge up my ancient Aetheri postings, those will be added as well, in addition to my old Livejournal (which I stumbled upon the other day by accident...goddess, was THAT an alternate universe ;)).

There'll be a separate section for this stuff when the time comes.

The full tale must be told if the plot is to progress, and it shall be.

I was going to submit this to some anonymous confession site, then thought better of it. The truth is freeing. :)

2012-01-25T03:35:00.000-08:00

Dear George - I know you read here on occasion, a fact you seem uncomfortable admitting. Though I'm a bit unnerved by your presence despite our non-friendship, I know that I can't control what you do and have decided to address this matter openly despite the considerable potential for extreme embarrassment on many fronts. I've used your full first name so as to avoid any ambiguity.

I've long considered my fascination with you to be a silly, adolescent crush...an obsolete relic from a very different time, when I was a very different person living a very different life from the one I do now.

After years of its consistent (and nagging) presence, I've come to understand this enduring interest/attraction as what I consider love.

I love your intelligence, your wit, your perceptiveness, your sense of humor/silliness, your individuality, your kindness, your thoughtfulness, your nerdiness, your sense of adventure, your fragility, your sensitivity, your integrity, your honesty, your strength, your perseverance and your rationality. I love that you not only saw through my shit all those years ago, as others did, but consistently called me out on it, encouraging me to grow and progress, while others neglected to. You were the first to do so in that way, and it helped tremendously...though I didn't fully understand how so/how much until later.

The intermittent, tentative compliments you did offer were much appreciated. Your opinion is important to me.

I love you, George. As a person, as you are. Thank you for attempting to support and encourage me. I'm glad and better for the interactions we did have.

Though I remain disappointed that we will never be lovers or real friends, I remember you often and fondly, and with genuine affection. May you live long and love well.

Gorgeously, graciously clever. :)

2012-01-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

This video was removed. Bummer.

A famous violinist responded to a ringing cell phone during his performance by parodying the ringtone with his instrument.

It was gorgeous, gracious and clever.

Guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

And now for something remotely artistic

2012-01-24T07:18:00.001-08:00

I sometimes practice writing the alphabet (among other things) with my left hand. Suppose it felt particularly grateful for the attention that evening. :)

Via Queer Feminism.com

2012-01-20T19:44:00.001-08:00

Dean Spade: Trickle-Up Social Justice from BCRW Videos on Vimeo.

Via Wooster Collective

2012-01-20T12:59:00.000-08:00

Via techdirt, via Craigslist, via Wikipedia, via Shakesville. Don't let this happen. FIGHT.

2012-01-19T01:32:00.000-08:00

Link to original article.

The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas
from the let's-walk-through-the-reasons dept
There's been plenty of talk (and a ton of posts here on Techdirt) discussing both SOPA (originally E-PARASITE) and PROTECT IP (aka PIPA), but it seemed like it would be useful to create a single, "definitive" post to highlight why both of these bills are extremely problematic and won't do much (if anything) to deal with the issues they're supposed to deal with, but will have massive unintended consequences. I also think it's important to highlight how PIPA is almost as bad as SOPA. Tragically, because SOPA was so bad, some in the entertainment industry have seen it as an opportunity to present PIPA as a "compromise." It is not. Both bills have tremendous problems, and they start with the fact that neither bill will help deal with the actual issues being raised.

That main issue, we're told over and over again, is "piracy" and specifically "rogue" websites. And, let's be clear: infringement is a problem. But the question is what kind of problem is it? Much of the evidence suggests that it's not an enforcement problem and it's not a legal problem. Decades of evidence from around the globe all show the same thing: making copyright law or enforcement stricter does not work. It does not decrease infringement at all -- and, quite frequently, leads to more infringement. That's because the reason that there's infringement in the first place is that consumers are being under-served. Historically, infringement has never been about "free," but about indicating where the business models have not kept up with the technology.

Thus, the real issue is that this is a business model problem. As we've seen over and over and over again, those who embrace what the internet enables, have found themselves to be much better off than they were before. They're able to build up larger fanbases, and to rely on various new platforms and services to make more money.

And, as we've seen with near perfect consistency, the best way, by far, to decrease infringement is to offer awesome new services that are convenient and useful. This doesn't mean just offering any old service -- and it certainly doesn't mean trying to limit what users can do with those services. And, most importantly, it doesn't mean treating consumers like they were criminals and "pirates." It means constantly improving the consumer experience. When that consumer experience is great, then people switch in droves. You can, absolutely, compete with free, and many do so. If more were able to without restriction, infringement would decrease. If you look at the two largest contributors to holding back "piracy" lately, it's been Netflix and Spotify. Those two services alone have been orders of magnitude more successful in decreasing infringement than any new copyright law. Because they compete by being more convenient and a better experience than infringement.

Finally, even if you disagree with all of that, and believe that the problem is enforcement, SOPA and PIPA, won't be effective in dealing with that. The internet always has a way of routing around "damage" no matter how hard people try to stop it, and the approach put forth by these bills is a joke. It's hard to find anyone with technology skills who thinks that they will be effective. Every "blockade" has an easy path around it, and the supposed "anti-circumvention" rule in SOPA will never deal with the more obvious paths around things like DNS blocking (use a different DNS or a perfectly legal foreign VPN system). The private right of action efforts are also mistargeted. They're based on the premise that infringement is done for monetary reasons. It's amusing that just a few years ago, these same industries insisted that music and movie fans never wanted to pay anything any more, but now they're claiming that these same people are paying for cyberlockers all the time? That's simply not credible. And if there's so much money to be made, the studios and labels would be opening their own cyberlockers. Either way, we've watched this game of Whac-a-mole for over a decade. It doesn't work. Every site that is shut down leads to half a dozen new ones that spring up. This is not how you tackle a problem: by making the same mistake made over and over again in the past.

So... SOPA & PIPA don't attack the real problem, do nothing to build up the services that do solve the problem, and won't work from a technological standpoint. And that's just if we look at the what these bills are supposed to do.

The real fear is the massive collateral damage these bills will have to jobs, the economy and innovation.
The broad definitions in the bill create tremendous uncertainty for nearly every site online. This sounds like hyperbole, but it is not. Defenders of the bill like to claim that it is "narrowly focused" on foreign rogue infringing sites. Nothing could be further from the truth. While PIPA targets only foreign sites, the mechanism by which it does so is to put tremendous compliance and liability on third party service providers in the US. SOPA goes even further in expanding the private right of action to domestic sites as well. We've already seen how such laws can be abused by looking at how frequently false takedown claims are made under the existing DMCA. Of course, under the DMCA, just the content is blocked. Under SOPA all money to a site can be cut off. Under PIPA sites will just end up in court. Or, with both laws, an Attorney General can take action leading US companies to have to effectively act as network nannies trying to keep infringement from being accessible. None of this is good for anyone building a startup company these days. The massive uncertainty around this, combined with the need for a huge legal department sitting in "the garage" as a startup begins, will certainly slow down the pace of innovation in the US, while likely driving it elsewhere.

And the definitions are ridiculously broad. Under SOPA, you can be found "dedicated to the theft of US property" if the core functionality of your site "enables or facilitates" infringement. The core functionality of nearly every internet website that involves user generated content enables and facilitates infringement. The entire internet itself enables or facilitates infringement. Email enables or facilitates infringement. They have significant non-infringing uses as well, but the definition leaves that out entirely. Under SOPA, there's also a risk if you take "deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability" of infringement on a site. Of course, it's not at all clear how one takes deliberate actions to avoid taking action. The only way to read this clause from a tech company perspective is that it requires proactive monitoring, which is effectively impossible for a user generated content site. PROTECT IP's definitions are equally broad, again using the "enabling" or "facilitating" language.

The risk of these broad definitions on perfectly legitimate companies is not theoretical: Defenders of both bills continue to insist that they're only meant to deal with the worst of the worst. If that were really true, the definitions would be a lot tighter and a lot more specific. Even if this is the intention of the authors of both bills, the simple fact is that the very broad definitions in the bill, mean that any entrepreneur today will need to take significant compliance costs just to avoid the possible appearance of fitting the criteria.

Defenders also like to brush off the idea that a bill like this would target something like YouTube. But we know that's not accurate since Viacom is still engaged in a huge lawsuit against YouTube, in which Viacom's claims certainly appear to cover the definitions found in these bills. While it seems unlikely that anyone would try to shut down YouTube completely, given the public outcry it would create, the real fear is what happens to the next YouTube, or just the fear that a rights holder could strike into any company by threatening them under the private rights of action in each bill. It becomes a form of legalized extortion. Threaten to bring action under these bills, and watch tech companies crumble.

And, already there are indications that companies are interested in bringing broad actions for infringement against organizations that most people would consider perfectly legal. Advertising giant GroupM recently asked its entertainment industry customers to compile a list of "sites dedicated to infringement," not unlike what's found under PROTECT IP. Universal Music, Warner Bros. and Paramount were three key providers to that list, which ended up covering a large number of perfectly legitimate sites including the famed Internet Archive (widely recognized as the library for the internet). It also included numerous innovative startups that are frequently used by content creators to get their works out, such as SoundCloud and Vimeo. Even more worrisome, it included a variety of publications and blogs, including Vibe Magazine, the quintessential hip hop and R&B magazine founded by Quincy Jones, as well as Complex, a popular lifestyle magazine recently recognized as one of the most valuable startups in New York.

Even worse, it appears that Universal Music also included the personal website of one of its own top artists, 50Cent. The hiphop star has a personal website as well as a website owned by Universal Music. The personal website is much more popular... and it appeared on the infringement list. Suddenly, you can see how letting companies declare what sites are dedicated to infringement can lead to them looking to stifle speech and competition.

Similarly, Monster Cable, who has stated its support for PROTECT IP, has put together its own list of "rogue sites" and it, rather stunningly, includes sites like eBay, Craigslist, Costco and Sears. It even includes consumer rights groups like Which? in the UK, and various popular shopping search engines like PriceGrabber.

These companies clearly take an expansive view of what constitutes "dedicated to infringement," and have no problem suggesting they would like to stop these sites. Internet companies and site owners have every right to be extremely afraid of what laws like PIPA and SOPA would do when they give much more power to these private companies to take actions that could shut down these sites, tie them up in court or merely cut off their funding and advertising.

That uncertainty has very real and quantifiable effects on jobs in this country. President Obama has noted that the internet adds approximately $2 trillion to the annual GDP (pdf). The amount of jobs created by the tech industry are massive, and represent a large percentage of all new job creation today. IDC has predicted 7.1 million new jobs and 100,000 new businesses created in the next four years from the tech sector. An astounding 3.1 million people are employed thanks to internet advertising -- jobs that simply did not exist a decade ago.

And these jobs go way beyond just the jobs at tech companies themselves. The important thing in tech platforms is not in how many jobs are at those companies, but how many jobs they enable elsewhere. eBay has been said to have empowered 750,000 people to build their own small businesses. Facebook's app platform has, by itself, created somewhere around 200,000 new jobs (pdf). It's likely that Apple's iOS app platform has created significantly more than that, given how popular it is. Google's tools have been shown to create $64 billion (with a b) in additional economic activity.

Do we really want to stifle all of that growth and activity with regulations that will stifle innovation and jobs, even (as noted above) as the evidence shows that merely adapting and providing a better service makes everyone better off?

That uncertainty has extreme and quantifiable effects on investment in new startups. A very detailed look at the uncertainty in the cloud computing space, prior to and after the decision in the Comedy Central v. Cablevision case, which effectively set the framework for the legality of cloud computing, showed much greater investment when the law was clarified to be in favor of letting these new services thrive. Take that away, and investment in this engine of growth likely would be much lower. Considering that politicians claim to be so concerned about the economy and jobs these days, the idea that they would push forth a bill that quantifiably would reduce investment in one of the only sectors creating new jobs is really stunning.

Broadly expanding secondary liability is a dream for trial lawyers, but will be a disaster for business. There's been a move, associated with these bills to somehow demonize important concepts of safe harbors from secondary liability. The suggestion is that secondary liability somehow "allows" bad activity. Nothing is further from the truth. Illegal activity is still illegal. The point of safe harbors from secondary liability is blaming the party actually doing the action that breaks the law. We don't allow people to sue AT&T because the telephone was used in commission of a crime and we don't sue Ford because someone crashed their pickup truck into another car. Liability should be properly applied to the parties doing the action that breaks the law. The safe harbors have just made that clear -- and allowed innovation to flourish. Empirical studies have pointed out that "the rich informational ecosystem we know today... is a function of the 'breathing space' Internet intermediaries currently have under the law."

Other studies have shown that pulling back on such secondary liability safe harbors would mean that investors would need an astounding 13x to 20x return on investment to make the risk worthwhile. That triples or quadruples the standard risk level that most angel investors deal with.

The key way that both PIPA and SOPA function are to drastically scale back that breathing space, by attaching secondary liability and compliance costs to US companies, in an attempt to keep users from infringing via other sites. That would represent a massive shift in the legal framework that has allowed the internet to flourish, and yet no research or studies have been done to look at the possible impact of all of this.

The technical measures described in both bills is tremendously problematic. Looking to use DNS blocking is just a bad move. It's why a group of core internet infrastructure experts spoke out very early on (about COICA, in the pre-PIPA days) to explain how DNS blocking would set back a decade or more's worth of work on online security standards, would make people less safe online, and has the risk of fragmenting the internet. It's why the founder of the world's largest independent DNS provider, OpenDNS, in charge of protecting one-third of all schools in the US, has noted that under these laws, he likely wouldn't have started the company, or might have started it in another country.

Having a judge determine the best network architecture is a bad idea. SOPA's attempt to address the "DNS blocking doesn't work" argument by adding a vague standard in which courts can order sites to take "reasonable measures" to block even more is also not encouraging. Does anyone really think that we want some judges determining what are "reasonable measures" for managing how the internet works? Wouldn't it be better to trust the long line of experts, drop any thought of DNS blocking, and move on?

Going down the slippery slope of censorship is fraught with peril, both domestically and abroad. Supporters of the law get angry any time people bring up censorship, but as law professor Derek Bambauer has made clear, any effort to block content is a form of censorship. What we can argue is whether or not this form of censorship makes sense or is a policy that people think makes sense. But no one should deny that bills that lead to blocking access to websites is a form of censorship.

There is reasonable debate as to whether or not this level of censorship goes violates the First Amendment. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe has argued that it does violate the First Amendment. Well over 100 of the country's top legal scholars have made the same argument. Arguing on the other side is well respected First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams... but even he admits that under SOPA and PIPA protected speech would get censored. He just deems that as acceptable collateral damage, as being merely "incidental." We can argue over whether or not it really is incidental, as we've already seen actions against sites under current law that seek to stifle large amounts of protected speech outside of any infringement.

The functional setup of such site blocking -- via DNS blocking -- is effectively identical to how the Great Firewall of China works. While the intended purpose is obviously different, the actual mechanism for blocking is nearly identical. This creates significant cover for repressive regimes to resist any diplomatic efforts by the US to push back against attempts by the US to promote internet freedom. Furthermore, we have seen how countries, such as Russia, have used copyright law to censor political opposition, using the law to go against activists challenging the government. Even if the intended purpose of SOPA and PIPA are to protect against infringement, opening up the door to censorship for one purpose makes it nearly impossible to avoid it being used for other purposes. It also basically gives the perfect blueprint for repressive regimes. They merely need to claim that their Great Firewalls are designed to stomp out infringement, and then can use it to intimidate and block political opponents. Adding to that is the massive expansion of the diplomatic corp. pushing for greater enforcement, and it's almost as if we're begging countries to set up their own Great Firewalls that will certainly be abused.

Countries abroad are watching us, and already noting the seeming hypocrisy concerning our statements. Media in other countries, who already are known for suppressing speech and censoring the internet, are already mocking the US for even considering such legislation at the same time as the US State Department claims to be promoting internet freedom. Talking about the importance of internet freedom on the one hand, while pushing countries to put in place the very tools that will be used to undermine internet freedom is not a particularly consistent message. This can be seen in VP Joe Biden's recent speech on internet freedom that presents all the arguments for why SOPA and PIPA should not be supported (in an unintended manner).

Changing what counts as a felony for copyright, without understanding the implications or common usage of technology puts many at risk. This does not apply directly to PIPA, but its companion legislation in the Senate, S.978. Similar provisions are found in SOPA as well, making certain forms of "streaming" a felony. Supporters of these actions insist that they're merely harmonizing criminal and civil copyright laws, since the felony parts of the criminal copyright statute cover reproduction and distribution, but not performance. What they fail to recognize (or admit) is that there's a reason why performance rights were left out, and it's because it's pretty ridiculous to think of a felony performance in normal contexts. But it becomes even more troublesome in the online context, because "performance" is so vaguely defined in an era when streaming works via a simple one-line embed. To embed a video is no different -- from a technical standpoint -- from linking to a video. And most people would have significant problems with the idea that you could face five years in jail for merely linking to content you have no control over. Yet, the streaming portions of SOPA and of S.978 make that entirely possible. Merely putting a single line of code on a site, pointing to content on another server that you have no control over, potentially makes you a felon. This will have massive unintended consequences and puts at risk millions of Americans who embed videos all the time.
To be honest, there are many, many more problems hidden down within the specifics of the bill, but this post was already getting long enough. However, what we have is a bill that doesn't tackle the real problems at all, that won't solve the problem it thinks it's facing, and has massive unintended consequences. Why? Well, because the entertainment industry insists that it's in trouble. This is the same entertainment industry who has been claiming the same thing about every technological innovation ever. If they'd had their way in the past, there would be no radio, no cable TV, no VCR, no TiVo and no iPods. Do we really trust them now to create a "narrowly focused" law that will only target the really bad behaviors? We'll close it out with a few quotes from the entertainment industry over the last century discussing various technological innovations, and question why we're letting them drive PIPA and SOPA forward:
The Player Piano

“I foresee a marked deterioration in American Music…and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations by virtue – or rather by vice – of the multiplication of the various music reproducing machines” -- John Philips Sousa, 1906

The Video Cassette Recorder

"But now we are faced with a new and troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life, and we are facing it from a thing called the Video Cassette Recorder" -- MPAA President Jack Valenti in 1982

Cassette Tapes

"When the manufacturers hand the public a license to record at home...not only will the songwriter tie a noose around his neck, not only will there be no more records to tape, but the innocent public will be made accessory to the destruction of four industries" -- ASCAP, 1982

Digital Audio Tape

The Mp3 Player

“Diamond's product Rio was destined to undermine the creation of a legitimate digital distribution marketplace..." -- RIAA President Hillary Rosen in 1998

The Digital Video Recorder

"It's theft...Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming." Turner Broadcasting CEO Jaime Kellner in 2002

The truth is...complicated. And incoherent. And mayhem. But splendid, engrossing and a favor.

2012-01-17T07:07:00.000-08:00

(Written over the course of a few days, and thus wildly disjointed, but in the end I suppose not terribly different from what and how I usually write)

I'm not getting better.

My wounds are not healing.

My pain is not subsiding.

My tolerance levels are plummeting.

My strength is gone.

It's not waning.

I'm not weakening.

There's no more strength.

There's nothing left to lose.

I've lost everything.

And a job won't fix it.

And some 'friends' won't fix it.

Neither money, comfort, 'security' or any manner of acceptability, validation, recognition or distraction will ever, ever, ever restore what has been destroyed. Make right the wrong that has been wrought.

All the art and sea breezes, 'good' days and intensely forgiving, escapist moments of love and peace and power in the world will not, cannot, make this better.

I am down to the final fragments. Just the most stubborn bits that have thus far refused to disintegrate.

But even these won't hold up forever. The clock is ticking.

I have deeply, truly loved exactly three people, maybe four.

One turned away upon realizing I was nothing I was pretending to be, and the worst of the things I was pretending I wasn't. The connection, the feeling was deeper and more meaningful on my end, taken to mean something much different. It was long over for her before I even realized an end was possible.

One I carried in my body for 10 months, co-slept with for 2 years, breastfed for 3 years, and lost in the most important of ways, forever, shortly thereafter. He's got a crack down the center of him because of it, though I'm not sure he experiences it that way at this point, and may never fully understand it as such/know much what to do with/about it.

One I live with; have suffered through 4 of the most agonizing and traumatizing years of my life with (largely due to his actions/inactions/reactions), and have loved and partnered with at all points and places (including none) on the spectrum.

This last person, this person I live with currently and have truly loved, is directly responsible for the loss of the one I truly love that I gave birth to.

He is also partially responsible, in a very small way really, for the loss of the woman I consider to be the love of my life, my 'intellectual' love, my unparalleled, unrealized lust.

This last person is family, all the same. In spite of everything. Even setting in motion the events that would lead to losing my child. This person is the only fucking person on earth I can really fucking talk to, without hesitation, without limitations and without restraint.

Without that, without some manner of stable-permanent home, family, love, understanding, friendship, companionship, partnership, connection, I could not continue. There would be no reason for me to.

I am alone in the most important ways, but in all ways, in every single way, I cannot be alone. I must have someone in my corner in some fundamental way in order to carry on with life.

Like most of us.

The other true-love, the woman, the love of my life, was not actually someone I felt I could talk to without hesitation, without limitations, without restraint, without self-censoring and self-consciousness. I felt muffled, uncertain and insecure in her company, in most aspects of relationship with her. Beneath. Unworthy.

But that wasn't on her. That was on me. I wasn't ready to have a conversation, a relationship with someone who took up conversational space/relational space, who took liberties women in her position have long been told/forced to abstain from, who was powerful, who knew herself, who knew what she wanted, who had standards, who was ethical, principled, mature, who had things to say that she felt were more important/more interesting/more complex and intelligent than things I had to say, who wasn't interested in putting me on a pedestal, who wasn't interested in being put on a pedestal, who had a complex and layered understanding of love and relationship and life, full-bodied, fleshed-out, three-dimensional.

I failed to do much of anything useful with that. I failed to be much of anything useful to her.

She's gone because I gave her no reason to stay. It's as simple as that.

I have been as honest as possible with Ryo about why things are the way they are. He's not in a place to really understand much outside of his immediate surroundings and touchable daily concerns. It's going to be a few years before we can reach a real, meaningful understanding and have a productive conversation about what happened. I don't know how he'll react, what he'll do, how he'll see me, what he's going to make of things. I don't even know if he's going to need to have a conversation, or want to hear what I have to say. It's possible that he won't need much reassurance, much explanation...that he won't have much interest in knowing the reasons why.

Shrug. We'll see.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not terribly worried about it. He'll feel what he feels, think what he thinks, do what he does. I'm mostly not drowning in guilt about the whole thing, not anymore. It is what it is. It happened. It's over. It's done. It will run it's course, do it's thing no matter how I feel about it, how he feels about it. We will have to do our best with what's left. And I'm sure we will, as we're able.

I'm watching a documentary about a painter, Alice Neel, who lost her first child to disease and had her second taken from her by her husband, to be raised by her husband's family.

She let it happen, let this be. She didn't fight to get her daughter back. She never saw her child again after the man she was married to at the time took her away. It happened and she went on with her life, married again (more than once, I believe) and had two other children, whom she raised and raised fairly well.

She was an artist with a capital 'A' for Alternative Lifestyle/Parenting. I'm FASCINATED by her. I'm in love. She pissed in public. She grabbed space, wrested recognition and acclaim and twisted it into taffy. She lived a broke-ass uncertain life, made unpopular and unrealistic choices, painted what and who she wanted and gave the finger to the establishment art community, to the corporate nuclear family industrial complex.

She was brazen. She was broken. She was real.

She didn't live for men, she didn't live for her children. She had men and children in her life because she wanted them to be there, but her work and her sense of herself, her notions of what life and art should be, were at the center of her world.

THAT is the way things should be. THAT is what I want for my own life and work. I want to be loved and to have relationships, friendships and children on my own motherfucking terms. As in I will have my relationships, my associations, my connections and my family how and when I want them, in what form pleases and serves me best.

And I will answer to myself. I will hear my children's thoughts, my partner's thoughts, all those who share my life. I will listen to their perceptions and understand their experiences of me.

But I will do want I want to do, and live how I want to live. My own, real cravings will drive me.

Alice Neel wasn't a card-carrying member of the feminist revolution. But she didn't need to be. She LIVED the revolution. Freedom wasn't an aspiration or an empty longing for her. She claimed it. She took her liberty. She didn't ask. She didn't wish. She didn't compromise. She didn't make safe, easy, approved-of choices in a comfortable environment. She scraped and screamed and screwed up irrevocably, existed in a deprived and in some ways depraved place. But it was honest. It was human.

She did exactly what she fucking wanted to do, and she didn't make excuses. She didn't ask for forgiveness or permission. She wasn't perfect, she wasn't impenetrable, she had her vulnerabilities and she made her mistakes.

But she lived the life she wanted to live, focused on what she wanted to focused on and gave those in her life no other choice but to accommodate her.

For my money, that's real feminism.

Back to her children. This child that was taken from her grew up to have children of her own. She was angry with her mother for not trying to have a relationship with her. She went to see one of her mother's shows later in life, after marrying and having children of her own, sat in the front row, was not recognized by her mother despite bearing a striking resemblance. She didn't really attempt to engage, I think she wanted to be found and discovered, was waiting for an ecstatic, mournful, chastised moment of re-discovery.

It didn't happen.

So this child that grew up without her bohemian, artist mother, who resented her for not coming for her, not raising her, not recognizing her committed suicide not long after seeing her mother for the first time as an adult. It was a lifelong weight, a constant struggle, an unendurable loss for the child inside that felt abandoned and unloved and ultimately unimportant and unworthy because of it. This killed her.

Some kids put in this situation adjust better. Some kids put in this situation adjust worse. For some, it is no adjustment at all. It's all individual, contextual. Two people, even identical twins will react wholly differently to the exact same stimuli/environment/circumstances. There's really no way to tell what children are going to do with their upbringing, with their experiences.

My brother, stepsister and me, though raised by different caretaker combinations/under different social/socioeconomic circumstances (brother primarily by my mother/stepfather in an upper-middle-class household, stepsister primarily by her mother, partially by her biological father in a middle-middle-class household, somewhat by my own father in a lower-middle-class, upper-working-class household, me primarily by my father and grandparents in a lower-middle-class household), were all parented essentially by the same manner of person: abusive, neglectful, distant, disconnected, resentful, authoritarian emotional invalids who considered children, their children especially, to be unbearable burdens. Who tolerated, not loved their babies. Who came to parenting by way of unhappy accident or miserable obligation or worst of all, both.

I took this terror very much to heart and was wholly negatively affected and incredibly damaged by it. My siblings did otherwise. My sister disappeared into an abusive marriage young, had children young, moved away and never came back. She dealt by not dealing, by trying her best to fit in, to be 'normal'. By pledging her lifelong service to an idealized version of family she never really saw or experienced.

It's not, from what I've heard, a deal that's worked out very well for her. For this, I empathize.

My brother didn't have the same experiences my sister and me did. He wasn't abused in the way we were. He had more of a 'normal' childhood, safer and less explosive/volatile in some ways, but equally dysfunctional in it's coldness, sterility, black-and-white divisions, forceful denial of it's own complexity and brokenness. He's dead-hearted as a result, a political apathetic with rigid, unforgiving notions of right and wrong, good and bad.

It's not that he doesn't deal with emotions, doesn't acknowledge deep internal caverns for fear of being overwhelmed by them as I long imagined. It's that he doesn't have many feelings in the first place, that there are no layers of experience/thought/being beneath what's on the surface. He's been flat-ironed. I think of him now as having an empty dent where his heart should be. For this, I mourn.

Partially, I reacted as I did to my upbringing because I was the first kid to arrive on the scene and therefore bore the brunt of my parent's human shortcomings and vices, though also because of how I was encouraged to deal with what was happening by those who surrounded me and too because I was who I was. I was born sensitive, reactive, obstinate, strong-willed, pig-headed, ravenously curious, soft-hearted, love-starved, anti-social/solitary, reflective, contemplative, covetous, intolerant, traumatized and re-traumatized, scabbed over, impulsive, bright, unequal, uneven, irregular parts analytical and pure, raw emotion, naive, defensive, nomadic, disordered, degenerate, disloyal, self-absorbed, cerebral, visceral, envious, gracious, open, controlling, bitter, odd, integrated, compartmentalized, gifted, self-subdued, acutely, excruciatingly self-conscious (it's ridiculous), self-destructive, apathetic, opportunistic, manipulative, ethereal but common as cat shit, both perversely and perpetually sexualized and asexual, defensively detached from sex and intimacy of all kinds, thick, rare and complicated to the point of absurdity, to the point of performance. I have always been these things.

I've felt unloved and unworthy, unvalued and unimportant for most of my life. I've tried to kill myself. I still think of ending my own life when the residual hurting becomes too intense to manage.

I guess I'm a bit like Alice Neel's first child that survived to adulthood. Permanently pained, limited and bound to the reality, the ceaseless grief of a sorry upbringing and deeply unfortunate circumstance. There's no 'getting over' not being loved and wanted by your biological family, only to be ruthlessly taken apart by others you fled into the arms of out of monstrous fear and need, there's no cure for what comes to ail you as a result of that, not for some of us.

It's too early to know what Ryo's going to do with the knowledge that, at base, I actively chose not to raise him. That he owes his existence to his father's insistence and not my own desire. That by way self-interested, self-centered decision-making I've remained a part of his life, but only marginally. That I won't offer him much of what I'm supposed to be offering him, that I don't want to, that I don't have a marshmallows-and-rainbows-benevolent-conditioned-obedience to mainstream culture or ways of being, seeing, dealing and engaging with the world to pass on to him, to paint over his perception, to placate him with.

(Being raised by a parent like me, in however limited a capacity, with my particular sort of character, disposition and personal/familial history is never an easy thing for a child. Especially not in a culture that demonizes women who behave like the human beings they are and the people they truly want/intend to be. Who are damaged and don't hide it, who are complex and don't disregard or deny the ambiguities of their lives and determinations. Ryo's been dealt a hard hand in that way, I know it well and I do my best to mitigate it's more difficult/sharp aspects as best I can from the position in his life I've chosen to occupy)

My not-parenting him is, primarily, fully intentional. This would always have been the path we would've taken, however we came by it.

Which is to say that if it hadn't been the big ugly push in the form of Eddie's abuse and Juan's betrayal, it would've been something else that led us here.

The truth is, raising Juan's child was never on the final itinerary for me. Was never something I genuinely wanted/was fully committed to spending a significant amount of time doing.

Ryo and me will spend the rest of our lives contending with that.

And I'm not sure what that's going to mean in the end for either of us.

More soon.

Secret identities

2012-01-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

I'm now living a damnable double life on the internet.

Readers and former online 'friends' of a certain social networking site, if you're confused by my new and bizarrely one-dimensional, non-representative presence there, don't be.

It's for potential employers to find if they decide to snoop around for information about my life. Even went so far as to create another website for that purpose as well.

While it was kind of fun to construct a false personae for the purpose of fucking with future taskmaster's minds, it's fucking nuts that it even needs to be done.

Hopefully, they will prove an effective distraction from this and all other places where I am out, myself and writing, behaving and thinking true to form.

I just wish I didn't have to do this to survive.

Having to repress 95% of my authentic personality, self and interests 80% of the time is the single biggest factor in my now decade-long campaign of avoiding paid work (especially in a corporate setting, which I've found to be the most conservative, stifling, suffocating and oppressive 'work environment' of them all).

If you were forced to live hand-to-mouth in whatever way you could stomach in order to stay away from that, in order to survive, your life might look like this too. You might be a little angry, a little pissed off and a little 'unbalanced', too.

You might be a little less patient with, and tolerant of, insensitive jerks who dismiss your lack of interest and ability to put up with choking down your personhood for pennies on a daily fucking basis. That could very well be the case if you were forced to make the kinds of choices I am.

Heading you off at the pass...

No, I'm not entrepreneurial. Starting a business, while a decidedly less intolerable endeavor, is not the answer for me. I've no real desire to make or sell another useless product to the mindless majority (though running a very small, cheap neighborhood cafe sometimes seems like a dream occupation, and may someday become a reality...if I have to sell something, nourishment seems the best way to go).

No, I'm not a communal-hippie-farmer-dumpster-diving type. Living in a shared space without running water, electricity and ready access to safe food with people I don't know very well and probably wouldn't get along with for very long, while a more forward-thinking (in some ways), or at least alternative endeavor, is not the answer for me. I like my personal space and my technology, I like clean fresh food and private showers and I have limited mobility to contend with; I've no real desire to live in a rural, off-the-grid style group where hard manual labor would be a daily reality (a modern poly-type family scenario, however, is another matter. But we'll get to that). I grew up on a farm, and I disliked that way of life then, too.

No, I'm not a caretaker. I don't have the patience, tolerance or mental/emotional wherewithal necessary for dealing with children, the infirm elderly or the disabled every day. I'm actively and debilitatingly emotionally traumatized by routine exposure to poor parenting, sick and damaged kids and the needless, gratuitous and catastrophic suffering experienced by those deemed 'useless' in whatever way by society. I can't handle it. I descend into madness very quickly under those circumstances, and that I simply cannot afford.

No, I'm not interested in becoming what I loathe and adopting a male model of 'success', wasting my time acquiring the required skill set to do so and working my way up the bullshit hierarchy to prove I can 'support myself' in the way that those who've bought into this wholesale have decided is the mark of adulthood (conformity is a mark of cowardice and lack of creativity, not adulthood). Where some find this empowering, liberating, stimulating and sensible, I find it exhausting, isolating, enraging, traumatizing, morally bankrupt/ethically problematic and patently insane.

I can't survive in the male supremacist, consumerist, numbed-down/dumbed-down, flat, vanilla, heterocentrist, pop-culture saturated corporate world. I've tried. I'm trying again as we speak.

It's fucking killing me. I don't belong in that world; in your world, dear reader. I have no place there. I'm not welcome. I'm not included. I don't matter and I am certainly not wanted.

If there's one thing I've learned in my 33 years, in the last ten of them especially, it's that.

This post was named 'Secret identities' because Noel Veva is really, for the moment and the exponentially-increasing and immediate future, a person who exists primarily in my own mind and behind my own closed door. She is not yet a tangible reality, a factual person. She can't be.

This post was named 'Secret identities' because all that I truly am, all that encompasses and comprises my real self and actual being will have to, once more, be gagged and kept in a dark room in the back of my mind somewhere, somehow and for as long as I can stand it, as I once again begin the arduous process of trying to make a little money in this sad, sick, nasty little world of yours.

(Don't say it isn't yours. Don't even think it. This world was made for people like you. Built by and for and specifically to maintain the primacy and privilege of people like you. If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't be writing this)

Sigh.

I don't want to do this.

I fucking don't want to do this again.

The interviews. The auditing about my only thinly-vieled, not-very-convincingly-concealed spotty work history. The lies and bullshit I'm forced to invent to seem 'normal' so that I can get a job, then keep it until I want to vomit constantly from the shit I'm forced to swallow, to observe and rub all over myself. The stink of viciousness. The retch-inducing flavor of poison disdain. The repugnant ugliness of hateful ignorance. The whispers and rumors when I can't get it right or can't stand pretending anymore. The backstabbing when I refuse to participate in all the pathetic dominance games. The poking and prodding when pieces of the real me start to poke through despite my best or increasingly more frantic/exhausted/exasperated efforts; the namecalling and gossip when I stand up for myself or others or express any sort of non-mainstream opinion, thought or action, the sideways glances when I try to find a comfortable place for myself in whatever way I can, the trap doors to try and snare me when I try to keep my distance from the vultures for my own sanity, the landmines and the doublespeak always underfoot and being lobbed at me from all sides all day long. The unrepentant, bald-faced woman, mother, other-hating. The rape jokes. The petty little alliances, the empty seat in the corner at meetings and the table behind the partition in the lunchroom. The tortured stomping around the building at lunchtime, the empty offers of lifeless, false, conditional friendship, the baiting...all the little atrocities and indecencies 'people like me' have to put up with every second of every motherfucking day at 'work'.

THE ENDLESS FUCKING BULLYING.

IT NEVER STOPS. NOT FOR A SECOND.

This shit has real fucking consequences, you fucks. It's not a game. This nonsense actually drives actual people to the brink of insanity. Daily.

This little distraction, this bit of fun you find so damn entertaining costs people their fucking lives.

People KILL THEMSELVES OVER THIS.

Don't you understand?!

WHY WON'T YOU FUCKING STOP DOING THIS TO OTHER PEOPLE?!

I can't stand it.

I. CAN'T. STAND. IT.

LEAVE ME ALONE. LET ME GET THROUGH THIS IN MY OWN WAY SO THAT I CAN MAKE ENOUGH MONEY TO KEEP A ROOF OVER MY HEAD, FOOD IN MY FRIDGE AND SHOES AND CLOTHES ON MYSELF AND MY KID.

Have a little fucking respect, be the tiniest bit decent, act like ACTUAL motherfucking adults and stop hurting other people to get your kicks.

It's terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE behavior. And it kills people. It puts them on the street. It breaks up their families, pushes people to abuse controlled substances and to lash out in all manner of self-destructive and otherwise destructive ways. It drives them insane.

There's nothing fun, or cool, or okay about forcing other human beings to invent fake personalities to survive in the world...and to ruthlessly mock, deride and destroy them if they can't/won't maintain them.

It's not funny. It's not acceptable. It's not harmless.

It's evil.

It kills.

Newsflash: men don't need women's help to stop oppressing us. Women need help to stop being oppressed.

2012-01-04T15:03:00.000-08:00

It's not that men can't/don't hear our cries and screams and pleading and beautifully written, reasoned and articulated arguments for our emancipation.
It's not that men can't/don't see what they're cruelty, violence and neglect does to women, how it dehumanizes, damages, degrades and drains the very will to live from us.
It's not that men can't/don't understand women's humanity...that women are sentient, that we feel pain and are self-aware, that we are not incubators, walking orifices or artificially intelligent servant-bots.
It's not that men don't know it's wrong to violently subjugate other human beings, primarily women.

Men know all of this perfectly well. They know damnmotherfucking well that women make up half the human population, do most of the world's work for free/nearly free, comprise most of the world's poorest, sickest and most abused/expendable people.

They get that we are hurting. They know that they are hurting us.

That's the point.

It's not called 'rule of the fathers' for nothing.

Men as a whole care about money, status, violence, sports, porn, video games, being fed a steady stream of self-congratulatory and homicidally self-obsessed nonsense in any and all written, recorded and visual forms imaginable, and being sexually, socially and domestically served by a docile and dependent slave class of weakened, fearful, self-loathing and self-policing women.

The only place women fit into that equation is as a slave. The 'good' girlfriend, the 'loving' wife, the 'doting' mother, the hypermasculinized, pathologically self-hating 'exceptional' associate/business partner/woman-friend, female 'wingman', fag-hag or political/social/workplace accomplice (otherwise known as the token/mouthpiece). That's it.

Patriarchy, female oppression isn't about the ignorance of men about the humanity of women. It's not all some weird mistake or unfortunate coincidence that men rape, murder, torture, dismember, breed like cattle, discard like garbage, sell like merchandise, brutalize and otherwise obliterate us and our babies. It's not an accident or afterthought that they do this.

Patriarchy, female oppression is a maliciously purposeful, well-developed and near-universally endorsed by men campaign to enslave one half of the human species for their own benefit and sadistic pleasure.

Dear fellow feminists:

Please, stop wasting your time trying to 'educate' men on the human rights of women and the reality of patriarchy. They don't need an education on the subject, they know. They invented the fucking system in the first place. They don't care what the people it was designed to oppress think of it.

Let men deal with themselves and educate themselves on the subject of not hating and oppressing women, if any are truly so inclined (which I very seriously doubt...if it 'aint broke, why fix it?).

The work of feminism must center on helping and educating WOMEN that they are human, that they have rights, that they are not made to suffer, serve and be abused by men. It's WOMEN who need resources and care and to be taught to love themselves, care for themselves, put themselves first, support themselves and their children and to think of themselves as actual people instead of dolls, fuck-toilets and breeding apparatuses. It's WOMEN who have had this knowledge, this truth of their humanity kept secret, made forbidden to access and benefit from for thousands of years.

Feminism is about female freedom from male control, about women freeing themselves from the external and internal prisons men construct to oppress and destroy us. It's not about educating men or enlightening men or becoming equal with men or striking a bargain with men to prettyplease oppress us a smidge less for 15 seconds of one day every 200 years.

FEMINISM IS ABOUT FEMALE FREEDOM FROM MALE CONTROL. FEMINISM IS ABOUT WOMEN FREEING THEMSELVES FROM THE EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL PRISONS MEN CONSTRUCT TO OPPRESS AND DESTROY US.

Men don't need our help to stop oppressing us. They can do that at any time and would have done so long ago if they wanted to (hint: they don't. Take the fucking hint already).

WOMEN NEED OUR HELP TO STOP BEING OPPRESSED. WOMEN ARE THE PEOPLE NEEDING AND DESERVING OF HELP. WOMEN ARE THE PEOPLE BEING HURT AND DESTROYED IRREVOCABLY BY PATRIARCHY.

Patriarchy doesn't 'hurt' men. It benefits them.

That's why they created it.

HELP YOURSELVES. HELP OTHER WOMEN.

Men have their shit covered.

Facebook comment response that became another one of my patented mini-manifesto rants. :)

2011-12-30T02:24:00.001-08:00

Thank you, it felt powerful and life-affirming, care-taking of me to do it. I need to take care of me so fucking badly. I'm so tired and hurt and on the brink. I just can't take anymore poor treatment, being taken advantage of or shamelessly used to for others' purposes, be they personal or 'professional'. This is, therefore, my line in the mud.

I'm struck by the truth of things, the reality that underlies this push, this compulsion to refuse all that hurts and chafes and bleeds dry and is useless to me...which is that this is really and truly my last stand. I've reached the end of the rope, the brick wall, the final boundary 'No' is pretty much all I have at this point.

I can't change the world, I can't make people stop trying to rip me to shreds and attempt to wipe their ass with me/throw me away like trash, but I can say 'No, I won't accept this as my fault. What you are doing is wrong and it has nothing to do with me. I don't deserve it. No, I will not work for starvation wages or be put through the humiliation of essentially being required to beg 6 different people just to be graced with a job that will pay me starvation wages while simultaneously grinding my ability to enjoy and appreciate life to dust. No, I will not take care of you and everyone else when I'm suicidal and physically sick from depression, anxiety, PTSD and chronic health problems arising from all of the above and more. No, I will not cook and clean and create a warm, happy household while you hide away in your room playing video games like a child and lavish attention and love on your dogs while the people you call family sit alone in another part of the house wondering why. No, I will not subject myself to the shit-talking, backstabbing and vicious doublespeak endemic to most social groupings just to have 'friends' who wouldn't piss on me if I were on fire. No, I will not align myself with people who claim to have the same values as me, who purport to be enlightened, free-thinking and kind but who treat me no differently than anyone else, who are just as quick to dump and denigrate me as those they castigate for doing the very same to others, just for different reasons. No, I will not waste my time trying to impress you, your friends or your family with a carefully constructed personae designed for that very purpose that bears absolutely no resemblance to anything approaching the actual me. No, I will not bow down to your imagined intellectual (or any other sort) superiority and accept that you are right and I am wrong because you say so, plus there are all these books and studies written and created by dead white men, therefore I should believe and accept as law any stupid thing that comes out of your mouth. No, I will not deal with your flaming ignorance and reprehensible abuse just because we are blood-related. No, I will not pretend that I am not hurting, lonely and afraid just because my pain and suffering makes you uncomfortable. No, I will not put up with crap 'medical care' from contemptible shitbags with letters after their name who behave as though my body is their personal, portable testing ground for whatever new poison they have been bribed to sell to 'fix' my lack of ability to pretend like things don't hurt, that I'm not sad and that the world doesn't suck booger-flavored monkey nuts.

No to all. Forever. The only power I have left. Fortunately, it's the only one that really counts. :)

Workplace qualifications, or the Anti-Work Compulsory Worker's Manifesto, or just plain NO.

2011-12-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

Pre-employment

If you're a disgusting shitbag who likes to watch broke people jump through seven thousand hoops/struggle through 11 interviews and an invasive background check before you'll shamelessly cheat them out of a fair wage, the ability to keep from dying of a preventable disease/injury and decent standard of living, go fuck yourself.

If you're not within easy biking/busing distance of my home, do not pass go.

If you're a slightly less offensive shitbag and willing to employ me at a rate that can afford me good food, shelter in a safe location and some measure of a life not centered around thankless, suicidal drudgery, here's what I won't put up with to be forcibly employed by you:

Post-employment

1. Any workplace that harbors or permits any person to possess/exhibit open and consistent sociopathic/sadomasochistic/discriminatory/harassing/abusive or dangerous behavior of any kind will be left without notice immediately.
2. Any workplace that is overrun with gossip/politics/power plays/busybodies/narks/‘gatekeepers’ (ie those who make it their sole purpose to keep those they consider ‘unworthy’ from advancing or getting comfortable in a company/position) will be left without notice as soon as possible.
3. Any workplace that is not kept reasonably clean and that is not physically safe will not be tolerated and will be left immediately if not remedied on the spot.
4. Any position requiring illegal/immoral actions to maintain employment will be left without notice immediately.
5. Any company that pressures employees, whether directly or indirectly, to avoid taking sick/flex/vacation time for any reason will be left without notice as soon as possible.
6. Any company with openly prejudiced/discriminatory policies of any kind will be left without notice as soon as possible.
7. Any company requiring excessive amounts of overtime of any kind will be left without notice as soon as possible.
8. Any company that does not offer and implement cost-of-living pay increases as a matter of ethical principle will be left without notice as soon as possible.
9. Any company that requires its female employees to perform conventional femininity in any manner, physical or social, in order to maintain employment will be left without notice immediately.
10. Any company whose HR department does not take abuse/harassment accusations seriously and which does not follow established legal procedure in addressing them will be left without notice immediately.
11. Any company that sacrifices employee wages/safety/necessary equipment for the sake of higher profits will be left without notice as soon as possible.
12. Any company requiring employees to do the work of several people without adequate compensation and appropriate production expectations will be left without notice as soon as possible.
13. ANY COMPANY THAT SEVERELY/CONSISTENTLY UNDERPAYS AND OVERWORKS ITS EMPLOYEES WILL BE LEFT WITHOUT NOTICE AND WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE IMMEDIATELY.
14. Any company that treats it’s administrative staff like indentured servants/second-class citizens will be left without notice as soon as possible.
15. Any company that does not readily provide employees with extra breaks/general human decency during particularly busy/stressful periods will be left without notice when convenient.
16. Any company with an environment that is overly conducive to social oppression/shunning/invisibilising will be left without notice when convenient.
17. Any company with cold, calloused upper-level staff that are intolerant of the random and unpredictable circumstances of life/the necessary schedule changes and absences that go along with that, and who routinely directly or indirectly threaten employees who must take time off with termination will be left without notice as soon as possible.
18. Any company that does not regularly, enthusiastically and proportionately reward it’s lower-level/administrative staff for their efforts will be left without notice when convenient.
19. Any company that requires it’s lower-level/administrative staff to spend productive time in consistently unproductive meetings without making appropriate adjustments in production expectations will be left without notice as soon as possible.
20. Any company that makes consistently unreasonable, unrealistic or inappropriate production demands of it’s employees will be left without notice as soon as possible.
21. Any company that fosters an unsafe, unkind or uncomfortable environment of any kind for any of it’s employees will be left without notice as soon as possible.

AVOIDED AS A MATTER OF SANITY/PERSONAL PREFERENCE:

-Work involving direct, daily contact with disturbed, distraught or disgruntled members of the general public, or anyone (there’s a reason I didn’t go into social work, this shit isn’t my bag, you’re not paying me enough for this, I’ve got enough on my shoulders already without taking on the monstrous levels of stress and emotional trauma so-called ‘helping professionals’ have to deal with everyday)
-Work involving direct, daily contact with children of any age (there’s a reason I stopped at one, and there’s a reason I chose not to parent the one I have full or half-time. I don’t tolerate children well for long periods of time. Period. Too stressful, too limiting, too triggery)
-Positions requiring advance notice/coverage to leave workstation (I have a bladder and a digestive tract. I have eyes that get tired, a brain that gets frazzled and emotions that run high at times. I have a sovereign human right to get up and leave a thing without having to ask or beg or schedule it. In other damn words, I'm a human being; not a robot. Fuck off)
-Positions requiring the majority of work to be completed under direct/close supervision (This isn’t grade school, I don’t need you breathing down my neck, your shit will get done, leave me alone)
-Positions requiring the majority of work to be completed in an open/brightly lit workstation with little/no privacy (it’s bad enough that I have to crawl out of bed every day against my will to do low-paying, thankless work. Must I also do it under glaring, ugly florescent lighting and without a wall panel/space to call my own?)
-Positions requiring ‘first point of contact/face of the company’ for the general public/new clientele (welcome to hell. Take a number. I completely suck at pretending I like to work/care about the company I work for)
-Positions requiring housekeeping/food/beverage service to upper level staff (I’m not your fucking servant, you couldn’t pay me enough to be. Fuck off)
-Positions requiring the running of outside errands (don’t have a car, wouldn’t do it if I did. You’re Mr./Ms. bigshot with all the money and flexibility and freedom. Do your own damn errands. NOT YOUR SERVANT, COULDN’T PAY ME ENOUGH TO BE. FUCK YOU)
-Positions requiring heavy phone contact (I don’t do phone conversation, let alone in an environment where I am not permitted to defend myself/hang up when abused. Let someone else monkey the landline; better yet, get an automated system and spare us all)
-Positions requiring mediation between departments/staff/the general public (I am not an objective, rational, level-headed third party under the best of circumstances. Fuck that)
-Positions requiring consistent and close contact with upper level staff (can’t stand the naked hierarchal pleasure taken gleefully at my expense. They're all diseased)
-Positions requiring excessive collaboration/contact with other employees/‘working in teams’ (if I need your help or input, I’ll ask. Otherwise, the opening of your mouth will most likely coincide with the filling up of my brain with useless information that will irritate me to no end)
-Positions requiring professional attire/‘polished appearance’ (I’m not even shelling out for ugly, expensive conservative clothing on the pittance you pay me. And forget makeup and feminine attire. Hire a robot; I’m not a doll)
-Positions requiring many competing and contradictory daily tasks (if you want something done correctly, you’re going to have to give me the space and time necessary to complete it correctly. Otherwise, expect shoddy work. There is no true multitasking)
-Positions requiring the making of travel/event arrangements/regular supply ordering and organizing (MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS. For Mr./Ms. You who can deny calls and manage your own workflow, it takes 10 minutes with no miscommunications. For overworked, underpaid administrative Me with 5,000 things to do, crappy equipment that prevents me from doing it in a timely manner and you breathing down my neck/battering me over the head with a bajillion special requirements I couldn’t remember if I had a desert island and a tattoo gun, it takes 2 weeks. For fuck’s sake, do it yourself. You’ll get the exact airline and time and hotel and car make and model and special food you want without all the bullshit. It’s so much fucking simpler. As for supplies...nobody has time to go around asking what everybody else needs/wants. Nobody even has the time to make a list of what they need! Allocate a certain amount to every employee it makes sense to, and let everyone make their own orders. Otherwise, it’s 20 boxes of legal paper in every supply cabinet and never enough pens, file folders or 8 1/2 x 11)
-Positions requiring excessive and consistent paper filing or management/organization of paper files (IT’S CALLED TECHNOLOGY. WE’VE HAD IT FOR DECADES NOW. LET’S USE IT AND STOP WITH THE PAPERCUTS AND UNREADABLE PHOTOCOPIES)
-Positions requiring consistent lifting, standing or physical activity (the body, she is broken. Even if she weren’t, I’m too old and I don’t want to. Let the kids)
-Positions requiring tic sheets/progress reports/multiple time cards (IT’S CALLED TECHNOLOGY. WE’VE HAD IT FOR DECADES NOW. BUY A FUCKING SOFTWARE PROGRAM THAT DOES THIS AUTOMATICALLY SO THAT YOUR OVERWORKED, UNDERPAID EMPLOYEES CAN DO THEIR FUCKING JOBS INSTEAD OF SPENDING THEIR TIME LOGGING HOURS)
-Positions requiring calendar/schedule management (MAKE. YOUR. OWN. ARRANGEMENTS. It’s simple and efficient. Have the admins do the paperwork, do the complicated stuff yourself. They’re your business connections/meetings, only you know how to manage them best)
-Positions requiring employees to clock in and out (This isn’t high school. We’re all adults. If my work day starts at 8:00am, barring personal circumstance or emergency, I’ll be there. If you absolutely must know exactly when I came in, BUY A FUCKING SOFTWARE PROGRAM THAT KEEPS TRACK OF THIS AUTOMATICALLY SO THAT WHEN I COME TO WORK I CAN ACTUALLY START WORKING INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR THE STUPID PROGRAM TO LOAD SO THAT I CAN CLOCK IN)
-Positions requiring the doing of busywork during slow periods/downtime (work is compulsory. It’s toil or die; don’t add insult to life-sucking injury by forcing me to dance for your sick enjoyment)
-Positions requiring proofreading/quality assurance without the aid of a computer (IT’S CALLED TECHNOLOGY. WE’VE HAD IT FOR DECADES NOW. BUY A FUCKING COMPUTER. IT’S MORE EFFICIENT, MORE WILL GET DONE AND LESS MISTAKES WILL BE MADE. THAT’S WHY EVERYONE ELSE HAS ONE)
-Positions requiring sales, appointment setting, upselling, inbound sales calls, pre-qualifying, ‘presentations’ or any other form of solicitation (you can stop advertising them as ‘administrative sales support’ while you’re at it)
-Positions requiring the majority of work to be completed in a shared workspace/cubicle (I’m not here to talk or pretend to be happy or make friends. I’m here because I have to be. I’m here against my will. Don’t make that even less tolerable by forcing me to interact with a bunch of people I’d never choose to be in the same room with otherwise)
-Positions requiring quotas or stringent deadlines (shit happens. Customers get snippy. Equipment fails. Kids get sick, we get sick, cars break down. Work gets lost. Time gets mismanaged. Life happens. Happens to you all the damn time...we know, we clean up your messes. Get the fuck over it already)
-Positions requiring regular staff meetings of any kind (I’m a grunt. Nearly all topics discussed in these types of meetings concerns sales/upper management, everybody knows it, stop wasting my fucking time and have the decency to let me hate my life in my cubicle where I have some privacy)
-Positions requiring abstinence from recreational internet usage during work hours (ie you’re probably not paying me a living wage and probably never will, you’re probably a totalitarian shitbag who treats me like dog vomit, so it’s really fucking crappy to force me to toil away in a jail cell without access to the outside world/a moment’s respite on top of that)
-Positions requiring any manner of time allocation/cost-centering (that’s what job descriptions/HR/accounting professionals are for. Please just let me do the stupid meaningless job you hired me for and stop making me do everyone else’s work for crap pay!)
-Positions that do not offer an appropriate/comprehensive training program/packet (especially if I’m new to the industry, you’re going to have to buckle down and show me what needs to be done if you want it to be done correctly. I can’t read your mind and I can’t absorb the ins-and-outs of a new position by osmosis. Do your job so I can do mine)
-Positions that do not provide a readily available, appropriately qualified person to assist new employees with questions and concerns (throwing new employees to the wolves without support is how gigantic money-wasting mistakes are made...which said employees are then usually promptly fired for. It’s an insane, eternal downward spiral of wastefulness. Give us the support we need, we’ll do a better job, make you money and you won’t have to fire us and waste even more money to hire someone else. Simple. Logical. Efficient. Why don’t you get it?!)
-Positions that lack the basic equipment necessary to perform daily tasks properly/efficiently (it’s hard to manage a busy office without a phone system designed for business or a computer. Or file cabinets. Or a desk. Or paper)
-Positions that require employees to fulfill quotas or regular deadlines with damaged, regularly malfunctioning or extremely old equipment/computers/servers, with little to no tech support to remedy that (ie expecting employees to produce a certain amount/complete work on a certain schedule with no allowances for equipment delays and no way of upgrading the system. This is rampant. This is inhumane. This is really, really stupid and inefficient. It needs to stop)
-Positions that require excessive process streamlining on the part of lower-level/administrative staff (ie no formal job description, no training manual, no formalized job procedure, all up to the staff to do managements job for them without an appropriate increase in pay/status, etc)
-Positions that require lower-level/administrative staff to ‘collaborate with’ or ‘advise’ upper management, or to suggest ideas in terms of process or product improvement (want me to do your work for you? COMPENSATE ME APPROPRIATELY. Otherwise, handle your own shit. Process, product and procedure outlining/streamlining/development is YOUR JOB. I’m just here to shuffle the paper, smile, die slowly of an ear infection and live in a crappy studio apartment with no furniture for the rest of my life)

Broke-ass: an interlude.

2011-12-17T08:06:00.000-08:00

Have a few blog posts stewing, just focusing on trying to find work as it's especially imperative to have money now that my household has absolutely no steady income.

Ryo is here; we spent most of last night making xmas decorations for our fake Charlie Brown tree out of soda cans, pop corn and a random red ribbon. Today we'll make more (planets, for Saturnalia ;)) from construction paper, bake some cookies, learn to read and write sentences, do some cleaning, walk the dogs, spend some time at the park and wrap up the evening at the local monthly gay/queer coffeehouse comedy event.

Broke-ass tends to push you in the direction of DIY/general craftiness/creative/dirt-cheap/community-oriented entertainment, and as someone who's relied far too long on mindless consumeristic habitry, especially regarding holidays/special occasions/fun, that's a welcome and productive change.

So too the shift towards spending quality time/creating/being as a family unit, instead of Going Out and Buying Things/Doing Things That Cost Money reflexively.

It's fun making popcorn garlands and cutting shapes out of aluminum, it's great spending time together going to community events/just enjoying the world as it is, as we can, we all are enriched by it, it's great for bonding/learning and growing as individuals and as a family, but the absolute necessity/lack of options underlines a lot of scary, and relatively new (to us), realities.

All thanks to now-fading/shattering of lifelong (in one of our cases, anyway) privileges, a'course.

As in, we are dead broke. As in, we are 3 months away from total financial ruin, broken lease/eviction, ruined credit (on Eddie's part, mine's been trashed for 12 years) and real, actual homelessness.

As in, ff one of us doesn't find work within the next couple of weeks, we are in serious, serious trouble.

Now, being broke is sort of par for the course for my life. I haven't historically been able to work often/for long, I don't have much earning power and my disposition/belief system is, to put it mildly, not exactly safe/compatible for/with long-term traditional wage-earning. I have long relied on others to do the heavy lifting in this respect, mainly out of having no other real option if I didn't want to starve to death/live on the street.

As a result, I've learned to live without a lot of things others (similarly/more privileged than I) consider 'necessities'...cable, car, new clothes, the latest stuff, furniture, etc. Hell, I didn't even own my own computer until 2009.

My recipe for happiness consists mainly of a roof over my head, an internet connection, a place to zone out, good food and some pocket money for coffee/books/the occasional out-of-house experience. I can live without television (already doing it!), furniture (already doing it!), a car (already doing it!), my own room/bathroom (already done it, soon to be doing it again, pretty much all I've ever known!) nice clothes (been doing it for a long, long time!), and most other traditional forms of 'entertainment/needful things' very easily.

But, now that the economy has been bankrupted and (often white, rather spoiled and subsequently annoyingly whiney) people with lots of experience/degrees/high earning potential are being shafted to shit, often in favor of those of us with less prestigious work records (and lower down on the class/race/ability/gender/education totem pole) who are much cheaper/easier to employ (re: shamelessly exploit with little fear of consequences as traditionally oppressed/exploited/abused groups have precious little room to complain/resist and as a result are often 'grateful' for whatever work they can find), I find myself in the position of possibly being responsible for supporting a household of two adults, two dogs and one child...on an income that can barely support one adult, in a part of the state that has one of the highest costs of living in the country.

Considering my track record of barely being able to keep one job for longer than a year at a time, this is not a positive development.

In fact, it is positively petrifying.

Even if I didn't have significant, and rather debilitating, mental/emotional/physical/social health/ability issues that seriously impede my ability to hold down a job, it would be frightening to the point of slack-mouthed, sickening, silent screaming, weeping and rocking...because I'm simply not capable of making enough money to take care of all of us, and have no way of remedying that for the foreseeable future. If ever.

To say that I am often paralyzed by an overwhelming sense of dread and terror these days would be an enormously watered-down and sterile understatement.

Consider the following:

-My grandmother is old. Her health is failing. She is utterly broke and living on likely soon-to-be-phased-out/whittled-down-into-dust Medicare/Social Security.
-Her daughter, my aunt, is getting older, is not in good health, makes minimum wage and cannot take care of herself, or her severely mentally impaired son, alone.
-My parents are assholes with lots of money who hide away in their remote dwellings happy to ignore and deny the fates of their struggling grown daughters (among others, ahem), both of whom have done their best to break away from them due to years of unacknowledged and unrelenting abuse.
-My father's brother and his wife have a lot of money. They, too, are MIA in terms of support.
-My mother's sister and her husband have a lot of money. They, too, are MIA in terms of support.
-My brother is a jerk who maintains a relationship with said asshole parents, admittedly, for his own financial gain, screw everybody else.
-My sister's life is in shambles, at least financially speaking, from what I understand. Possibly even worse than my own.
-My kid's father is undocumented. He works and survives on the whim of those willing to exploit him for their own gain/profit. His safety and very physical presence in this country depend on the blind luck of having been fortunate enough to evade serious legal notice for the 10+ years he's been living here under the radar. It will eventually run out. I freeze every time the phone rings unexpectedly. I want to curl up into a ball and die every time I think about what will happen to Ryo if his father, who currently has sole legal/physical custody of him, is deported (hint: the chances of me regaining custody/managing to keep him out of foster care/from being deported alongside his father are slim to none).

Who, exactly, do you think is going to be left holding the bag for those struggling in this scenario?

If you guessed me, have a good shit. I'm about to.

Consider also that there are many, many people with Eddie's employment background and education who have been out of work for several YEARS...or who have been forced to take low and minimum-wage paying work to survive...only to be permanently set back by a decade or more in terms of wages and opportunity.

Consider finally that this means we are probably all now members of the permanent working class, if not working poor/possibly worse.

Which means any future opportunity my son may have had, any chance at a decent standard of living/ability to even remain in the country of his birth has most likely officially been completely obliterated.

Which means a lot of other really awful, horrifying stuff that I can't bear to articulate at the moment.

---

As many disadvantaged and oppressed people have known the world over for many thousands of years, and have been saying, repeating and SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAWDDAMNED LUNGS AD NAUSEUM TO ABSOLUTELY NO AVAIL every single second since then, the working class is a living hell. Life is work, which never pays enough to put food consistently on the table or to keep the rap-rap-rapping of collectors, landlords and all manner of agents of the poor-hating state/culture at bay, people shit on and spit at you, point and laugh, shame you to your face, fully expect you to find a dark hole to die in somewhere out of the delicate double-vision of the decent, monied and fortunate, ever hand-wringing over How Best To Dispose Of You In A Manner Which Will Protect Their Precious, Precious Sense Of Collective Goodness And Superiority, and worst, very worst of all, there's no.fucking.way.out. Once you slip, are tripped or become trapped below that invisible line, you're stuck. You're screwed.

We're stuck. We're screwed.

So yes...this is a scary, scary fucking time for my family, for me. We are teetering on the brink.

My sick, broken body and sick, damaged mind and weak, fragile heart simply cannot take anymore. I've been running on fumes for years. This has pushed me right over the edge.

If Eddie can't manage to pull a living-wage paying job out of thin fucking air, like, yesterday...

The most likely case scenario is that I am going to end up supporting several adults, dependent animals and my kid on a wage not even one person can survive on.

In a body that's failing me. Inside a mind full of chaos and nightmares.

FYI -

No, I am not broke, not sick, not suffering this fate because of spending habits or because I own a computer, shoes purchased in the last 5 years, an Ipod or a smartphone. I am not in this situation because of 'bad decisions'...and even if I was, who gives a fuck? I'm a human being. So is my son. So is Eddie. So are the rest of my family who are struggling, many of whom did 'everything right' (goddess how I loathe that phrase). Nobody deserves to live like this. If you think otherwise, FUCK YOU.

I am in this situation because I have never, ever, EVER been paid a living wage. Not ever. Not once. Not even close.

I am in this situation because I have had health insurance for exactly 1 year and 1 month out of my entire adult working life (12 years).

I am in this situation because my learning difficulties, physical ailments and mental/emotional problems have gone largely ignored and untreated, due to lack of money and lack of support.

I am in this situation because it's really fucking hard to keep a damn job when you have to work so hard to get out of bed in the morning and not kill yourself from stress, anger, pain and constant trauma...due to lack of money, lack of support, the desperate circumstances that result from that and lack of anyone within a 1000 mile radius giving an actual fuck about whether nor not I live or die.

I am in this situation because I am a throwaway person. A disposable. I am in this situation because nobody cares about people like me. Nobody will help. Nobody will offer time, money or resources to help people who have fallen below a certain threshold/are considered 'unworthy' for one of a hundred billion reasons. My duty at this point is to quietly and unceremoniously dig myself a hole and die in it...don't think for one second I'm not aware of that...so that the Good People Of The World can absolve themselves of further guilt and shame at literally setting up a society that creates a sewer valve for People Who Don't Fit In.

That's what I'm up against, every day. That's what MILLIONS OF FUCKING PEOPLE are up against, every day. This isn't about effort or work ethic or 'trying hard enough' or networking or bootstraps or any of the other hundred thousand excuses and non-solutions and self-absolving cop-outs you toss at me/us. It's about the basic structure of capitalist/consumer culture...one which prioritizes money, stuff and status above actual human lives.

I'm in this situation, dear obtuse reader, because in a culture like this, I.HAVE.NO.VALUE. Me being a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hurting, loving, sentient human being means nothing in a world where money and stuff and the having of money and stuff is all that matters, and if you can't/don't/refuse to 'get with the program', you are literally left the fuck out in the cold to starve and die.

So spare me your ice-hearted, patronizing, moralizing bullshit about 'choices'. Because I don't have any.

Neither, for that matter, do you.

Because 'conform or die, slave' isn't a fucking choice.

Get with the program? I'll die first.

You'll all make sure of that.

Message sent to a fellow OKC'er after perusing her profile...

2011-11-29T20:43:00.001-08:00

"'I am a bit disillusioned by the system of academia, but it is still REALLY important to me that you be educated.'

Was really liking your profile up until that point, and feel the need to articulate why/ask some questions.

If I may ask, why is it so important that those you associate with be 'educated'? What do you mean by 'educated'? College educated? Do you believe that those without college degrees are not capable of educating themselves? Do you believe that intelligence/education is a concrete, definable, measurable thing of worth, value and importance only in one form/obtainable only in one way?

When you say that it is important that those around you be 'educated', are you sure you don't mean similarly privileged by the acquisition of a certain *kind* of education?

If not, why fall into the trap of reproducing in your personal life/circles that which you claim to be disillusioned with in academia (which I can only assume is the overprivileged, incestuous intellectual conceit endemic to academic culture)?

Elitism is not intelligent, nor would I associate it with the qualities I consider worthy of the stamp 'educated'. Elitism is arrogant insecurity, born of privilege and entitlement...hoarding, hierarchal, rigid and static. Nothing wise, admirable or innovative about it.

Which nicely sums up the problem(s) *I* have with academia/academics in general, the social groupings that tend to cluster around them, and why I choose not to associate with any of it/have little interest in an 'education' of the traditional, collegiate sort.

You can know/be interested in certain things and not be an exclusionary snob, not think you have everything figured out and that those who don't think you/live like you/have what you have are somehow less than/other, that yours is the only true, real sort of smartness and only valid way of life, that your ideas and opinions are superior by virtue of your 'education'.

It's truly possible, and vastly preferable to what academia, and nearly all academics, pass off as an 'education'.

Snobbery doesn't make you smart or discerning or sophisticated. It makes you apathetic, insular and cruel...and leads to devastating systemic inequalities of all sorts, among them the many sex/race/class/ability barriers barring access to an 'education' of the sort you prize in the first place.

Dollar-store food for thought. ;)"

What has not been said, why I haven't bothered explaining things or seeking help, and all the nightmares that go along with that. Part 1.

2011-11-25T14:11:00.001-08:00

It's been over a year since I lost custody of Ryo.

I haven't talked about it much, here or anywhere. I haven't wanted to. I haven't been able to. I've resisted. I've refused. I've buried myself in other things.

The reasons for this are many:

1. It's none of your business.
2. I've been through quite enough bullying and bullshit surrounding my life and choices already. I cannot begin to articulate how tired I am of being attacked, ridiculed, mocked and shamed for everything and anything I do (and don't do), especially when it comes to my kid. I have a sovereign right to protect myself.
3. Talking about what happened in detail is unfathomably painful, triggering and without fail sends me into a shit/shame spiral that is extremely difficult to pull myself out of. I have to maintain, find work and build a life somehow, being eaten alive by guilt and sorrow won't help me or Ryo.
4. There's little point. What's done is done, it can't be changed, it can't be helped, there's nothing to be done about it and dwelling seems a bit too much like self-harm the majority of the time.
5. Complaining, while cathartic, in this case is useless. Moving forward is the only sane option.
5. The vast majority of people I've encountered in life, online and otherwise, simply do not have the capacity to 'get' why I've made the choices I have. Cultural conditioning, prejudice and -isms are all-pervasive in this area. I have neither the time, energy nor inclination to deal with wall after wall of unthinking titanium ignorance.
6. I've accepted the situation, to a goodly degree. It's actually worked out better than the alternative in a few respects.
7. Focusing on what I don't have prevents me from focusing on what I do, and keeps me from being fully engaged/loving/supportive and effective as a parent when Ryo is around. In other words, it's flat unproductive in terms of what parenting I am able to do.
8. I don't owe anyone explanations for my choices.
9. There are all manner of families out there. All different types of constellations, arrangements and structures. Mine is but one of many 'non-traditional' options.
10. Non-custodial parenting, for women, especially in my circumstances, is radical. It is, in part, a political choice, and I have made it as such.
11. Denial/disassociation is/are a fabulously effective coping mechanism, one(s) I have learned to utilize extremely well.

With those reasons (and others I'm probably not remembering right now) in mind, I would like to recount fully what happened here. For my own edification, and to shed light on why my life looks as it does now in a safe environment where I am protected from other's (immediate) scorn and ridicule.

There's a lot to say. I have trouble remembering the specifics of some of it (as with all other traumatic periods of my life, which, sadly, comprises the bulk of it). As always, I won't respond to any questions/thoughts/anything concerning what is written here. Read and be informed, read and be horrified, read and be saddened, read and be overjoyed, read and be disappointed, read and be validated, read and be smugly satisfied, read and be unsurprised, read and be unaffected, read and be some combination of all of the above or something else, read and be what you will. Your reaction, your responsibility.

---

Part 1: The Event Itself

On August 24th, 2009, Eddie attacked me verbally and physically aggressed me, in front of Ryo.

I had asked him to clean up the dogs' feces on the balcony, which he had continually promised but had failed to do. He was late to visit his parents for their anniversary. He told me to fuck off, called me a fucking bitch, said it was over, kept calling me names, screamed and threw cleaning supplies around the kitchen. I told him to stop. He refused. I told him to leave. He got nose-to-nose with me, wild-eyed and snarling, and told me to make him.

Ryo was sitting at the kitchen table, not 2 feet away.

(It was not the first time, nor the last. Prior to that day he had punched holes in walls, called me names, bent a frying pan over his head, thrown things, threatened to kill himself and threatened to punch me shortly after the accident that nearly took my life a few months prior. Since then he has screamed, broken things, bashed his head against the tile counter, told me he hates me, threatened me directly and indirectly with abandonment and homelessness)

Shaking and terrified, I told him that if he did not calm down, I would call the police. I picked up my son, carried him to his room and closed the door. I told him I was sorry for what he'd seen, that Eddie was doing something very wrong and that I would protect him. I don't think he understood what was going on, but he knew I was scared.

A few seconds later, Eddie banged on the door and demanded to know if I was going to call the police. I told him that I didn't know what was going on or why he was doing what he was doing, but that I didn't know him anymore, didn't want him around me or Ryo and that he needed to leave. I told him to go to his parents' house. He left.

I locked the door behind him (pointless as he had a key), told Ryo to play in his room, went to the bathroom, closed the door and cried. Ryo came in a few minutes later and wanted to play, maybe to comfort in his own babyish way. My mind raced as I tried to remain sane, to keep functional, to process what had happened and decide what to do next.

I had no job. No money. No car. No bank account. No friends. Nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Nothing.

There was no going back to the abusive hell that was my grandmother's house, where my father and mother would have free access to both of us.

There were no shelters within walking distance. I had no bike, no way of transporting Ryo safely on a bike. I had no money for a bus. My girlfriend at the time had only a motorcycle.

My relationship with my girlfriend was falling apart. Her condo was not in a liveable condition, nor would/could I accept an offer to stay there, knowing it would probably lead to homelessness in a few weeks/months.

I was in shock. I knew something horrible had happened, was afraid to the point of curling up into the fetal position and rocking, but everything around me was fuzzy. Ryo's voice from my hip sounded like it was reaching me through a long tunnel. The world around was muffled, muzzled. My heart was pounding in the foreground, my blood rushing in my ears.

All I could think about were the early years I'd spent hiding in closets and under stairways while my biological parents screamed, threw things, called each other foul names and hit each other. The later years I spent hiding under the covers in my room as my father screamed at my stepmother, called her foul names, threw things and hit her/choked her/threatened to kill her for wanting to leave...until she did, then he tried to kill himself. My grandfather threatening to put my head through a wall for 'talking back' to my father. The bloody nose my father gave me as an adult, the bruised ribs after kicking me. The times he'd slapped me, choked me, pushed me up against the wall and screamed in my face, threatened to slash my tires/take my car, destroyed my property, stolen my things, lied. The fading memories of living with my mother and stepfather, how they fought, the looming threat of his physicality, the lower half of my body covered in bruises after he beat me, my face, neck and shoulders bruised after my mother beat me, the endless, mind-fucking, soul-killing terror of growing up in an abusive warzone of violent, controlling men and broken, helpless women. How much of my life I'd spent trapped in it. How profoundly it had damaged me...to the point that I had never been able to stop seeking out those who would help me to recreate it.

I realized in that moment, crying and shaking in the bathroom with my confused, bewildered child tugging at my sweats, innocently insisting that I play with him, blissfully unaware of what had happened though unsettled by his mama's naked pain and fear, that abusive relationships were all I had ever known, and that it was very likely they would be all I would ever know.

I realized in that moment that no one was coming to save me, that no one would help, even before I ran crying to my computer to beg for assistance from those I still considered my 'friends' online. I knew instinctively. I knew from experience.

Ryo started to fuss and cry, sensing and mirroring my upset. I tried to comfort him, but I had no comfort to give. We were in serious fucking trouble and I did not know how to hide it.

I went through all of my non-options again.

I cried some more.

I paced around the apartment, blinded by terrorized tears, trying to keep Ryo occupied, knowing I had nowhere to go but that he could not stay. I knew I had to get him out. I knew the cycle would repeat itself, that numbness and cowardice and complacency would set in, that I would be pushed and manipulated into downplaying what had happened, into trying to forget/smooth over and that I had to act quickly.

I picked up my prepaid cell phone and checked my balance. 10 minutes left.

I called Juan first.

I can do revolution all by myself, thank you.

2011-11-22T15:00:00.001-08:00

Comment left at Echidne of the Snakes:

GLARING OMISSIONS:

No people of differing physical/mental ability or any of the many homeless for whom the park is a permanent residence were involved or invited to participate in the protests.

Would *also* like to make known that my submission to the 'We Are The 99%' Tumblr was ignored, while more than a few assholes posting specifically to mock those suffering/racist jerks blaming the economic downfall on 'illegals' were included.

My brief visit to Occupy Long Beach (CA) swiftly validated all of my inherent suspicions about this movement.

Mostly college-aged white people, with young white middle-class men running the show (and token men of color, all college-aged, all middle-class, jockeying for position) young white middle-class women (and token middle-class women of color...all young, all conventionally attractive, all straight-appearing/straight-acting, none outspokenly woman-centered, feminist or lesbian) following dutifully and hopefully behind, everybody else subordinate and/or totally invisible.

There were older people of all ages, races and classes. There were people of all sexual orientations. There were people with many different political affiliations. But they were not running the show, or involved with it's operation/direction in any way.

My best friend and me fell readily into this latter category: over 30, fat, broke, visibly lower middle-class (torn unfashionable clothes, old shoes, etc.) not affiliated with any shiny non-profit/activist organization, not 'somebodies' in the world of activism/intellectualism, me a white androgynous uncompromising lesbian feminist, him a mixed race effeminate man with no ties or loyalty to dude nation on any side of the political spectrum, etc.

We weren't welcomed to the encampment. We weren't acknowledged or invited to participate. We were totally ignored. It was obvious from minute one that we weren't the demographic the organizers were targeting, that the goals/objective did not center, or even include, us.

What drove the point home was when some white, older upper-class asshole started hassling people in the booth. After a few minutes he pounded his fist on the counter, threw some stuff and screamed, "You're all idiots!".

I stood up and screamed back, shattering the screen of invisibility. I told him to go f*ck himself, to go home to his money. He flipped me off and stormed down the street away from a few (male) protesters chanting pre-approved one-liners robotically at him. The women all kept their heads down.

Those that did acknowledge me (one or two young white middle-class women, a few white middle-class men of varying ages) did so primarily with shunning silence and dirty looks (though there was a smile or two), while a white male college student chased down the violent jerk who had just insulted and assaulted his friends (and of the very class Occupy purports to oppose/challenge) and everyone else there to try to 'reason' with him and win his support. Nobody said a word to me.

Afterwards, I sat in shamed silence with my friend. Invisible once more, now a pariah to boot. Nobody even made eye contact with either of us after that. We left a half hour later.

We will never go back.

If that's not indicative of who/what this movement truly represents (re: a bunch of white middle-class dudes and their enablers mad as hell about losing their privileges, seeking only to regain them, to re-establish the status quo to include themselves and join the 1%), I don't know what is.

I support the spirit of Occupy, the ideas, the potential. The actual movement itself has nothing to do with liberation. At least not for people outside the 'activist class' (re: young, white/white identified, middle-class/middle-class identified, college-educated, 'ambitious', 'somebody', etc).

Change of management indeed.

Where I'm at.

2011-11-21T19:59:00.001-08:00

Kindred/Rant

It would be great if there were people in the world that I could have meaningful, platonic relationships with.

It would be really great. I would like it.

People who understand without constantly having to be sat down and explained to that I do not exist to please, placate, enlighten, pacify, validate, civilize, parent, unconditionally/ uncritically support and agree with, follow around in a full-tilt conformist sprint, provide all-forgiving, all-nurturing caretaking of any sort, make their life prettier or easier or more interesting or nicer, impress them with socially-approved 'I'm somebody!' feats (like professional/artistic 'success'/validation, lots of money, lots of adoring 'Yes, you're somebody! Everybody says so!' social hierarchy vampires [also called 'friends'] a 'good job', overpriced, gentrified housing in a middle-to-upperclass-heteronormative conservatron-approved space and neighborhood, a 'nice car', expensive stuff, a thin body with clear skin that looks perpetually 18, hyperfemininity, social/political conservatism/enforced apolitical-ness, constant parroting of whatever the current mainstream nonsense opinion is, reworking it slightly to make it seem as though I've done some thinking and am serviceably intelligent but never threatening, 'witty' [re: snarky, unkind and viciously sarcastic] ironclad enforced vanilla sexual preferences/proclivities/monogamy, impenetrably foul conservative parenting 'values', etc).

Who understand that for there to be 'somebodies', there have to be 'nobodies'. That the elite define themselves and their worth solely in relation to those they shit on and consider subhuman. That without hierarchy there would be no winners and losers. No obscenely rich and desperately poor. No glittering, worshipped cliques and erased, despised outsiders. No legions of cold, starving, ruined people staring longingly into the climate-controlled circle of dead-hearted, disastrous privilege.

Who get that hierarchy is the root of all suffering. The source of all pain, anguish and ugliness. That if we want to change that, we must do away with the concept of hierarchy completely. There can be none. Of any kind. Ever.

Who are aware that the second we start valuing/prizing certain people's lives/experience over others, we end up here. In the desert of ignorant apathy, always looking over our shoulder for the blade we know is going to pierce our backs at any second. The blade we all helped fashion and keep sharp by refusing to acknowledge the blood on our own hands.

Who know that it has to fucking stop, or we will run blindly rabidly foaming at the mouth/attacking each other in these vicious circles/cycles until they kill every last one of us.

Who fucking get it, who are not bought and paid for, who are not slaves to their families, their friends, their religion, their job, the television, the internet, pop culture, every motherfucking opinion and viewpoint except their own. Who are authentically themselves. Who know who they are, who they want to be, who they don't want to be. Who care. Who love. Who create. Who take in. Who see.

Tangentially related and tiresome: some time ago I encountered a person I used to call a friend in a public space (volleyball tournament I was invited to play in). I had previously made it very, very clear that she was a member of a group I wished to have no further dealings with, else they risked a super-scary social spectacle, which is of course the ultimate paralyzing fear of all middle-class white people (myself included).

Upon seeing me she immediately approached, stormed even, and threw her arms around me, in full view of the rest of the group, Eddie and Ryo.

I was so shocked that I didn't react at first. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't believe that this person, who had so often and for so long professed her care and support for me, would do such a thing with full knowledge of my boundaries. She was the last person I expected to do so.

Maybe she thought she was being kind, maybe she genuinely wanted to make a gesture of goodwill but was utterly incapable of doing so in a way that didn't bludgeon my autonomy to bits in the process. It's possible that she was that clueless and unaware.

But I doubt it. Storming someone as deliberately and openly as she did cravenly belies a rather rottenly high level of passive-aggressive, privileged entitlement. The kind that subterraneanly (and not so) asserts that herself and her actions are not in question, oh no. She is a 'good person' who 'stayed out of it'[ie tried to play both sides, pretended nothing bad was happening, silently condoned what was happening and refused to challenge the social structure that caused it to happen] and dammit, she's going to PROVE IT BY 'AFFECTIONATELY' MAULING ME IN FRONT OF THOSE WHO WOULD, HAVE, AND CONTINUE TO USE MY EVERY BREATH AS ARTILLERY AGAINST ME, AND WHO WOULD NOT HESITATE TO DO SO IN FRONT OF MY KID HAD I RESISTED.

So I hugged her back, dutifully, as required by social norms and in an effort to spare myself, Ryo and Eddie the stress and difficulty of being forced to spend the rest of the day choking to death in a thick cloud of the bullshit that most certainly would have billowed had I done what I wanted to do, which would've been something like throw her off decisively, push her away, and scream something largely unintelligable about her having no right, no right at all to pretend to be my friend when she had disappeared from my life/pretended I didn't exist during the hardest 7 years of it, in addition to what a complete fucking asshole she was for putting me on the spot like that in front of my kid, my friend and an entire group of people who have joyously masturbated to my struggles, spread noxious lies and rumors and encouraged others to follow suit in a vain, transparent effort to make herself feel better about it.

Since I was backed into a corner that day and not able to defend myself then, I will do so now.

Fuck you, Brandi. You are no friend of mine. Go exercise your sad guilt demons/massage your ego someplace else. If you touch or approach me in public again, I hope I will be in a place to tell you where to stick it, which I deeply regret not doing the first time (though of course in a way that will not encourage anti-feminist, misogynistic backwards horseshit about women not being able to get along. I'm not angry with you because you're a woman. This isn't a fucking catfight. You betrayed and abandoned me. You lied about caring about me, disrespected my wish to have no further contact and flagrantly violated my boundaries...in front of the people who caused the whole mess in the first place. I won't stand for that. I won't pretend it's okay or that it didn't happen. Fuck off.)

Later that same day, during warm-ups for a match, the self-appointed leader of said group, Todd, said hi to me. A loaded verbal violation/assault neatly packaged into a single word. Imminently deniable, seemingly innocuous to the untrained ear unaware of the history/circumstance behind it, wielded for the express purpose of terrorizing/destabilizing me. Of reminding me, as if I needed reminding, that he was king and that he and his minions would bend me over whenever they damn well felt like it, my personhood and expectations of basic human respect be damned. For sport. For pleasure. Just because they fucking could.

Again, I froze...though I was not surprised. I asked him if I'd heard him right. The most hideously arrogant/brutish smile spread across his face as he said with poisonous pride that I had. Ugliest fucking thing I have witnessed in recent memory.

For a split nanosecond I considered walking away from the match, away from the tournament in a rage of protest. But I wanted to play. The team I was subbing for was doing well, I was playing fairly well and though I was paying for it physically and would pay even more so in the days to come, I wanted to finish out the day.

That, and I didn't want to be chased out by his mob's bullying crap. By this jackass's refusal to respect and honor my boundaries.

It wasn't brave or game-changing or terribly defiant, but "How odd" was all I could muster. I was surrounded on all sides by vocal and tacit supporters of this person and his/his groups sadist social campaign against me. There was no space to breathe, no room to maneuver and for fuck's fucking sake, I just wanted to play volleyball that day and to for once, for motherfucking ONCE, be the left the fuck alone.

Too much to ask, apparently.

Since I was backed into a corner that day and not able to defend myself then, I will do so now.

Fuck you, Todd. That you are able and encouraged to pounce on me at every fucking opportunity in whatever pseudo-aggressive/passive aggressive manner suits you does not make you cool or brave or justified. I don't know what motivates this seemingly bottomless need to humiliate me, or how you are able to reconcile your taking such pleasure in hurting someone who is already fully shattered, and what's more, unable to defend herself from your assaults with being a decent person. Doing so makes you evil, stupid, rat-brained and one of the most intolerable assholes I've ever had the displeasure of knowing. Hope I'm able to disabuse you of your many delusions in person sometime in the future.

This all must seem pretty ridiculous to people on the outside looking in. It actually is pretty ridiculous, in a way. It's a group of people who show up and play a silly sport. All the same people on the same teams at the same locations. Year after year after year. People get jobs, get married and have kids, most ascend to the middle-to-upper-middle class, but the time spent between gym walls is frozen time. Nothing changes, except a new, usually younger face here and there. The hierarchy maintains itself at all costs, and those who challenge or step out of line it are publicly flogged/shamed, each and every time. In ways subtle and overt. It is a never-ending, petty, juvenile cycle of gradeschool mafia garbage.

And for more than 15 years, it was my entire world. I lived and died by court performance and tournament wins, by pats on the head and ass by the ruling penile elite/their girl-dolls. I longed for acceptance/admittance into the upper echelons, I wanted to Be Like Them...because that place and those people were all I knew and I simply didn't know any better.

My life and worldview, my passions and dreams, my focus were/was that limited, that pathetic, that foolish then.

Even though I've lived a hundred lifetimes since leaving that community, even though I've learned about/made space for myself in the infinitely larger/wider world outside of it, even though I've changed fundamentally/grown as a person, sexually, socially and politically and can see clearly the life-wasting, mind-sucking folly in remaining so long a part of such a useless, fucked-up, adolescent social bubble, I am still not immune to the psychological weaponry used to torment/silence me in those circles.

It, and they, are still capable of rendering me stutteringly speechless, pavlovian, submissive and silenced on cue. To their broadcasted delight.

Which is what makes them 'winners' and me a 'loser'.

Which should be manifestly insane, but in a social system that encourages and rewards this behavior, especially in such a crystalline/distilled form, makes perfect sense.

Which isn't ridiculous at all, but extremely unsettling and indicative of some incredibly frightening shit.

Sex/Poly/Related

On the alt/kink scale I'm somewhere on the vanilla-flavored/swirly side. I like a bit of spanking, choking, biting, verbal abuse and the like. I'm not averse to group sex and though I define as lesbian, not totally unwilling to consider male participation.

Weapons, gear, contraptions and (hardcore) role-playing don't appeal to me, nor do swinging-style arrangements or those not based on careful choices and mindful, informed, consistent conversation and some level of emotional involvement.

On the 'acceptable' social, neutral, bloodless face of it, the relationship model I most gravitate towards is expanded, family-style, somewhat asexual polyamory, though I currently have little interest in sharing my home with more than two other adults, if that.

What I mean by 'asexual polyamory' is that sex and sexytimes, sexual relationship would not be the basis, the glue holding together any poly household I would be interested in being a part of. There would be sex between certain members (perhaps different members over time, perhaps no members at certain times), there would be romantic friendship (defined by me as loving, deeply caring, sentiently [re: not reactive, not obligatory, not mindless, not enforced] loyal and physically affectionate platonic relationship), there would be shared childcare/household duties and there would be riotously emotionally intelligent and respectful conversation and interaction, family holidays and outings, a commitment contract, collective financial/social strategies/parenting objectives, etc. There would always be the possibility, always be willingness to expand the grouping to include others in terms of living space and shared daily life, no closed doors, but always an extremely careful evaluation of what potentials could/would bring to the family before inclusion.

More casual loverships would be the business of the individual engaging in them, to be discussed in detail as necessary/in proportion to their effect on the individual/group dynamic. I'm comfortable with an arrangement that encourages all parties to have bits of their romantic/otherwise life that do not directly revolve around the grouping as that feels freer/less smothering/more natural and sane to me.

There would be a mutually-agreed-upon system for addressing grievances and clashes, there would be an exit path in case of irreconcilable difference/disagreement, there would be assigned personal, private space for all members to recharge/regroup alone, there would be allowances for individual personalities/preferences in terms of engagement.

My relationship ideal/model is not one I've yet seen modeled or lived just yet. I haven't looked into poly writings/existing communities/ideas that deeply. I'm sure somebody's doing it. I'd like to observe the play-by-play for a bit, for a good long bit, before I decide to build a chosen family of my own. I'd like to get some counseling and do some more thinking and writing on the subject beforehand as well.

I am interested in spending time in an all-female, all-lesbian household, but will likely never be able to structure my own family around an all-female dynamic, as Eddie will play an important role in Ryo's life for many years to come, and as such men, him, are essentially permanent part of my life/family.

(To say nothing of the fact that certain lesbians, lesbian feminists in particular, have an issue with living with/associating with those of us who have chosen to parent our male children, or indeed who have children at all. I can't really blame them, but am really disheartened by their behavior all the same. Talk about shooting the fucking messenger)

I am attracted to men, but I choose not to act on it at this stage in my development. I choose to be sexual and to partner with women romantically/otherwise, though have no current desire to date or have sex.

I understand that my attraction to men stems primarily from a need to be accepted, validated and loved by a father figure...in addition to turning tables and giving daddy his comeuppance. I understand that I have traditionally 'gotten along better with men' mostly because most of the men I've been 'friends' with have either wanted to fuck me outright or have struggled with an unwanted/inexplicable/unacknowledged desire to fuck me.

Friendship with men at this point will have to mean friendship with POLITICAL queer/gay/asexual/otherwise-outside-the-mainstream men. No more clueless straight men with secret unrequited crushes, no more curious academics wanting to play social/sexual/pity science experiments with the weird girl, no more politically apathetic, mainstream, small-minded, money-grubbing wannabe socialite gay males, no more suffocating social groupings headed by shithead dudes that permit my presence at the absolute requirement of my total silence and acquiescence to strict pecking orders.

I choose celibacy at this point in my life because I am damaged. Because I am tired. Because I have been through hell the past several years and need most of my energy to save myself, pick up whatever pieces are worth saving and move forward somehow, to what and where I'm not exactly sure.

The idea of sex with another person at this point freaks me right the fuck out. I'm a closed book, in protective mode, closed off, shut down, a dry river bed. I have nothing to offer and don't want what others are selling. Not right now.

I choose celibacy at this point in my life because I would rather spend my time sleeping, eating, drawing, masturbating, reading, writing, walking, dreaming, forging a solid, enduring internal structure and relationship with ME than seeking romantic attachments with others who are not likely to add anything to my struggle for more freedom, more self-actualization, more happiness, more constructive challenges, more depth, more color. I would rather work on/focus on me and my family. I believe that that is a wiser and more beneficial course of action at the present time.

Not sure how long I'll walk this road. Probably a few years. I'll allow for the possibility of meeting someone(s) interesting along the way, though fucking/partnering is never going to be as simple as 'ooh, this person's attractive and interesting, I'm IN' ever again.

When I masturbate, I think of men, mostly. I'm still there in terms of arousal. Men are pretty much all I know sexually, though I have had experiences/intense fantasies about women at certain times. I am attracted to women. I'm not sure what a sexual relationship with a woman is going to look like/be like for me as I'm not sure where I 'fit' in that sort of dynamic (top, bottom, femme, butch, whatever) and why I need to 'fit', whether my only choice will be to try to 'fit', and so on.

(My relationships with Amber and Tonia were anomalies, I've found. Most women who identify or who have identified as lesbian, at least in my general vicinity are not open to polyamory, children, late bloomers, political radicalness or relationships with women who have lived predominately heterosexual lives, and often for good reasons. Greatly and quite discouragingly limits my options, however)

I'm neither butch nor femme. Top nor bottom. Kinky nor vanilla. Flirting with other women, the prospect of dating them is mysterious, new, uncharted, a bit intimidating. I'm an outsider. I'm a newb. I don't know where to start. I'm not a member of queer community, never have been and what I've seen of it looks to be as insular and hierarchy-ridden as any other, in ways I can't even fully understand. I can't go back to that, in any form or for any reason.

Those on the margins of queer community, those who may be most like me/most compatible with me are extremely underrepresented. Invisible. I can't find them, and I don't know where to look.

Are there others, other lesbians like me, living underneath and around labels, disloyal to group cohesion/conformity, living and loving and fucking and partnering on the fringes of queer community, interested in pursuing the type of relationships I am?

I haven't seen evidence of it/them yet. I see a lot of binaries, a lot of cliques and a lot of heteronormativity/monogamy, close-knit social packs, I've experienced many of the same issues plus new ones (confluence of internalized misogyny/socialized passivity/indirectness/manipulative dishonesty, less incentive to be courageous and to break new ground, less willingness to accept possibility of difficulties, etc). What I've seen hasn't been encouraging.

But perhaps I've been looking in the wrong places, making assumptions. Not seeing things clearly. There are still so many nuances I don't fully grasp, so many things that don't yet make sense to me.

There's always that possibility.

Art

I am drawing as often as I can. I have a character, an avatar. I'm starting a comic blog with Eddie. My first three frames for Idiom have been completed, though I've lost my login credentials and can't currently post them. I'm trying to encourage Ryo to draw. I want to incorporate/translate drawing/art into making a living, somehow. I don't want to conform. I have no interest in artistic convention, or any of the cliques or elite there, the power plays, the grabs for validation/status. I don't want to be thought of as a 'great artist'. I don't want to do fine art.

I like street art. I'm drawn to the renegades and those creating on the margins, against the flow, in flagrant violation of artistic (and in the case of street art, legal) rules.

I've fallen in love with webcomics. I love surreal/abstract/non-linear comics. Like scribbling your life story in code, in crayon on a receipt behind a dumpster, taped to the inside of a bottle. Not intended for mass consumption/even viewing, purposefully distorted, campy, carnival-mirror imagery. Nonsensical, fantastical, incomprehensible.

I've been communicating with a working artist I met on OKcupid. She's a conventionally talented, classically trained illustrator. She draws warrior goddesses, dragons with scarves, goth-inspired fine art pieces and sketches in a very lifelike, realistic manner. She has a degree in 3D modeling. Her art would be considered 'good' or even 'great' by most.

She wanted to see my work, so I sent her a doodle I made in Paintbrush. Her response was the textual equivalent of an uncomfortable foot-shift and a 'gee, that's nice', complete with an abrupt subject change.

I was very pleased with this. :)

I told her that that's what I want my art to be, the response I want it to invoke. I WANT most people to think it's childish garbage and to ignore it, to be embarrassed for me and to regret asking to see my stuff. To think I'm deluded and foolish for pursuing art in the face of my obvious lack of ability.

Yes, that is *exactly* the place and space I want to occupy.

Why?

Because I have a sneaking suspicion that the rare few who will be drawn to what I do in spite of that are the kindred I have been seeking my whole life. My co-conspirators. My radical sistren/brethren. My people.

And if not, scribbling in crayon on receipts in dumpster-bottles is just a shit-lot of fun anyway. :)

End

Well, now I've done it.

2011-11-14T20:34:00.001-08:00

Managed to get my assignment ended by the company I was temping for due to excessive absences.

I'm feeling really shitty, depressed, overwhelmed, exhausted, hopeless and like a fucking fool.

This is a hard lesson I'm long-overdue to learn:

My picking habit, my mood swings, my disassociation, my insomnia and my denial surrounding my learning/concentration issues are totally out of control, all related, and must be addressed. I cannot put this off any longer.

I liked this job. Really. Loved it, even. I loved the work, loved the location, loved my supervisor and loved my co-workers.

This one's on me. I let my shit get the better of me even under the best of circumstances.

Fuck.

FUCK.

I'm scared. I'm 33 years old. I've never kept a decently-paying job longer than a year. This is the absolute worst time, both in my life and in terms of what's happening in the world, to falter. There's got to be a way out of this endless loop of self-destructiveness. There's just got to be.

Right?

Eddie's been great, both loving and supportive as I wipe the tears and dust away, readying myself for the next attempt.

But how many will there be?

How many times will I go through/put myself through this?

Will I ever find another position that I enjoy as much?

Am I destined to answer phones/shuffle piles of paper for the rest of my days?

...

In lighter news, I've started drawing again. I like the results. I'm enjoying the process.

Something about pie and cake.

So there's that.

...

Might as well babble about lesbianism/celibacy, since I'm here.

I am attracted to women. I want to partner with women. I am a lesbian. But, I am very much less than ready to date, and don't have much interest in doing so at the moment. Hence, I am celibate.

There's all this emphasis on sex and romance and partnering (ahem), and not enough on character-building, personal enrichment/self-actualization. How can one be a good partner if one isn't a well-rounded, fully fleshed out person first (ahem)?

Why do partnerships need to be built around sex, anyway? Fun as it is (or can be), if there's one thing I've learned, great sex does NOT a great relationship make. Not even close.

What would the world be like if partnerships were based primarily on companionship? Of the real sort, the full sort, the big, scary, open, oozing, ugly sort, not the schmaltzy stuff we watch/read about? I don't think that's the state of things now.

What I've seen of 'happy relationships', at least the heterosexual ones, leads me to believe that most of them are built on a steaming, stinking mountain of garbage that gets bigger and fouler as time goes on. Stuff gets thrown down the trap door, ignored, shut away, forgotten or at least tried to be.

Romantic love, passion, lust, feeling 'in love'...all fantastic, but ultimately, all fleeting. Not what long-lasting relationships are built of/on. Recipe for a short, hot, memorable time, yes. Utterly insubstantial in the long run.

I have a better relationship with Eddie now than I ever did when we were still a 'couple', still having sex. I enjoy it, us, 'we' immensely more. We...communicate now. Which means we use our words when we are angry or scared or irritated or just having a fuck-all of a day. We still fight, of course. But we talk about it. The way we feel, how we may have arrived at our feelings, how to move forward, what to do better next time, what to try to avoid, compromise, strategies...it's a bit of a new thing. To say that I'm not quite accustomed to it would be an enormous understatement.

I'm accustomed to fire and ice. Fucking and fighting. Up and down, on and off, back and forth. Start and stop.

This...equilibrium we've discovered is rather unnerving, if healthier. Healthy, unnerving and alien. The house is still-quiet like the surface of a small pond. Not a pregnant quiet. Not a foreboding one. There are ripples, splashes, waves of varying sizes, but no catastrophic tsunami, not like before. There isn't the system or the substance to sustain one.

...

I miss Ryo. All the time. It was him I was thinking about as I picked and picked and picked away time in the bathroom at work today...what I would say to him when got old enough to ask me why things have turned out the way they have.

So far, this is all I've got:

"I love you, sweetheart. More than you will ever know. I'm sorry I wasn't able to be a bigger part of your life. I wanted to be. Things happened. Mistakes were made. The situation got so bad at one point that I thought it would be better for both of us if I let your father raise you primarily. It seemed a better option than others available to me at the time. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I've always loved you, I always will, I'll continue to be here for you in whatever way I can and I'm sorry."

I am not looking forward to that conversation. To the bewildered, pained expression on his face, the tears streaming down and that terrifying sense of failure and inconsolable loss. Of cycles repeated and wounds too deep to heal.

There have been glimpses of that conversation cresting on the horizon the past couple of months...the awareness that we are being kept from each other, the not understanding why. The questions. He's cried. I've cried. We've cried together.

It's awful. It's worse. It's unbearable to hear my baby cry and ask me why we can't be together. His sadness is intolerable. Searing regrets.

He's brave. He's strong. He wipes his eyes, smiles and keeps his head up, keeps moving even though I know he's confused and afraid. He tells me he'll be good in school, be good for his father, stepmother, stepbrother and stepsister and do his best. Sometimes I think he tells me like he hopes it will change things, like if he behaves well enough he'll be allowed to stay. Like he's done something wrong, that it's his fault we can't see each other. Agony.

He tells me he 'loves me every day'. I tell him I love him back. Every day.

I'm brave. I try to be strong. I try not break down, though the tears do break through on occasion. I try not to let on how much it hurts to take him back, to let him go, to watch him walk away to the life he is living without me. The life I know so little about, am not permitted to see and he is not yet capable of sharing.

He seems happy much of the time. Content. I know his father and stepmother and stepsister and stepbrother love him. I know he loves them, that he likes school, has fun and is fed, cleaned and cared for.

But I didn't get to be there on his first day of school. I've never met his teachers. I have no idea who watched and cared for him during the day for the past two years, or really much of what goes on in the house he lives in. I don't know who his friends are, what his favorite bedtime story is, what television shows he watches or how he spends most of his time.

I'm loving and parenting him in the shadows behind the stadium of his world. I'm not even on the sidelines anymore.

I feel cheated. Something precious has been stolen. It can never be reclaimed.

I will have much to answer for in the coming years. I just hope the answers given won't add to the pain of having to ask.

This must be what hell feels like.

...

I won't end there. I want to tell you that I'm okay. I've grown enough/made enough peace with how things have turned out/who I am that I can cry and writhe and bleat and feel like an empty, worthless husk and still smile. Still giggle. Still love waking up to the sunshine, hearing the rain, playing with the dogs, dancing in my room, drawing on the couch, watching movies with my tiny sometimes-family, reveling in my stolen pleasures/secret joys when they're available.

This is a difficult path, but I can't help but feel I'm here because I need to be. I don't believe in fate. But I do believe we often steer ourselves towards things that for whatever reason, in some primal, essential way, we need.

I must need this, then. This must be useful and worthwhile, somehow. I'm sure of it. I'm here. I've selected against and away from security, safety, conformity and convention so consistently that it must be important for me to do so in some way.

I'm sitting here on this found couch in this overpriced apartment, jobless, friendless, childless, sick and alone because for the moment, it's necessary. The earth is still solid beneath my feet, the atmosphere still holds the air in and tomorrow I will rise up to live and walk and eat and laugh and love and cry and fail and succeed tinily and parent fragmentedly and orgasm mightily and create wildly and flail and fail infamously and on and on and over and over and over all the days of my life until it's finally good and done.

However long I live, whatever work I do/don't do, wherever I go, whomever I meet, whomever I love, whomever I lose, whatever awaits, whatever befalls, I will always have me. I will always have the self-made, self-sustained core that has carried me through heartbreak, through self-hatred, through blood and tooth and mobility loss, through childbirth, through child loss, through my own childhood thick with thieves and ghosts and landmines, betrayal and spine-shattering, brain-dulling evil, through rejection and abandonment, through abuse and neglect, through humiliation and the sting of a thousand failures and missed opportunities, through crippling indecision, paralyzing depression, suffocating anxiety and the nightmares and the cowardice and the laziness and the apathy and the shame and the fear and the ever-present pain.

I will always be Noel, in spite of it all. I will always have me, no matter what else is taken or lost.

Strangely comforting thought.

Letter to an old lover/friend

2011-11-08T00:05:00.001-08:00

(Didn't end up going through. Just as well.)

D -

(This got long, my apologies. I know I'm running the substantial risk of this falling on deaf ears, but it's important enough to me that I'm willing to run my mouth anyway ;))

I'm not sure if we ever had what could properly be called a real friendship, but out of respect for the hope that we did (and/or perhaps will in the future) if nothing else, I ask you to think very critically about the information/ideas you were presented with at the conference you mentioned attending on your wall. I've heard a thing or two about it/those who spoke and hearing that you went gave me cause to worry.

Under the guise of business advice/self-help, the already-insidiously-culturally-ingrained notion that people can be 'motivated' out of their poor business/life circumstances is being propagated. The idea that hard work trumps all, can fix any and all manner of social/political/personal ills is incredibly problematic, as the playing field is far, far from level.

It may not be a direct objective of the conference, this faith-in-the-nonexistent-free-market, corporations-as-people, everybody's-equal-and-has-an-equal-chance-at-success and big-business-is-a-benevolent-jobs-creator/societal-benefactor nonsense, it may be articulated in a slightly different way, but it's definitely implied (and those who spoke there have gone on record saying as much, and worse, on numerous occasions).

I'm here to tell you, living proof even, that things simply do not work that way. The playing field is not level. Access is denied to many. Corporations are neither people nor interested in protecting the health, well-being or rights of people. There are a multitude of barriers in place preventing many from even surviving, let alone 'succeeding'. Success is not and should not be defined as the ability to make a lot of money and buy a lot of stuff. The insistence that it be so is profoundly destructive to the human mind and heart; breeding generations of sociopathic ignorants who's primary directives are wealth and status, no matter what the cost.

Speaking as someone who's been damaged significantly, and who's life continues to be plagued by the consequences of public/social policy being written/influenced by people who hold the same worldview as these speakers, I can tell you from experience that in listening to them you've only received one very small, limited side of the story...from the perspective of what I like to call The Dumb Fucking Luck Club.

(Of which your parents, your friends and pretty much everybody you know is almost certainly a member in one way or another, at least from my/a lot of other people's perspective)

Privileges like being born white, being born male, being born able-bodied, being born into a non-abusive middle-class family with the financial/social resources/desire to help you, being heterosexual, etc. have shielded/protected you and many others like you from the many insults/disadvantages/horrors the rest of us endure for lack thereof, to the extent where it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that those who do not share your good fortune are somehow flawed, broken, or to blame for their misery...that if only they were 'motivated', they, too, could 'succeed'.

And worst, that if they fail to 'succeed', they deserve to die...or at the very least be despised and live in a perpetual state of abject poverty and despair.

It's a lie, D. Don't believe it. Don't heed the call of apathy and indifference to the people living without the benefit of unearned advantages, who's luck, if they ever had any to begin with, probably ran out long ago. Who have nobody and nothing to turn to. Who desperately need the help, understanding and kindness of the more fortunate. Who deserve life, happiness and comfort as much as any human being. Bootstraps (or pulling yourself up by them) don't feed the hungry, care for the very young, very sick and very elderly, don't heal the mental, emotional, psychological and physical wounds caused, worsened and made terminal *every single day* by the ugly institutionalized prejudice/bigotry of this society and culture.

Instead, they, and the insistence that people rely on them/individual 'solutions' instead of focusing on eradicating hierarchy/addressing racism, misogyny, classism, looksism, ableism, ageism, fatphobia, homophobia, transphobia and the like, those institutional biases that got us in this mess in the first place, in fact *create* suffering on a massive, MASSIVE scale.

Are you aware of the Occupy Wall Street/99% movement? If not, you may want to do a bit of research on it (though I highly recommend avoiding mainstream media outlets as they're owned by the very interests the protests were created to challenge and you're unlikely to receive accurate information from them). It's arisen as a result of large-scale, social spectrum-wide social outrage/unrest as a direct result of people like your conference speakers, impossibly rich men, with more than they could ever need, acquired primarily by unearned advantage/luck, telling those with dollar signs in their eyes, a hollow sound in their hearts and a bit of privilege of their own (and some that are far less lucky/privileged but who desperately want to be let into the club) that if they just do what they did, if they just try hard enough and screw enough people over, they can make enough money to ignore the screams of the rest of the populace, too.

I can tell you that that strategy doesn't work.

I can also tell you that the reason people like this cling so damn hard to their 'success' and money and stuff, spend so much time degrading others who haven't been as fortunate and so diligently avoid meaningful contact with those who don't have what they do is because they know, even if they don't admit it, that once lost, no amount of 'motivation' or 'inspiration' or 'hard work' will get them back their fortunes.

They can't face that, or the people that live in their arctic shadows every day. It fucking terrifies them.

As well it should.

(Oh, they hear the screams, alright...they just keep building walls of money in hopes that they'll eventually be drowned out...which causes more suffering/louder screams, so they keep building walls of money...)

Because it (bootstraps, hard work, 'personal responsibility') never got them rich in the first place. They, those speakers and all who belong to their class/caste, know this well. They sell the lie of 'personal responsibility' and bootstraps and consumeristic individualism to make themselves even more obscenely rich in an ever-vain attempt to further shield themselves from ever having to live the way most people do...who live (and die) that way because of men like them and their callous, reactionary avarice.

Because if you're born too dark-skinned, too poor, female, disabled, are gay or trans, outspokenly progressive/radical, ask too many questions/otherwise are not in with the rich/privileged kids, if you're mentally ill/damaged, if you're fat or too old, if you fall, if you fuck up, if you get sick or have a bad stroke of luck or seven, if you drop out of favor with the ruling class/their enablers, there is.no.going.back. You're done. You will struggle to survive for the rest of your days, no matter how much effort you put into attempting to 'better' yourself.

(I know this better than you could imagine)

Telling the impoverished, the insane, the sick/disabled, the homeless, the thoroughly ruined/damaged to 'suck it up' and 'try harder' is not only ineffective/pointless/impossible, it's cruel. It's unconscionable. It's sick. It's despicable. It's wrong. Blaming the unfortunate for their suffering, suffering caused in large part by the greed and cruelty of the most fortunate, is the refuge of selfish, cold-hearted, money-grubbing sycophants who will look for any excuse to exempt themselves from having to give a crap about anybody but themselves/their own bottom line.

Social darwinism, which is exactly the disease people like these speakers spread around for their own profit, is not cool or smart or innovative. It's evil, stupid and murderously counterproductive. It *creates* the myriad social and political issues we are currently dealing with as a country, culture and species. It threatens our very survival, and it will be our collective demise if we do not find a way to rise above it.

In short, understand that you are in the position you are in because you are damn lucky. Not special. Not more hardworking or deserving than anyone else. Just lucky. You didn't earn your privileges or the comfort you enjoy now. It was handed to you on a silver platter of dumb.fucking.luck.

And nobody else should have to suffer because of that (and believe me...many, many people do). People have intrinsic value. All people. All ages, all sizes, all races, all abilities, all classes, all genders, all belief systems, everyone. Everybody deserves healthy food, clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, a roof over their heads, comfortable clothing and shoes, the right to live and love freely. Not just the privileged, white, male, xtian, straight, cisgendered, able-bodied/able-minded, rich, lucky few.

Not realistic? In the year 2011, everyone having what they freaking need isn't realistic? This is the richest country in the fucking world. We have mad technological and scientific capabilities, which instead of being directed towards wasteful consumption/profit *could*, instead, be used to improve the quality of life for EVERYONE, not just those at the top.

We have enough resources to take care of everyone, *absolutely everyone*, right now, full stop. Permanently (not many people are aware of this, but it's true). They are simply concentrated at the top. They are being hoarded by those who need them the least. People are starving to death, dying of preventable illnesses, living on the streets and otherwise existing in a state of needless agony in this country, *right now*, because 1% of the world's population *refuses to share* what should, and easily could, belong to and be shared by everyone.

f that's not disgusting, if that's not wrong, if that's not cause to wake up, rise up, take action and change things, I don't know what is.

Don't become another mindless middle-class conservatron, D. Don't listen to those assholes. Don't let your heart die. The world is full of so many hollowed-out apathetics already...which is why so many are suffering, starving and dying every day. My family included.

It doesn't have to be this way. If we can turn towards each other instead of away, value people and relationships instead of money and stuff, address the real issues and learn to actually live and behave like the rational, intelligent, evolved creatures we only pretend we are now, we can stop this. We can make things better. Not perfect. Never perfect. But so much better. For all of us.

Rise above the petty urge to turn your back on others. Open your heart. Open your eyes. See what is happening around you. Be a part of the shift to a saner, more just society.

If for no other reason than to never have to ignore the screaming again.

I've learned that that, all by itself, is reason enough.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Noel.

P.S.

Please go to this site and read some of the stories posted. It'll break your fucking heart; and hopefully underline much of what I've said here.

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

Fired. FINALLY.

2011-10-04T17:09:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to get shit-canned for MONTHS now.

Phew.

*So* glad that's over.

A youngwhiteblonde woman in her early 20s who lives in a 4 bedroom house with her mother will now (wo)man my former helm (poor kid), whilst I get on with the business of finding something (ANYTHING) better.

Know what I've learned to love?

The Face of Fired. The look of projected and fearful guilt and shame your coworkers shine like a projector-beacon on your visage the moment everybody else learns of your imminent axing (as if you didn't already know. You *always* know).

It's BEAUTIFUL, hilariously obvious and amusingly awkward (WHY DO PEOPLE NOT THINK THOSE ABOUT TO GET FIRED KNOW PERFECTLY DAMN WELL THEY ARE ABOUT TO GET FIRED? WHY DOES EVERYBODY ACT LIKE IMPENDING FIRING IS JUST LIKE SOMEBODY EXPLODING AND SMEARING THEM WITH BITS AND PIECES OF THEIR BLOODY CORPSE? WHY DO OTHERWISE REASONABLY MATURE ADULTS SHRIVEL INTO FRIGHTENED, SNIVELING CHILDREN THE MOMENT THE WORD 'FIRED' IS SPOKEN IN THE WORKPLACE?).

(Don't bother. I know the answer[s]. There are many.)

Dear former co-wives of The Ultimate Abusive Asshole Boss From Hell:

You pulled nothing over on me. I knew very well which of you were working overtime to get me ousted. I knew very well what the requirements were to appease you and keep my precious job. I just didn't care. Nothing in the world, not even my own safety and security, was worth staying. Not the prettyshiny big building, not the crappy cafeteria, not the even crappier kitchen with the falling-off cabinet doors, cracked countertop and filthy floor and free peanut butter and crackers, not the nasty coffee, not the scary elevators that roared down the shafts and sounded like they were about to crash at any second (EVERY.TIME.YOU.RODE.THEM), not the shitty and nearly worthless 'insurance' offered by a man who's net worth numbers in the multiple millions of dollars, who could easily afford to offer dental and vision coverage (among other things), but chooses instead to save a measly buck or two at his employees' expense, not the shitastic work I was never trained to do, was not hired to do and garnered me exactly ZERO new/marketable skills, not the promise of bonuses or a paltry raise sometime in the next decade, not The Monster's all-important-Law Reviewed-famous approval, not your mean, cold, shit-for-brains 'acceptance' into the 'happily-submissive-routinely-emotionally-abused-to-the-point-of-soul-death' hollowed-out zombie club.

See, I don't appreciate being told by The Master's assistant to wear adult diapers and sit in my own shit rather than leave my desk to deal with my bowel issues. I don't take kindly to having my painstaking, self-taught work called 'bullshit', thrown across the desk like trash, in addition to being lied to about my job priorities in front of the entire rest of the company because it pleases The King to humiliate me. I can't tolerate multi-millionares storming into their high-rise offices and threatening to close down the entire firm and throw their hard-working, broke-ass employees out into the street because they've just bought a hundred companies and can't decide what to do with their obscene amounts of money, privilege and time. I'm not willing to deal with a person who fires several people over the course of a few months pretty much because he fucken feels like it, or who threatens to fire people for disagreeing with him or displeasing him in any way. I despise and will not work for 'powerful' men who call women bitches. Who tell their newly-hired and fragile young assistants to 'pull their heads out of their asses' for needing help with something. Who call their employees stupid (among other things). Who's right-hand dickwipe truly outdid herself when, upon hearing of some rather serious personal issues I was having that were affecting my work, told me to 'shape up or *runs finger along neck to simulate beheading*'.

But then, I'm weird like that. I have pride. I have dignity. I have a functional conscience, a system of ethics and a still-beating heart. I'm not capable of lowering my head, averting my eyes and pretending nothing is criminally wrong so that I may keep receiving a paycheck. I'm not hollowed out or dead inside. I'm whole. My humanity remains intact.

And my head stays high. You won nothing, and accomplished less.

Because, see...I don't have to put up with him any more.

And the satisfaction derived from that? TOTALLY WORTH the next few months of extreme financial hardship, hunger and uncertainty.

To put it more simply:

A clear conscience=better than food.

Thank you for playing, and may the goddess guide each of you to safer ports.

A frame, at last.

2011-10-02T16:00:00.000-07:00

Spent the evening last night being bandied about by wheelchair (torn leg muscle) at a community audio art festival.

Much gratitude for the bandying, partner-friend. :)

I LOVE COMMUNITY ART FESTIVALS.

There are few things I draw more satisfaction, pleasure and that tingly sense of delicious oneness from than experiencing the fruits of local amateur artists' bountiful and endlessly inventive brain-farms.

Much gratitude for the inspiration, fellow amateurs. :)

I thought of how those of us (not really me) not anywhere near the top of the heap, the head of the totem are often portrayed in art. Broken, sick, sad, lonely, tormented, needy, damaged, insane, dangerous, deranged, evil, ugly, untouchable, foul-smelling, that heavy slimy feeling I feel when I look at photographs/paintings/sketches of those deemed 'undesirable'.

I felt the surge to create.

The first in a good long while.

I obeyed the pull after parter-friend and me finished our new movie when we got home (Mid-August Lunch, which I highly recommend).

I opened a new file.

I drew myself, someone (now) oft-deemed by scads of foolish others as 'undesirable'.

My index finger flew across the pad. The image nearly willed itself into being.

It rarely comes so easy.

It almost never quite turns out as I'd like.

This time, it turned out better.

You'll see. Soon. :)

That batshit crazy and completely unpredictable happenings of a life called mine.

2011-09-14T22:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so everything in my life just went sideways, then it was kind of righted, then it went sideways again, only way, way more sideways than I could have ever expected/imagined it would.

Fuck. It just never gets easier. Or logical or fair at all.

I can't really elaborate just yet. But it'll happen.

*Visions of monkeys flying out of random butts everywhere*

Otherwise, with the blaming of me:

I wish everyone would just stop doing that already. At least without taking the time to think critically/examine the particulars closely. I dearly wish this would ever, ever be. I long, hope, yearn and cry my fucking eyes out for it on a monthly basis.

You don't want this particular bargain-basement/lurking-underneath-park-benches-type set of choices, Oh Wielders Of Blame.

Trust me on this.

Trust also that I do the very, very best I can at any given moment with said frightening, incredibly difficult, ridiculous to the point of flat stupid and just plain crazy-inflating choices as I'm able.

It's getting a little tiring, this life.

I'm feeling quite drained by it, and everyone around me who simply MUST THROW ALL AVAILABLE BLAME IN MY DIRECTION EVERY CHANCE THEY FUCKING GET.

Add a dash of confusion, a whole lotta loss and never anywhere close to enough love, and you get, well, me. And all of this.

And always, always, always, ALWAYS utterly and completely without any fucking support whatsoever to go with my steaming hearty helping of blame, blame, blame.

I'm learning to get on with things in spite of this. Not that I should really be expected to.

Which is something, really something.

I guess.

Demons

2011-09-07T22:55:00.000-07:00

Why hello there.

Abandonment, Fear, Avoidance, Attachment, Self-Loathing, Disassociation, Psychosis, Depression, Hopelessness, Mania, Anxiety, PTSD, Compulsivity, Denial, Rage, Deflection/Projection, Other?

I see all are present and accounted for. Let's begin.

Firstly, you cannot have my son. He is hands off from this point forward. I know you're all clamoring for attention, milling around, needing to be acknowledged and sometimes without warning screaming to be acted on RIGHT NOW, but I'm drawing a firm boundary. Pay attention.

My son. My relationship with him. Our life together. His well-being and needs. FIRST, LAST, ALWAYS. Us. Forever.

You can't have him. You won't take him.

I won't let you.

Got it? I'm calling for reinforcements. I'm restocking the armory. I'm asking for help and I'm going to handle you. All of you. You are all going to be dealt with, one by one, until you are secured.

You will never come between us again. Ever.

From now on, you deal with ME. Fuck with him at your peril.

Secondly, I'm going to have to ask for my happiness, contentment, motivation and focus back. Seriously, it's been 10 years. I think that's quite enough time to have painted it blue-black and played tennis with it or whatever it is you've been doing all this time.

So I'll be taking it back. Starting now. Centimeter by centimeter if I have to. I will pull it from your elongated, sharp-nailed and slimy grasp if it is the last fucking thing on this fucking earth I do. Are you reading me, space monkeys? The party's over. Mami's home. The place is a mess and this house will be put in order. You're all going to help.

You have taken the first third of my life. The rest is mine. I will move forward. I will rise above. I will rise from these fucking dank-ass old ashes and I will fly again. You will not stop me.

Not this time.

Lastly, your presence has been requested at the Emergency Cake Summit in the lost recesses of my subconscious. Wear sprinkles and pray for rain.

Making peace with empty space

2011-09-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

My dear, broken heart -

Sigh. We've been here before, haven't we? Not in this specific way, not for this exact reason...but we've been here.

You are hurting more than you know how to deal with right now, but you will learn to deal with it. You will pull through. You will find a way.

Dear heart, you always do.

You've known, in the deepest places in you, that this was coming. You've known for a long, long time that this was the right thing to do. You shouldn't have waited so long, but you've done what needed to be done.

You have done the right thing for you, according to your principles. DO NOT LET ANYONE MAKE YOU DOUBT YOURSELF. DO NOT LET GUILT OVERTAKE YOU. DO NOT GIVE IN. DO NOT GIVE UP.

This was your choice to make and you've made it as best you can. The empty space will remain. It cannot be filled. It cannot be covered or replaced or moved to the side.

All that's left to do now is make your peace with it, learn to live with it, and make the most of the life you have left.

Cherish the memories, grieve the loss and move forward.

Believe that you can.

Know that you can.

You've done it before.

You can do it again.

You will heal.

You will find happiness.

Do not give up.

Gee, I wonder who's reading my blog in BEVERLY HILLS.

2011-09-05T18:29:00.001-07:00

*Smirk*

Blogging the transition

2011-09-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

My first instinct is to break from things like blogging when Big Things Happen and Scary Change Comes in my life.

This time, though, I thought I'd try something different and actually blog through the change/terror/pain/growth/fear/process.

So, I'll be blogging this transition.

But I won't be giving a lot of details. Not yet.

In a year or so, the picture will become clearer.

That's the scoop for now.

I really need to stop staying up so freakin' late.

Last night I thought about blogging some supportive-of-all-women manifesto. Tonight, I am tired and tipsy and about to sleep and just want to type-spill...

2011-08-31T22:32:00.000-07:00

Hi, blog.

Hi, readers...whoever/wherever you are.

A terrible, gray limbo I'm taped to the middle of right now.

Not quite a parent.

Not quite an adult.

Not quite a lover.

Nobody's friend.

Nobody's sister.

Bound by necessity to an abusive father-fuck of an employer (and otherwise).

I do love my sisters. I do love all of them. Even when I don't.

But that's neither here nor the point of this post (it doesn't have a point, don't look for one, waste of time).

Told Eddie I don't feel terribly attracted to men anymore. It's drained from me. Not particularly pointed in the direction of women, either.

The past three years of my life would leave a lot of people in the sexual/depressive lurch, though.

Lost friends. Lost health. Lost kid. Lost potentials and loss, loss, loss everywhere.

I don't plan on making much sense here, so move along if you're looking for depth or rationality.

I'm fine. I'm not going to shatter or break or dive headfirst into a spiral. I'll make it.

BUT INTO WHAT? WHERE AM I GOING? WHERE DO I WANT TO GO? WHAT DO I WANT TO DO?

I ride the damn bus every morning to work now. I hate it. I have the privilege and the space to hate it. I miss having a car and I miss being able to decide when to leave my house. I have to leave early to allow for the bus being early or late and it's a convenience issue, it's not important, it's a privilege to be annoyed in most cases PERIOD but I hate, hate, HATE it.

My bike was stolen a month or so ago now. At the place where I work. Went downstairs for lunch and it was gone.

Another loss.

Just a bike.

But dammit, MY BIKE.

Privilege, privilege, privilege. Somebody really needed it that was not me. Needed to sell it, ride it, give it to their kid or mom or friend or whatever.

I can buy another bike.

I don't feel lonely, necessarily. Being alone is my normal. I do want companionship of some sort, but on my terms only. I'm not willing to compromise anymore just to have 'friends'. I can live without them if that's the case.

I can't draw or blog, it feels like a chore. Work takes everything and all I want to do when I get home is watch The Golden Girls or some cheesy 80s movie to dull the ripping pain of having no freedom. No choices. No options.

I miss the hell out of Tonia. I read her OKC journal, I read her blog and I feel a tug in my heart so strong I can hardly stand it. Kindred, challenger, friend, love, lover, comrade, sister, mentor, fellow seeker, searcher, question-asker, truth-speaker.

She is happy. She built a family and is happy. I'm happy she is happy.

I just want to be a part of that happy. Her happy. A happy I could see myself being happy with, amongst, against, in the same space, never the same but together, never perfectly aligned but running roughly parallel as best we can.

It will be one of the greater regrets of my life that I won't be able to that.

*Sigh* *Deep breath*

Lessons are hard. But essential. I learned that I am not what she needs, that I cannot give what she asks of those around her. Not yet, perhaps not ever.

I have learned that my great love is myself, that my great task is to love and accept myself in the way I have always longed for others to do so.

It's a process. It moves forward, it moves backward, it stays in place. It's a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute thing.

I succeed, I fail, I don't give a fuck.

I keep going.

Ryo is growing up beauifully, humanly, he is frustrating and sensitive and delicate, maddeningly stubborn (*cough*) and gentle and impulsive and weird, capricious and callous and open and giving and loving and avoidant and odd and trapped inside himself yet still so curious, searching, curious and searching with a shield of half-opaque plastic between him and the world.

The 'fuzz'. It surrounds me daily. It's a protection. It's a genetic gift/defect. He's got it. It protects him. It limits him. It offers him a unique, if blurry, view of the world.

Just like his mami. ;)

Whether or not I choose to continue on the path with him remains to be seen. My personal system of ethics does not happen to allow for me staying. Not under these circumstances. Nobody but me is going to understand that, and that's the way I like it. No excuses, no explanations. I just want to do what I feel is right.

But I don't think I'm strong enough. I love him too much. Though being around him, especially under these circumstances/in this context is nothing short of agonizing, his sweet face and golden laugh keep me tethered. Our few days are precious. He has a kind, fragile nature. He has a brittleness. He needs. He needs me.

I need him.

He needs me because I understand. I understand what it is to be powerful yet delicate, intelligent yet stunted, wild yet caged inside a perimeter of your own making. I get this completely. His father doesn't. His stepmother doesn't. His stepsiblings don't. His grandparents and cousins and friends of family don't...and never will. Eddie doesn't.

Being born of my blood, being raised in the manner of those like me, being influenced by people with hearts as brutally savaged yet foolhardy in love with themselves and life, dreamers of fantastical narcissistic dreams, always the same, ever masturbatory, designed to be unrealized, just outside of everything, longing always to be let in without any real push to make it happen, not knowing what to do with the fleshy feelings of actuality once things materialize, casting your net back into your fantasies, searching for something sparklier when all you probably need and can handle is just behind you, waiting, waiting, growing impatient, readying to move on, gone when you finally remember to turn around, too late to save yourself, inventive and manipulating, innocent and perverse, bright and dull, broken and whole, full and starved of feeling, needy beasty, over-giving, unwise, brilliant, innovative, passionate, surface, depth, shards, shit, bubbles and sugary bile.

His father is shaping him in ways I am beyond unhappy with. Ways I no longer have the slightest bit of control over. I have no say in how he is educated, what he eats, what he watches/absorbes (save the 4 days a month he is with me), who he associates with and what perspective he develops on life and those around him and not. I hate it.

I HATE IT. This is NOT what I wanted to him, for us, for my life as a parent and his as the child of me.

No, no, NO!

He doesn't belong to his father. He doesn't belong to me. Ryo is Ryo's, and his life will be his own. He will make his choices and I will respect them.

I'm hoping that, later, he'll decide to tell his father to go fuck himself and come live with me. I cling to that hope. I live on it, some days.

Others, I make peace with my life. I am thankful and grateful for a level of freedom and privilege most women in my position do not enjoy/experience.

Parenting has always been exceptionally hard for/on me and I won't pretend I don't have more breathing room now. I do.

But I don't think I really need it, and at times I don't want and reject it so wholeheartedly I stop breathing for all the days he is not with me. I'm on hold until he comes back.

Transitions suck a big one for both of us. From parent to lone gunman/oddball to parent and back again. From mainstreamed to HOLY SHIT EVERYTHING IS STRANGE IN THIS HOUSE NOTHING LIKE MY HOME HOME AND WOW IT'S KIND OF FUN AND I LIKE it to mainstreamed and back again.

I want Ryo RIGHT THEN and to take him far, far away from his father and Eddie and the past three years of loss and regret and pain and confusion and separation and not knowing and not wanting to know.

He loves his father. He loves his father's family.

I accept and respect and am glad for this.

He loves the strange, often strained and pixelated family we try to build every other weekend together with Eddie and the dogs, our big new apartment and my shiny stupid loathsome job, our laughing and singing, dancing and reading silly books and learning to spell and read, make things out of clay, eating at the counter, eating as much as we can because we often don't eat enough, eating a variety of foods, playing nicely, asking nicely, being kind, trying not to interrupt unless we need to, waiting our turn, helping with cooking and cleaning, being gentle with the dogs, not crossing the street without mama, there is more to life than video games, television and cartoon characters, buying stuff does not equal love or fun, but it can be recreational, we don't need every toy or thing that other people say we do, building back trust with Eddie in our own time is okay, napping when we cannot get it together, sometimes mama cannot get up but she still loves you and Eddie can take care of you (not just at those times, too), that mama understands and loves and Eddie does too, it is okay to take that extra step in the direction of independence, mama and Eddie won't stop you, learning is incredible, that other people can be cruel and that that is their problem (and ours, but we'll get to that), that we can be cruel and that that is our responsibility, that it is important to take responsibility for ourselves and the things we do and not project blame (in kid terms), understanding that boys and girls can be interchangeable, that boys can like and do girl things and vice versa, that it sucks that there are almost no women anywhere except in the home and in supporting roles all over the damn world, that race matters, that age matters, that class matters, that looks matter, that social castes exist and matter, that fun is not to be had at the expense of others, that lying sucks, that boys and men do lots of housework and caretaking and that turning to them for nurturance is strongly encouraged, that girls and women and mami are not ATM machines, that mama has needs and feelings, that girls and women and mami are not dolls, that loving is paramount and that our family is different, unique, difficult and not at all sufficient, but still a family, built on genuine love and caring.

I think about having another child sometimes. Sometimes the thinking turns to wanting which turns to longing which turns to obsession.

But I don't really want another child.

I want the child I already have.

To come back.

For good.

Ryo is perfect to me. Immaculate, flawless, completely spectacular little emerging being. With his anxieties and tantrums and needing to repeat everything over and over and over, with the holes in his teeth, the mercury in his mouth, the vaccinations in his blood, his beautiful awkwardness, his need to be alone (JUST LIKE MAMI :)), his independence in terms of learning, HIS FUCKING STUBBORNNESS JUST LIKE MAMI, the cartoons and video games reigning supreme in his consciousness, the enforced simplicity and mindlessness and the frustrated attempts at communicating.

He is perfect. He is Ryo. He is me and his father and his own evolving teensy self. It's fun to watch. It's heartbreaking to watch. It's crazy-making to watch. It's profound to engage in/with. It is a fucking sacred privilege to be even on the periphery of.

Even after surviving his father and his smugness now that he has 'won', even after the bleeding, permanent damage caused by having and loving and carrying and feeding and holding and comforting and having it all ripped away like a vital organ...even though I know the day will come when he will turn on me, turn away from me and reject all I have given, taught and learned and been and fought and given up to have and keep him in my life in any way, to protect and offer understanding, perspective, love...

I am overflowing with gratefulness that he is here. I regret the fucking shit out of partnering with his father, but having Ryo? That dorkishly divine, adorable, wiggly, struggly, serene creature?

NEVER.

YOU ARE SO LOVED, RYO. SO, SO LOVED. YOU ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. YOU ALWAYS WILL BE. With me or not with me, in each other's lives or no...you made everything rise up out of dingy dirt and grow a crown of thorny, honeysuckled, tangled, happy, blissful, blasted voluminous LIFE.

Thank you, my sweet son. You deserve better from both your father, Eddie and me, and I hope in time we can all become more worthy of providing it to/for you, if at all possible.

*Huggies* (We say huggies :))

With the dating/loverships...

I don't care right now. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I'm working, I despise my boss (but mainly like/love/can tolerate the work itself) and it's all I have time or energy for (which is why I hate working). I've been traumatized over and over and over and over again emotionally and it's enough for now.

I've met a few people platonically, expressly so, it's gone nowhere. I don't want to talk on the phone. I don't want to talk about most of the things most people want to talk about. I don't want to spend my time going to clubs or wheedling my way through sick-ass social drama. I'm not looking for a life partner, I've got one. I don't want to have any more children, I've got one. Marriage is shit, pass. Social groupings are shit, pass. I don't give a fuck about status. Politics, the kind most people interest themselves with, mostly don't concern me.

Clothes, money, my damn hair, my damn lovehandles, my fucking job and what it 'means' to people, numbers on a pay stub and names on jeans, dates on calendars, yearly lamenting about time, weights on scales, my address and What I've Done With Myself/My Life and whether or not anybody/everybody thinks that's fucking Good Enough For Them.

I've had it. I'm done.

Eddie and me have our fun. No more PIV ('cept for twice, 'cause I had to be sure ;)), but we kiss and hug and it fills the void when it needs it to be filled.

We are brother and sister, husband and wife, friends and roommates, partners and strangers.

It's for life. At least for now.

He'll have his others and I'll have mine, if that ever becomes an attractive possibility ever again, which I'm sure it will.

Right now, I'd just like to finish the last fucking frame of my first comic issue (there are only two. I don't draw well or quickly).

Not tonight.

Tonight, I try not to pick myself out of boredom/delirious tiredness/pain, be satisfied that I was able to blog at all and perhaps locate something moderately stimulating somewhere that is not here.

I will get to the 'Ideas' format. I will I will.

But I will NEVER eat a cherry tomato raw.

YUCK.

Fuck, did I mention I'm working?

2011-08-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry, forgot.

At least, for now I'm working. As in as of tomorrow, I still have a job.

No way to know how long it'll last, though.

No way to ever really know that.

But I am working. And I did move...to a much nicer apartment in a much nicer part of town, with my own sleeping space and shitting space and everything (me and Eddie are sharing a 2 bed, 2 bath).

For the second time in my life, I have my own shitter.

It feels wonderful to shit in my own shitter. It feels wonderful to sleep in my own space.

It feels FANTASTIC to be able to choose my interactions with Eddie. And Ryo, when he's here.

It feels like freedom to have somewhere to hide, when I need to.

The place is pretty empty, as we barely had enough for the deposit (still paying it off, actually), let alone furniture.

Owe a small sum to the IRS, too, so that comes before couches.

And beds.

And drawers to put my socks/underwear in.

And some manner of light source in my bedroom so that I don't have to keep the bathroom door open just to not trip over things.

But it's better than a studio apartment split 5 ways. TOTALLY FUCKING BETTER IN EVERY WAY.

Did I mention we also have a patio? A big one?

This place is practically paradise.

(Oh, and I somehow finagled my way into a job as a legal assistant. By speaking approximately 12 words during the interview. Why yes, that is rather odd. And stupid. I have no experience and no idea what I'm doing [over] half the time, but yeah, I'm a legal assistant. Weird, weird world)

The world of humans careens wildly in the direction of a 3 trillion-foot high wall of petrified shit!

2011-08-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

And, for the most part, I care not.

Look, world of humans...

I've survived domestic violence, my vile bio-family, homelessness, prostitution, molestation, neglect, abandonment, vicious rumors, rape, attempted rape, workplace sexual harassment, street harassment, poverty, over a decade of crippling clinical depression and anxiety, PTSD, mental and emotional abuse, incessant, relentless and utterly unforgiving bullying, four thousand horrible relationships, social ostracization, nasty breakups, a nastier divorce, psychosis, shattering disappointments, the long, slow dismantling of every hope and dream ever clung to for my dearest of lives, the loss of (almost) everyone I thought I could love and trust, custody of my precious son and a wicked and unruly host of physical ailments and chronic illnesses.

I'm all traumified up, and am going to need to sit this one out.

So go on...go to shit. Fall apart. Go straight to fucking hell in a steaming breadbasket of death, taxes and a great, swarming, grasping, ugly orgasmic death-rattle as the final, wretched strongholds of greed, powerlust and avarice shatter to volcanic ash and cosmic dust for all the fuck I give.

I'll be in a corner somewhere, roasting marshmallows in the fires of your sad, overdue/overwrought, lovely-like and blessed demise and reading the last of the unburned/unused-for-toilet-paper-and-insulation/currency books with the biggest, widest, most self-satisfied and smug-ass shit grin on my face imaginable, the forty-two seconds before my own happiest of untimely endings.

Let it burn.

LET IT ALL FUCKING BURN.

Humankind is not worth the effort to save.

Not from where I'll be/have been/will be/am sitting.

For Tonia

2011-08-01T00:50:00.001-07:00

Thank you, Melissa.

2011-06-29T20:09:00.000-07:00

Damn straight.

Nothing further to add at the moment, but I'll come back to this and add more thoughts as they pop up.

All I can really think to say right now is that this makes sense, and that it helps me to understand myself and many other women I've encountered/interactions I've had with them much, much better.

It's also given me more space to breathe mentally and emotionally, which is always welcome.

Thank you, Melissa.

The truth isn't ugly. It's fucking hideous.

2011-06-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

Comment left here.

"thebewilderness -

Most people I’ve met and known, male and female, feminist and not alike, would’ve done the exact. same. thing as this asswipe. As in witnessed the horror, been fully cognizant of the evil in remaining silent, done absolutely nothing anyway, somehow managed to rationalize their silence and complicity away and continued right the fuck on with their life as if nothing happened. Without a drop of guilt or remorse.

The flavor of people with which I’m most familiar are weak, cowardly, socio-pathically self-interested assholes who have the empathy and emotional intelligence of dirt clods and whose only real concern is themselves and what directly affects them. One of my greater hopes is that I will one day cross paths with truly decent/ethical folk, because it chills me to the bone to realize that to date, I’ve met exactly none in real life.

I have been on the receiving end of this monstrousness more times than I care to remember. I am guilty of it myself (though not to this degree. I’ve survived rape and would rather die than watch another woman have her life essence ripped out of her while doing nothing to stop it).

Western culture is ugly, violent, and cruel (re: hyper-patriarchal). To a spellbinding degree. Power and sniveling, slavish submission to those perceived to have it are its top mandates. If this fuck’s story is true and he ‘just’ witnessed the rape and did nothing to stop it/did not report his ‘friends’ to the ‘authorities’, it’s because he was a weak-ass little wannabe who worshipped power, fetishized dominance/submission and could not bear to miss an opportunity for his overlords to sprinkle a little bit of their magic privilege dust over him so that He Might Be Gawd One Day, Too.

*RAGE*

Popularity. Social conformity. Vile cowardice/self-loathing, the fetishization of violence/the breaking of people/use of other human beings as toys/toilets/slaves and the ever-elusive cookie-crumbs of conditional acceptance into the cool-kid club.

Women fucking die over this shit. Every damned day. Raped, beaten, ostracized, torn to pieces in all manner of ways and people just turn their fucking backs and walk.

You do not even want to know how many ice-encrusted backsides I’ve seen skip merrily away from my tattered ass over the years. You truly do not. There are no words to describe the pain and destruction these menaces have wrought in my life, and the lives of some I’ve known and loved (there was a time when I would’ve given anything for those crumbs, too…and almost did).

My heart goes out to this woman if she exists. I hope she has found healing and happiness in some form.

I’m so glad that this piece of maggoty horseshit has relieved the long-suffering Earth of his presence, and well ahead of schedule. I’ve read of his partner’s struggles and it’s nothing short of a disgrace. Seriously, WHAT a fucken prick to have left her essentially nothing after all she sacrificed for him. Fucking typical. Apple didn’t fall far, it seems (it never does)."

Burst-posting and wind-change

2011-06-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

When I'm adjusting to something (like work, like I just mentioned), I tend to do little more than adjust to it and do my best to survive the adjustment. Which is why I haven't been around much.

Plus, as always, I'm lazy.

Transitions are rough for me. The older I get, the tougher they become.

I'm a lot like my father in this way.

Which stinks, horribly, as I don't want to resemble that man in any way, shape, or personality trait.

Yick.

Another thing to tack onto the ever-expanding list of Conditioning/Bad Habitry To Overcome.

It's insurmountably long these days.

Been thinking a lot about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, and here.

I'm almost positive I'm going to continue parenting.
I'm almost as positive I'm going to pursue formal education of some sort.
I'm absolutely positive that I'm going to spend a lot of time focusing on financial self-sufficiency and debt removal. The weight of my financial obligations both past and present long ago surpassed my ability to ignore them. It's getting done as we speak and it's happy-making.
I'm also completely positive I will do art. I will keep my comic and I will draw and learn to paint, possibly sculpt. These things enrich me, fill me up, make me giddy and often bring on that ever-elusive sense of Fulfillment And Okay-ness.
I'm somewhat positive I'll make friends. Somewhere. Somehow. Someday. Still working that out.
I'm something-close-to-positive that my dating days are over, at least for the next 5 to 7 years. I'm so over it. I am so fucking over dating. The whole deal seems like a colossal waste of time and I'm embarrassed to have wasted so many years of my life centering it.
I'm utterly unsure of what my next strategy will be in terms of dealing with my emotional issues. They are under control for the moment, but I seem to have exhausted/outgrown all of my prior coping mechanisms. I guess it's just time to deal. Some other way.

As for this blog. It stays. The sub-title, tone and content may shift and switch around over time, but it's good for me to have a public space to talk. To myself. :)

After this post (and maybe a couple of others, not sure just yet), there will mostly only be art and IDEAS, in a specific and themed format, posted here. Hence the sub-title.

Think it's time to retire my confessional-rant style and do something else.

So here I go (soon).

Hardcore Gossip-Free Zone

2011-06-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

Which means...

DO NOT EMAIL ME GOSSIP OR ANYTHING RELATED, AND DO NOT USE THIS BLOG OR ANYTHING RELATED FOR PURPOSES OF GOSSIP.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, Idiom.

2011-06-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

Look, I draw when I feel like it.

I haven't felt like it lately.

Takes me a couple of months to adjust to working when I haven't done so for awhile, plus I'm focusing on getting out of debt, enjoying having a bit of play money and just living my stupid life.

I wasn't kidding about not being ambitious. If I posted a frame a year (or less) I'd be perfectly satisfied.

Productivity is not a priority for me. Happiness, enjoyment and leisure are.

So when drawing and posting my drawings feels happy, enjoyable and leisurely, I'll do it.

Otherwise, I'll do what I want.

Neener.

What freedom looks like.

2011-06-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

I love everything about this post.

Male culture is toxic. It has only the power to destroy.

Everything male domination touches, withers. Rots. Dies. In suffering and agony.

Women are culture-less, language-less, bound and gagged by a thousand years of woman-hating, woman-obliterating HIStory. We have no idea who we are outside of the male-constructed model of ourselves, our identities, our rigid, inflexible, suffocating slave-roles.

I believe art is one of the higher purposes and greater joys of human existence, therefore it can stay.

MALE art, though interesting rarely, must go. MALE culture, the same.

A healthy world, a healthy culture for women cannot be ruled or initiated by men.

This is our work.

My art has been infected to a stunning degree by maleness. My writing, too. My thinking. I have lived and breathed male supremacy for so long to attempt to do otherwise feels like taking carbon monoxide into my lungs.

Black has been made white. Night made day. Fire into water, moon into sun. Patriarchy has turned all the natural logic of the universe on it's head, and spun it around.

It's no wonder women search. It's no wonder we yearn for something different, something better, even if we do not yet have the language or understanding to describe it. Nothing around us makes any sense. A world that hates half it's population for being born, for existing is an abomination. A complete and utter insanity. A gaping hole of despair.

Like nearly all women, I grew up in an immediate culture and family of utterly intense woman-hatred (to say nothing of the media and 'culture' at large, and the immeasurable toll that took on me as well). To survive, you had to identify, aggressively OVER-identify, with maleness. You had to spit on solidarity with other woman and cling to your father/boyfriend/husband/male friends for dear life, and hope to hell they didn't reject you for whatever capricious reason they could come up with.

I see things so much more clearly now, all these years later. When I go back to the places I grew up, the people I knew (which I do less and less of as time passes and the need to be validated lessens with solitude, celibacy, age and time), I'm blown away by the toxicity of men, and how sick, deranged and suicidally devoted and loyal the women who surround them are.

I see monsters when I look at the men. I see small, twisted, broken, scavenging birds in the faces of the women. Starved, crazed, emptied of vitality, meaning and purpose. Thinking only of the next opportunity to be validated by the nearest male to them. Another fix to get by in an environment where that is literally all they are permitted to nourish themselves with: the deadly, addictive poison of self-hatred and self-denial.

Men need half-starved, brittle, self-loathing women who will lash out at themselves/each other at the slightest provocation. It satisfies their bottomless craving for female humiliation and mutilation. They are vampires who cannot survive without sucking the life force out of others, primarily women.

Which is why they don't make fembots or androids to serve them. Machines cannot sate their hunger for flesh-and-bone women to break, to ruin, to destroy. They get off on our sentient misery.

I've abandoned my biological family. I've rejected friendship after friendship and relationship after relationship based wholly or partly on hatred of women. I've left the world of 'romantic' heterosexuality. I've turned away from 'beauty', 'niceness' and social acceptance by way of submission and conformity.

I sit here typing this a solitary woman. An absolute feminist. Revolutionary, renegade. Frightened, still detoxifying, unsure of where to go next as I've never really been free to even consider what to do with my own life. Still searching for all the shattered pieces of my mind and heart horrible men, colluding unconscious women and my own sickened self cast into the wind.

Healing will take a lifetime. Comfort is a memory. The world is a dangerous place for those of us who reject the venom, spit it out, kick our legs, bite back, strike out alone.

The world is a dangerous place for all women, but even more so for women like me.

Freedom, self-determination, autonomy, self-respect and self-love is absolutely worth the fear, the pain, the uncertainty, the feeling of placelessness, pointlessness, rootlessness and constant, mind-numbing disillusionment, disgust, hatred and confusion.

It is not easy to be free. It is not fun. It is not simple and it is not a socially acceptable choice.

But it the only way to live a truly human life.

Cast off your shackles, sisters. Rise.

Be free.

Draw

2011-05-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

I want to translate all of the images, scenarios, scenes, music videos and stories in my head to paper.

The concepts and imaginings and narrations that have been cycling around in my brain for years need to be recorded somehow. Traditional writing/storytelling does not appear to suit them very well.

A graphic novel, on the other hand...

It's not coming easy or quickly yet, but I'm enjoying drawing. It's been a long, long time since I could say that honestly.

Just finished a portrait of my friend, in red pen on red paper (style I'd like to develop, interesting results)...turned out rather nicely.

It used to be that I drew things from memory best. That seems to have shifted. Now I seem to do much better with a photo, person or item in front of me.

Happy to join the ranks of artists who do their sketches in coffeeshops. The alt-community atmosphere is highly conducive to creation/the drive to create for me. And I no longer worry about what anyone will say about my sketches if they happen to catch a peek.

Actually rather hoping people will see what I've done, whether they appreciate it or not.

Feel like sketching/illustration is something I need to do, that I'll flourish personally and conceptually there.

We'll see.

If only I'd known who was standing on the other side of the mirror all those years, grinning toothlessly back at me...and not alone...

2011-05-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

I might not have worried so much, and about so many things...

If I'd have known that the me of this moment had even a whisper of a chance of existing, somewhere, someway...

My life may have turned out quite different.

I will always remember the day I just spent with Ryo.

We laughed, ran down the street, climbed to the top level of a parking structure and spun around and around underneath the endless gray sky, giggling madly, drunk on the feel of the cold wind and warm energy of our love. We walked through shops, talked about things we liked, ate and drew pictures, chased each other through the yard and spent time as it is best spent. Fully ourselves, fully together.

And it hit me, the way it often does when that sweetest of spots in my heart is touched, that nothing else matters...that the consuming contentment surrounding us was the entire universe.

And that all the fucking up and pain and sadness and tears in the world couldn't take that perfection away. That the incredibly profound and overwhelmingly satisfying completeness, the sense that all is right in our world, in that instant if nowhere and nothing else, was ours. Always.

I wasn't anxious or worried or feeling pulled away. He wasn't fussing or tantrumming or seeming unsure. For the briefest and most beautiful of precious hours, we were just as we are, traveling through time and place, in seamless step.

Often, I've thought of my decision to bring a child into the world as something less than wise. The events of the past few years have brought me face-to-face with previously undisclosed aspects of myself that were hard to acknowledge, even harder to deal with. I've had to grow out of many old habits/character traits and grow into new ways of living, being and seeing. My immediate surroundings have been built up and torn down so often and in a manner so helplessly chaotic as to make building a home of any sort, physical or emotional seem a wasted endeavor. I've thought long and hard about letting go completely.

But today, Ryo (was) here. We (were) together. We spun in circles under that sky as one, whole being. Tranquil, total, transcending. Over the difficulties, under the disappointment and straight through the fear.

The other side is a wonderful place.

Think I'll live there someday.

On the (non) progression of feminism (another forum response that became a post).

2011-05-04T16:47:00.000-07:00

Below-mentioned article/criminally abbreviated comment here.

Even though the author and me are separated by many layers of class, culture, privilege and time, and even though this story took place in an era that mostly came and went before I was born, I found myself relating in a very powerful, visceral way to her words, as they are astoundingly similar to some I've used to describe my own lived experiences.

Many of us born in the years/decades after the women's liberation movement of the 1970's are still struggling with the exact. same. questions, concerns, fears, stumbling blocks and stagnation she described.

I had no freaking clue how my body worked/what it even looked like until long, long after I was sexually active. I started masturbating at age 9, but didn't know anything about mutual pleasure in terms of partnered play until much later (though of course, I knew all about how to get a man off before I was even a teenager).

And lesbianism/asexuality/celibacy/onanism? Forget it. There was boyfriendhood or play-bisexuality to get the boys attention. Everything was centered around them. It was never about us. Women didn't matter, and they sure as hell weren't supposed to be directing emotional/sexual attention at themselves or each other, not caring about sex at all or refusing to participate in the whole mess in the first place.

Sex, of course, meaning penis in vagina. Penis in vagina (or for extra fun, anus) over and over and over until the penis ejaculates. Then, sex is over until the penis needs to masturbate inside another orifice again.

Clitoris? Cunnilingus? Mutual masturbation? Touching? Hugging? Kissing? Cuddling? Emotional/intellectual connection? Speech? Sacrilege. Sex=penis in vagina. Beginning, middle, end.

Everything/anything else means the man gets a cookie and 'Boyfriend/Husband of The Year' award after a half-hearted, resentful attempt once every six months or so.

Same with parenting, friendship, work, politics, life. Man shows up, earns medal. Women busts her ass for 50 years and gives up her life, dreams, sanity and security, gets blamed for everything and anything that goes wrong or doesn't.

In certain social clusters, almost nothing has changed. Women born to privilege are still expected to live out their lives as overeducated, dutiful, doting broodmares and wives, and those on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum are still pushed to marry any man who will have them in order to survive, with compulsory, middle-to-upper class nuclear white heteronormativity/values winning the day on both ends.

Those in the middle seem to have a bit more flexibility in terms of lifestyle (and in general seem more amenable to woman-centered values), but the backlash rhetoric that has re-framed feminism as being about 'choice' instead of about freedom has effectively waterlogged any meaningful resistance to (white, heterosexual) male control.

On all sides, self-love, self-confidence and self-direction are either demonized and discouraged, or not even put forth as options. Most women, in the year 2011, still stumble around in a thick cloud of complete ignorance/indifference to their own self-worth and inherent value as human beings. Most women, in the year 2011, still see each other as little more than competition for men's attention and/or an unimportant distraction until a man comes along to validate them.

Even the lesbians I've known have scoffed at feminism, and have fully adopted the language, behaviors and mindset of men. It baffles me.

'Our Bodies, Ourselves' wasn't on my radar until I was in my late twenties, and I'm a card-carrying Gen Xer...supposedly the most liberal and progressive generation of the last century.

All I knew of feminism until age twenty-freaking-five could be summed up in a single word: 'feminazi'.

All I cared about until my mid twenties was being pretty enough to attract a boyfriend/husband so that I could get married. With few exceptions, that was all any of my female 'friends' (re: partners in misery until we could land a man) cared about. Feminism and independence were simply not a part of our reality.

We heard the term. We learned all about how women won the right to vote and how they used to not be able to leave the house/work and how they used to be forced to have a zillion children they didn't want, but that that time was over, we were living a 'post-feminist' world and were now all FREE!

FREE to have expensive abortions if we really, really needed them and could find a provider in our county and if we were super sorry afterwards and promised not to do it again. FREE to take expensive, hormone-wrecking, blood-clot-and-cancer-causing birth control pills so that men could fuck us on demand and not have to worry about having to pay for those abortions or worse, raise the children they were exactly 50% responsible for creating.

FREE to be fuckable and feisty. Still subordinate, still submissive, still something not quite human, but with a wise-cracking, raunchy twist (re: self-loathing, apathetic, oppression-deynying sense of humor and stiff, unnatural, cartoonish male-invented 'sexiness'). Still not represented in public office, still not running corporations, still not making a living wage, still not permitted to defend or stand up for ourselves under any circumstances whatsoever and still not a snowball's chance in hell of being elected president, but dammit, we could screw and be the Exceptional Woman, an honorary man, different from all the ordinary, subhuman women we would be required to relentlessly mock and deride to keep our status.

We could wear highheels and fishnets and red lipstick and tight dresses, laugh at sexist jokes and dye our hair weird colors and talk about our clitoris, and be only slightly less than outright ostracized if we slept around. With men. Still to be called sluts for our trouble (and if we like/want to sleep with women? Invisible or an ugly, useless, murder-and-rape worthy dyke).

Hair care products freed us from unsightly coarseness. Foundation liberated us from our human skin texture. Hook-up culture encouraged us to play with the boys (but never with each other...unless he could watch). Plastic surgery empowered us to accept and love the artificial bodies we were forced to buy and hate and reject the natural bodies we were born with. Insanely expensive college degrees gave us the 'opportunity' to still be paid less than men for the same work, no matter how hard we tried to prove ourselves.

In short, we were free to buy and consume a new and improved false freedom: penetrative sex with men. For our mothers, it had been a wifely duty. For us, it was a badge of pride...but no less of an obligation.

And we still had to cook dinner, change diapers, keep the house clean, work shit-paying jobs with no opportunity for advancement, receive substandard health care that denied our mental, physical and emotional realities, live under the constant threat of rape, sexual assault, molestation, harassment, social isolation and poverty, with complete and utter lack of emotional/psychological/intellectual stimulation and satisfaction, all while listening to/watching a steady media-induced stream of gleefully misogynistic bullshit 24/7.

This was no accident. The vicious backlash of the 1980's and 1990's was orchestrated for the single, express purpose of twisting feminism into empowerment-through-male-placating and re-packaging it as a non-threatening, retrograde lifestyle 'choice' instead of a status-quo-destroying revolutionary social movement.

From radical self-reliance, naming our oppression and widespread rejection of traditional gender roles/agitating for political, social and financial equality, to 'chosen' housewifery, asshole bleaching/labia shaving, butch hatred, pole-dancing, rape jokes and violent, degrading porn.

How far we have fallen.

It took a horrible man, a horrible marriage, a horrible divorce, yet another horrible relationship and finally, losing custody of my own son for me to truly open my eyes and develop a real understanding of what feminism is and why it's not just necessary, it's absolutely essential for the health, well-being and humanity of all women.

And that real feminism has nothing whatsoever to do with 'choosing' to live a life indistinguishable from the stultifying domestication/submission that came before. Or lingerie, martinis or trendy jobs/apartments and an endless string of emotionally infantile man-children to drain my time, energy, resources and sanity right the fuck out of me, or replicating these memes in relationships of whatever sort with other women.

So very, very little has changed since the 70's. After what women like the author and those before her went through to help secure a better, freer future for all of us, one that was supposed to be here and have liberated us all by now, it's an absolute disgrace.

What madness is.

2011-05-03T00:38:00.000-07:00

You wake up in the morning and your heart is heavy with emptiness.

You roll over in bed and your mind is either blank, full of horrible memories, guilt or regret, struggling to remember where it left off or all of the above/some volatile mix you couldn't anticipate.

You sit up and you feel your back twinge, your jaw lock, the back of your neck snap as your tongue slides over the crack in your capped tooth, growing bigger daily.

You stumble awkwardly to the bathroom because your joints are stiff and your hips and knees ache and tweak sharply with every step.

You sit on the toilet for 45 minutes or more because the piss and shit either won't come out, or won't stop coming out.

Your back's still hurting; you'll have trouble wiping again and worry about fucking smelling like piss/shit all day. There's a deep, unexplained and worrying ache in your lower abdomen and you feel another stress migraine coming on.

Then your shoulder starts to burn...the singing, searing pain of an old muscle tear/arthritis flare-up that taunts you periodically and without warning.

The piss and shit is still coming out/still won't come out.

Your mind starts to drift backwards.

They hate you. Your parents hate you. You've lost all your friends. You have no friends. You've never really had any friends. People hate you. No one loves you. Your dad was right. Your mom was right. Everything you do is wrong. Everything you've ever said, done, or thought is horrible. You're a monster.

The piss and shit is either dripping/pouring out of you, or swelling and pushing on your still-throbbing abdomen.

You're a failure. You can't finish anything. You can't do anything because it makes you tired or it bores you or scares you or you don't know how. You can't take care of yourself.

All that money. All those bills. You'll never be able to pay it back, even if you do somehow miraculously find a job. No one will hire you. Rejection after rejection after rejection. You can do the jobs you're applying for, but you can't undo your work history/social awkwardness and you're suddenly not testing well on aptitude tests, and you can't understand why or fix it.

You always quit. You've been fired twice. You can't focus when you're at work. You take too many bathroom breaks. You learn too slowly. You work too quickly and make too many mistakes. You can't adjust properly or quickly enough. People seem to zero in on you and try to either make you uncomfortable or make you One Of Them; neither of which you respond to well.

You just want to be left alone. Why won't anybody EVER LEAVE YOU ALONE?

This piss and shit streams are either slowing to a trickle or you're about to give up trying to do either.

You've told lies. You've done bad things. People don't trust you. People don't like you. You don't like you. You don't trust you.

Ryo. You'll never live with him again. You wouldn't want to even if you could, because he takes too much energy you don't have. And you don't know what you're doing as a parent; you spend most of your time trying not to do the things your parents did. And a lot of the time, failing miserably. You have no confidence in your ability to raise him in a way that won't hurt or confuse or frighten him or make him hate you. You feel hopeless and freaked out/stiff/triggered a lot of the time you spend with him. Then the guilt sets in and you freeze.

You're a terrible parent. You're doing to fuck up your kid for life. You can't do this. You're going to fail. You can't do this. You're going to fail.

Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail. Fail.

Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up. Give up.

No point. No point. No point. No point. No point. No point. No point. No point. No point. No point.

There's no hope. There's no hope. There's no hope. There's no hope. There's no hope. There's no hope.

Nothing will ever get better. Nothing will ever get better. Nothing will ever get better. Nothing will ever get better.

No family. No friends. No car. No money. No Ryo. No love. No comfort. No future.

No way out.

No way out.

No way out.

You're either done pissing or shitting or have given up trying, and are picking again.

Pick. Pop. Scratch. Pick. Pop. Scratch. Pick. Pop. Scratch. Pick. Pop. Scratch. Pick. Pop. Scratch.

Bleeding. Stinging. Bruising. More veins than the last time. Getting older. Back tweaking. Getting older. No health insurance. Getting older. No job. Getting older. No life/social skills. Getting older. Body giving out. Getting older. Mind going blank. Getting older.

Dying in the street. Homeless shelter. Psych ward. Rape. Death. Beatings. Straight jackets. Forced medicating.

The past.

The future.

Your heart is numb. It's used to this. The hurt is there, all the layers and layers of denied/unrecognized/undealt with/unbearable pain, but you can't feel it. Yet. Mercifully.

Pick. Pop. Scratch.

Stare, squint, squeeze.

You watched a sci-fi show to decompress the night before and now you're inventing new story lines, always with you as the tragic hero. You imagine wild fantastical scenarios in which you die/save the day/nobly sacrifice for the greater good. Lost in a euphoric flood of fantasy. Soothing. You speak your lines aloud, often the same ones, over and over and over and over and over. Sometimes they're long impassioned speeches, sometimes witty one liners or just a single word. Sometimes they make you red with anger/embarrassment/self-consciousness or cause you to burst into tears/sob like a frightened child, but you keep saying them anway. You can't stop.

Pick. Pop. Scratch.

You know it's getting late and that it's a long walk to the bus stop/ride to the interview you scheduled yesterday. You know you're going to miss the bus and the opportunity if you don't stop yourself.

You're exhausted because you're once again running on 3 hours of sleep because you couldn't make yourself go to bed on time if your life depended on it. You fight sleep with everything you have. You refuse to let yourself rest and recharge. Staying up late on a school night is forbidden, you're not supposed to be doing it, and therefore you must.

The picking accelerates; you're nervous. Fuck-Up Imminent. You stare blankly into space and say the lines, over and over and over. You scratch deeper into places you've already scratched, pick harder at things you've already picked, popped the bumps you've already popped three, four, five times.

Who cares anyway? You aren't even really interested in the job (even though you are). It's too far away (even though it isn't). They probably won't hire you anyway (even though it's entirely possible they would). They'll probably make you take stupid tests you'll fail anyway (even though they likely won't/you'd likely pass them if they did).

You'll never get a job. You can't even get yourself out of the house without hurting yourself/going half blind by way of relentlessly squinting at your now-bloody things, stomach, back, sides and butt.

You're stupid. You're crazy. You're mentally incompetent/insane/damaged. You're not normal. You're a freak. You're a monster. You're an invalid.

You feel disgusted with yourself for ripping holes in your skin, for not being able to stop despite your many promises and periods of abstinence, you know it's self-destructive and a sick coping mechanism, but you feel an odd sort of pride in your self-harm and see a demented beauty in your pockmarked, scarred, bruised, bleeding body. You feel free of mainstream aesthetic standards, patriarchal beauty norms. You delude yourself into thinking your self-directed, uncontrolled violence is a form of Brave New Resistance, instead of the physical manifestation of your deep-seated mental and emotional torment. The substitute screaming of your fingers into flesh, the channelled silence of your well-trained and stubbornly compliant voice.

You can't scream anymore. You can barely cry, except in random, chaotic, detached-from-the-situation-or-emotions-at-hand fits that bring about only the mildest and most temporary relief from the immense pressure, the weight of the everything you can't change and the nothing you can't escape.

You've missed the bus. You've blown the opportunity. You make a half-hearted attempt to reschedule with a made-up excuse about doctor's appointments/family emergencies, but you know you've blown it. If you're not reliable enough to show up to an interview, you're not an attractive hiring prospect.

Fuck capitalism. Fuck working. Fuck money and the need for all this subservient, ass-kissing tapdancing. Valerie Solanas didn't work. Scum Manifesto is truth. She died in the fucking streets like a warrior.

You don't want to work. You don't care about money. You're above that rattery and drudgery. We all are. REVOLUTION.

The phone rings. It's another company interested in an interview. You do your best to fake interest/normalcy or am suddenly alive with alternate personality and hang up with a soaring heart and confidence. People want to hire you! All is not lost! You are validated!

You can get a job. You can get a good job that pays well. You can get an awesome job that pays awesomely, far more than likely. You will find the perfect job! You just need to be more positive/focus on your strengths!

See, you didn't need to go to that stupid job interview anyway. PERFECT AND IDEAL OPPORTUNITY WILL COME TO YOU WITHOUT EFFORT.

You're smart. You're capable. You're brilliant! You're all-powerful! You're resourceful and can be loyal and responsible and a good worker if you were just treated well and given the right opportunity. YOU'RE THE MOST WONDERFUL EMPLOYEE IN THE UNIVERSE. Yes! Hard work! Hard work is the answer! You'll feel better about yourself and your life if you work hard and are distracted by a job. Maybe you'll even make friends. Maybe you'll make a lot of friends, and go out for drinks every friday night like normal people and laugh and talk about unimportant things like the weather and what kind of milk you drink.

Hell, you could work two jobs! Three! You're a badass and not afraid of hard work! No physical/fatigue and depression problems! Just lazy/spoiled/afraid of pushing yourself; there's nothing seriously wrong with you! You're okay, you're fine, you just need to Try Harder! Good things will happen to you if you just believe they will!

*Cue repetitive fantasizing about working around the corner from your apartment making $60,000 a year, getting out of debt in 6 months and making oodles of good, true friends and all the demons and disappointments of the past miraculously melting away with little to no effort, a beautiful apartment/Vespa scooter, half-time custody of your son out of nowhere and a middle and old age spent in comfort and peace, with little to no recollection of the Terror That Came Before*

Calm. Numbness. Anesthetized. Neutral. Neither up nor down. Happy. Blissful. Think about things you could draw! Businesses you could start! Organizations you could volunteer for/spearhead! All the wonderful things you're capable of! All the pure and original thoughts and ideas just waiting to be shaped and molded into pure and original and admired and loved and magnificent, world-changing things!

Suddenly, the future is livable and splayed out in front of you, decadent. Perfect. Inevitable, if you would just stick to the formula.

People would like you if...

People would love you if...

Everything would be okay if you could just...

If you did x, all of y, z, b, d, q, p, a and pi would disappear like it never happened.

There's a magic button.

There's an enchanted key to that ever-locked, ever-unreachable door.

You just have to stick to the formula.
The magic, perfect formula of perfection.
That will really and truly and for reals this time work.

Even though it's never worked.

Even though it doesn't exist.

Even though you've been through this a hundred trillion times and you know damn well that's the case.

Creeping heaviness. Emptiness seeping back in. Turn on the computer to get away from it. Turn on the television to get away from it. Jerk off to get away from it. Go for a long walk blasting my Ipod to get away from it. Read a book, try to draw, take a nap, compulsively eat to escape it, avoid it, outsmart it.

Sometimes you manage to outrun it. Sometimes you dodge the worst of it. Sometimes you're knocked flat by the full force of your bottomless rage, sorrow, guilt, fear, despair and hatred and it takes you weeks/months to recover, or you never really do.

Sometimes you try to 'deal with it'. You self-talk. You journal. You sing simplistic and useless platitudes. You remember what other people have said to you. You remember things you've thought of to move through it on your own. You look up local therapists you can't go to for help because you have no money. You seek online advice/counseling that doesn't exist or doesn't help. You join forums you never participate in.

Sometimes it works and temporarily stems the tide. Sometimes it doesn't and you frantically double, triple, quadruple, quintuple your efforts until it smashes you into a wall in a feverish, blinding terror.

Even if it does work, even if you can get away; the relief never lasts. The memories resurface. The beast growls in your chest. The demon lurks in your closet. The shadows are everywhere.

It's going to happen again. It's going to hurt again. You're going to lose contact with reality again. You're going to go blank and numb and not know where you are again. You're going to be unable to distinguish reality from memory/fantasy again. You're going to think you've been sitting staring at a wall for 20 minutes when it's really been 4 hours again. You're going to pick and pop and scratch and rip at every single inch of your skin and lose an entire day to it again. You're going to want to scream again, but not be able to. You're going to want to cry and cry and cry tears that will never come. You're going to eat everything in the house again. You're going to feel bottomed out, centerless again. You're going to remember again. You're going to feel guilty again. You're going to regret again. You're going to hate yourself and want to die again.

You don't want to remember. You don't want to hurt. You don't want to feel that involuntary and horrifying out-of-your-body psychosis again. You don't want to go through this. Not again.

Please, you beg. I'll be good. I'll find a good job and do my work and show up everyday on time and make friends and learn small talk and social niceties and be a good citizen and a good girl. I promise, I'll do it right this time! I'll be normal and do what everyone else does. Just make it stop.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Please, please, PLEASE...just make it stop.

Make the voices go away. Make the memories go away. Make the sadness and emptiness and need to do things over and over and over go away. Make the self-sabotage stop, the self-harm stop, the delusions stop, the tactile hallucinations stop.

Can't write what you need to here. Too terrifying.

It's late and you're up blog-barfing your agony to the void again. It doesn't really help, but you do it anyway because you don't know what else to do.

Your eyes hurt; you only got a couple of hours of sleep last night. You're out of your mind with exhaustion and sleep deprivation. You need to go to sleep. You need to go to sleep. You need to go to sleep.

No, fuck sleep. You need to write. You have this fucking blog that goes for weeks and months without being updated. Nobody's reading it because you keep changing the content/address and bouncing back and forth and up and down with what you want to do with the place, because you have no idea why you blog at all anymore, or ever did to begin with.

You don't want anybody to read it. And you do. But you really/mostly don't. But you really/sometimes do.

Every knowing/understanding is fleeting and ephemeral, as temporary as wind. What you've learned today will most likely be forgotten/misremembered tomorrow. You can't hold onto anything; it all slips through your mind and fingers.

Eddie's asleep and snoring. The dogs too. You don't know what Ryo's doing right now. This weekend is his weekend. You're tired and scared. What if you don't know what to do? What if you don't know what to say? What if you get mad? What if you get triggered and can't function? What if you're too tired to take him to the park/cook/read to him? You love him so much, you want to do/be better but are so damned uncomfortable around him no matter what you do or try. He cries and you don't know what to do. He tantrums and you don't know what to do. He still can't talk and you don't know what to do. He seems to be behind in just about every developmental aspect but you don't know what to do. His father won't listen and neither one of you has the money to get him help.

No money. No help.

Nobody coming to save you.

Nobody cares.

You can't help your son.

You can't help yourself.

You don't know what to do.
You don't know what to do.
You don't know what to do.
You don't know what to do.

Your back hurts. Your eyes hurt. Your jaw hurts. Your knees hurt. Your ankles hurt. Your shoulder hurts. Your teeth hurt. Your stomach hurts. Your wrists hurt. Your heart hurts.

Your mind is useless with suffering.

You can't live like this anymore.

You can't sleep.

You're hungry.

You're so tired your fingers are sticking together.

Your life is a waste.

Ruined.

You can't fix it.

You don't care about anything anymore, except outrunning the pain and guilt and fear. Stealing moments of pleasure and numb solace whenever and however you can.

Burned bridges. Broken promises. Endless lies. Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, PAIN.

Perpetual pain. Body, heart, mind.

Broken. Everything's broken.

Nothing ever works out.

Too late to fix it.

You can't do anything right.

Loser. Fraud. Freak. Liar. Idiot. Pervert. Embarrassment.

Unwanted. Unloved.

Unnecessary.

The ringing in your left ear is loud, piercing. You're losing your hearing. 33 and losing your fucking hearing. Getting older, getting poorer, becoming more and more helpless.

Terror.

Aching jaw/sore teeth. Peridontal disease. Flipper that's about to fail. Job-hunting with obviously false teeth is hard enough. Missing teeth? May as well park your ass in the gutter and wait for death right now.

You're going to die. Heart attack, stress, rape, car accident, suicide. Old age.

Mental institution. Nowhere else to go.

No family, no friends, no car, no money, no help, no hope, no way out.

You're going to die after having lived like this.

You're afraid of death, but even more afraid of continuing to live your life.

No turning back.

No saying sorry.

No redemption.

No hope.

No way out.

No way out.

No way out.

No way out.

Somebody looked at your OKCupid profile. Somebody that's cute/interesting. HUGE BREATH. You're not totally ugly/undesirable! Somebody liked your picture enough to check out you're profile! You're okay! You're pretty/interesting/smart! Everything's alright!

They didn't message you. Too intense for them. Their loss. Ha! Sheep. Nobody can deal with your realness. You're just too authentic and honest.

*Soar on an extremely short-lived high of self-aggrandizing and arrogance*

And the cycle/sickness rages on.

Complimentary peek inside the psyche of a Lost One, Deeply Disturbed, savaged, obliterated, torn asunder, wild and thrashing, mindless, surviving by any means and method.

Living in a weakly constructed, often malfunctioning fantasy land just to stay alive.

Abused. Abuser. Sick. Neglected. Forgotten. Mad. Broken. Hopeless. Helpless.

Insane.