Got a girlfriend
Got an apartment
Got more bills
Got more games
Got better internet
Got better at Starcraft for a while but then
Got Civilization V and it's all for nothing now
Spent more time at her place than mine
Spent more money on bills than ever
Spent more time on Netflix than Xbox
Spent more on curry than anyone could have guessed
Working on my story, still
Working on an actual comic soon
Working on getting back into writing classes
Working on getting a foothold into writing on my own site, my God, too many things
Tired
Bored
Alone (until Tuesday)
Excited (for writing)
I think that's everything. My excuse for not going over all of this in much finer details is that I was too busy living it. Documenting things can be hard when you don't hold yourself to a consistent routine. I guess I can sat least talk about where my mind has been at since moving:
Moving out was not exciting, scary, or anything other than overdue. My mom kept telling me that it would hit me, either sooner or later. It didn't. I was never afraid. I was never excited. To be honest, the most it ever was was embarrassing. It felt overdue. It felt like a delayed step into adulthood. It felt like every moment before was an excuse to not grow up, go outside, and live a life. And it permeates a lot of my old writing. I was talking to Felicia (my girlfriend for those who don't know already) about my Kendall post. It seems like it's from another era, but in reality it was only a month or two before I met Felicia. Here's how long it feels like it has been: I had to go back to the aforementioned post to remember her name, just now. Anyhow, just reading that perspective, it leaks a lot of insecurity. It reads like it is: a worried, self-assuring post from a kid who hasn't moved out yet. Moving out in a way feels like it's enabled me to take on more adult emotional capabilities. Not more complex, just more grounded. If I could do it over again in my present circumstances, I'd do a lot better in just about every way. But I wouldn't, because fucking up there ultimately led to who I'm with now.
It seems to me that for a smart person, it's easy to let fear utilize your intelligence to justify avoiding living your life. It's easy to make excuses for why you can't go out, can't spend time with your friends, can't do anything. There will always be work. There will always be obligations. And different will always be scary. But how long can you use those things to avoid seeing the world? For all we know, you've only got one shot at it. It just feels like there's no justification for not challenging everything, including your perception of your own contentedness. All I ever wanted to do as a kid is be an adult, to be the guy that knows his shit, and have the requisite confidence that comes with it. Well, now I've hit the edge of the beginning. Now I'm old enough to technically fill a small margin of those expectations. And now it's different. Now that I have a taste for being a man, what I really want is to absorb. As a kid, I wanted to meet what I felt was a societal expectation, to have a certain station superior to most. In short, to be better than most people. And this may just be my bias talking but I feel like a lot of people probably feel that way. But over time, I'm starting to find myself caring less and less about those sort of things. They just don't seem fulfilling at all. What I feel like I want now is to be free of that sort of thinking. Or not to be free, but to contextualize it in a place I feel it deserves, as a part of a child's mentality. My obsession has become understanding what leads people to become trapped within their own perspective. I see people who are content to be exactly what they are and nothing more. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, I think it's important to embrace your own identity. But I also wonder why they don't want to be something more, too. I have and continue to take pleasure in dismantling my own reasoning and thought processes. Why do I feel this? Why do I think that the sum of knowledge I have on x is sufficient? How does my favoring bias towards myself affect my view on this? These are all things that I think are really important to understand. I think it's dangerous to assume anything about yourself, or to feel that you're going to remain the same person over time, across experiences. What's true about me now may not be tomorrow. And that goes counter to the idea of concrete personality traits, it seems. So what constitutes a personality-defining trait and what constitutes a trait that may only be temporary? What evolves and what only changes? I feel like my life is in this way a series of interesting social experiments, while still being just a normal human experience. I don't mean that first part of the sentence to sound as anti-septic as it's coming across, because while one of the goals is to attempt to understand myself, the primary goal is to be able to look back on my times and be contented with the decisions I made.
I think most people spent each era of their lives wishing they could go back and redo the previous ones now that they know more about themselves and the world. I was thinking today as Make Me Bad by Korn came on my music player, "my god, if I had realized how much of an influence I was on my stepbrothers, who knows how my relationship with them and their relationship with music would be different now!" You see, back around the time when Issues came out, my older brother Roman was not into music like Korn at all. I used to listen sort of ashamedly on my own little CD player and headphones, because I didn't want to foist my tastes upon people that didn't share them. Not because it would inconvenience them, but because it would embarrass me. That's an important distinction in terms of motivation. Anyhow, the song Somebody, Someone came on one of these times, and I thought, "we used to watch horror movies when we were younger, even though he doesn't like this band, he might like this first part of the song." I was hoping to get ten seconds of validation from someone I considered my superior.
http://www.youtube.com/v/igX0ZEJKXsQ?
It turns out he did like it, and it planted a seed. Soon, he turned around completely on the band, and when the music video for this very song came out on MTV, we would totally get into it.
http://www.youtube.com/v/FBEE-t-uyI0?
Still, I had a lot of trepidation about sharing music. But as time went on and that era of my life came closer to ending, I had a burgeoning realization that Roman in a very real and yet still older brother way looked up to my taste in music. My tastes helped bring more definition to his, and the unwitting encouragement of enjoyment spurred mine in directions it may never have gone. I got Satellite by POD because of (seriously) one song, and partially because the music video was cool:
http://www.youtube.com/v/LOESyEljmFE?
I remember bringing this album over with the intent of listening to it with them. I ended up going on a walk to the store. I liked exploring the world in this way at the time. I was limited in just how far I could go, and there was something freeing about not being beholden to a more protective parent who'd at the very least ask questions or tell me to be careful, both things that at the time believe it or not could be enough of a nerve-inspiring hassle to make me not bother. Anyhow, I came back from the store and Roman was playing Hydro Thunder on N64 and telling me, "This CD is SO GOOD." That felt like a victory for me. It was peer acceptance in the purest sense. It was someone else telling me "what you feel is totally correct." But the honest truth is that this realization and validation came much sooner, although I was too young to appreciate it. We were just little kids when Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morisette came out. Much, much too young to grasp the actual meaning of the lyrics, or possibly detect dad's fear that us putting this album on repeat surely meant at least one of us had to be gay.
http://www.youtube.com/v/4iuO49jbovg?
Hearing this song 40,000 times coming through the bedroom door had to be disconcerting, and possibly the only moment that alleviated this is when he called us down because this music video happened to be on and we ALL said, "SHE IS SO PRETTY." This album was either lent to me by my mom, or taken from her (probably the latter) and is my first real moment of musical bonding with my other family. This also happened when one of us got hold of the Bare Naked Ladies' album with One Week on it.
http://www.youtube.com/v/snZcn3Qt1xI?
Me, Travis, Roman, and Roman's friend Matt all stood around the stereo, holding the liner notes that had the lyrics to this song, and tried to sing and keep up with it. Far more than one time. Seriously. And at that time, taste was so strongly communally oriented that I can't even say for sure who first liked the song. Not to say this worked every time, because back when the Spice Girls were popular, Roman brought home the CD and tried to get us into it. It didn't take, but at least from my perspective, my desire for acceptance kept me from outright making fun of him, because I didn't want to damage this thing that I for some reason perceived we all had.
And in at least one occasion, my dad also unwittingly had a hand in this, when a coworker lent him a CD with a song that made him laugh.
http://www.youtube.com/v/CMRaSXh9-n4?
My dad didn't think all to much of this band beyond this song, Dune Buggy and We're Not Gonna Make It, and honestly, before I bought this CD, I didn't even realize there were more than 5 or 6 songs on it. But we LOVED this song, and we listened to it again, and again, and again. I remember this all very clearly, and this ended up becoming the first album that I ever bought with my own money.
My overarching point is, knowing all these things, if given the chance, I could easily redo this entire era of my childhood better. I would have a lot more confidence in my own place in the dynamic. I could easily have brought in a lot more music, and maybe even redefined the (for lack of a better term) balance of power amongst my brothers. But these memories are a product of that unknown fumbling, that lack of confidence in myself. That experience of being embarrassed, and hopeful, slightly ashamed and yet eager, they all form into one rich narrative that defines a large part of who I am now, and who I'll always be. The value of screwing up is so often understated in the world. It always has a negative connotation. But some of my fondest memories are a direct result of mistakes, and in retrospect, many of them are so endearing because they're embarrassing. It's impossible to calculate the exact synthesis of anyone's personality, but you can very easily say that a lot of my eccentricities today owe themselves to the fact that for 8 months after Tenchu came out, I was the kind of kid who thought I sounded EXACTLY like the soldier that says, "WHAT?" when you make too much noise, and the basis of that belief turned into a game we played in the backyard pool for literally years. I was the kid who read a two sentence synopsis of Resident Evil, and then not only completely fabricated a plot for three games on the spot to impress Roman's friends, but then decided we should film a parody/homage to each of them. And we <span style="font-style:italic;">did.</span> Putting this to paper makes me realize two things: that embarrassment also gets a bad rap, and that our desires as children towards acceptance can lead us to hilariously awesome and ridiculous circumstances and ideas, and the formulation and execution of those ideas define who we are.
I went pretty far into the memory pool here and kind of lost my page, so I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because we're adults, doesn't mean we should be any different. Instead of regretting the mistakes we made as younger people, we should embrace them for what the realization of them has brought to us in our current places. We live in a culture that seems to have a fetish for shaming others, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that shame is exactly the wrong emotion to have over a lot of our fuckups. Right now, I really feel like there is never a more perfect time than the moment you inhabit now to commit to bold foolishness. And the only way to do that is to step outside of the tiny worlds we've made comfortable for ourselves.
Got an apartment
Got more bills
Got more games
Got better internet
Got better at Starcraft for a while but then
Got Civilization V and it's all for nothing now
Spent more time at her place than mine
Spent more money on bills than ever
Spent more time on Netflix than Xbox
Spent more on curry than anyone could have guessed
Working on my story, still
Working on an actual comic soon
Working on getting back into writing classes
Working on getting a foothold into writing on my own site, my God, too many things
Tired
Bored
Alone (until Tuesday)
Excited (for writing)
I think that's everything. My excuse for not going over all of this in much finer details is that I was too busy living it. Documenting things can be hard when you don't hold yourself to a consistent routine. I guess I can sat least talk about where my mind has been at since moving:
Moving out was not exciting, scary, or anything other than overdue. My mom kept telling me that it would hit me, either sooner or later. It didn't. I was never afraid. I was never excited. To be honest, the most it ever was was embarrassing. It felt overdue. It felt like a delayed step into adulthood. It felt like every moment before was an excuse to not grow up, go outside, and live a life. And it permeates a lot of my old writing. I was talking to Felicia (my girlfriend for those who don't know already) about my Kendall post. It seems like it's from another era, but in reality it was only a month or two before I met Felicia. Here's how long it feels like it has been: I had to go back to the aforementioned post to remember her name, just now. Anyhow, just reading that perspective, it leaks a lot of insecurity. It reads like it is: a worried, self-assuring post from a kid who hasn't moved out yet. Moving out in a way feels like it's enabled me to take on more adult emotional capabilities. Not more complex, just more grounded. If I could do it over again in my present circumstances, I'd do a lot better in just about every way. But I wouldn't, because fucking up there ultimately led to who I'm with now.
It seems to me that for a smart person, it's easy to let fear utilize your intelligence to justify avoiding living your life. It's easy to make excuses for why you can't go out, can't spend time with your friends, can't do anything. There will always be work. There will always be obligations. And different will always be scary. But how long can you use those things to avoid seeing the world? For all we know, you've only got one shot at it. It just feels like there's no justification for not challenging everything, including your perception of your own contentedness. All I ever wanted to do as a kid is be an adult, to be the guy that knows his shit, and have the requisite confidence that comes with it. Well, now I've hit the edge of the beginning. Now I'm old enough to technically fill a small margin of those expectations. And now it's different. Now that I have a taste for being a man, what I really want is to absorb. As a kid, I wanted to meet what I felt was a societal expectation, to have a certain station superior to most. In short, to be better than most people. And this may just be my bias talking but I feel like a lot of people probably feel that way. But over time, I'm starting to find myself caring less and less about those sort of things. They just don't seem fulfilling at all. What I feel like I want now is to be free of that sort of thinking. Or not to be free, but to contextualize it in a place I feel it deserves, as a part of a child's mentality. My obsession has become understanding what leads people to become trapped within their own perspective. I see people who are content to be exactly what they are and nothing more. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, I think it's important to embrace your own identity. But I also wonder why they don't want to be something more, too. I have and continue to take pleasure in dismantling my own reasoning and thought processes. Why do I feel this? Why do I think that the sum of knowledge I have on x is sufficient? How does my favoring bias towards myself affect my view on this? These are all things that I think are really important to understand. I think it's dangerous to assume anything about yourself, or to feel that you're going to remain the same person over time, across experiences. What's true about me now may not be tomorrow. And that goes counter to the idea of concrete personality traits, it seems. So what constitutes a personality-defining trait and what constitutes a trait that may only be temporary? What evolves and what only changes? I feel like my life is in this way a series of interesting social experiments, while still being just a normal human experience. I don't mean that first part of the sentence to sound as anti-septic as it's coming across, because while one of the goals is to attempt to understand myself, the primary goal is to be able to look back on my times and be contented with the decisions I made.
I think most people spent each era of their lives wishing they could go back and redo the previous ones now that they know more about themselves and the world. I was thinking today as Make Me Bad by Korn came on my music player, "my god, if I had realized how much of an influence I was on my stepbrothers, who knows how my relationship with them and their relationship with music would be different now!" You see, back around the time when Issues came out, my older brother Roman was not into music like Korn at all. I used to listen sort of ashamedly on my own little CD player and headphones, because I didn't want to foist my tastes upon people that didn't share them. Not because it would inconvenience them, but because it would embarrass me. That's an important distinction in terms of motivation. Anyhow, the song Somebody, Someone came on one of these times, and I thought, "we used to watch horror movies when we were younger, even though he doesn't like this band, he might like this first part of the song." I was hoping to get ten seconds of validation from someone I considered my superior.
http://www.youtube.com/v/igX0ZEJKXsQ?
It turns out he did like it, and it planted a seed. Soon, he turned around completely on the band, and when the music video for this very song came out on MTV, we would totally get into it.
http://www.youtube.com/v/FBEE-t-uyI0?
Still, I had a lot of trepidation about sharing music. But as time went on and that era of my life came closer to ending, I had a burgeoning realization that Roman in a very real and yet still older brother way looked up to my taste in music. My tastes helped bring more definition to his, and the unwitting encouragement of enjoyment spurred mine in directions it may never have gone. I got Satellite by POD because of (seriously) one song, and partially because the music video was cool:
http://www.youtube.com/v/LOESyEljmFE?
I remember bringing this album over with the intent of listening to it with them. I ended up going on a walk to the store. I liked exploring the world in this way at the time. I was limited in just how far I could go, and there was something freeing about not being beholden to a more protective parent who'd at the very least ask questions or tell me to be careful, both things that at the time believe it or not could be enough of a nerve-inspiring hassle to make me not bother. Anyhow, I came back from the store and Roman was playing Hydro Thunder on N64 and telling me, "This CD is SO GOOD." That felt like a victory for me. It was peer acceptance in the purest sense. It was someone else telling me "what you feel is totally correct." But the honest truth is that this realization and validation came much sooner, although I was too young to appreciate it. We were just little kids when Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morisette came out. Much, much too young to grasp the actual meaning of the lyrics, or possibly detect dad's fear that us putting this album on repeat surely meant at least one of us had to be gay.
http://www.youtube.com/v/4iuO49jbovg?
Hearing this song 40,000 times coming through the bedroom door had to be disconcerting, and possibly the only moment that alleviated this is when he called us down because this music video happened to be on and we ALL said, "SHE IS SO PRETTY." This album was either lent to me by my mom, or taken from her (probably the latter) and is my first real moment of musical bonding with my other family. This also happened when one of us got hold of the Bare Naked Ladies' album with One Week on it.
http://www.youtube.com/v/snZcn3Qt1xI?
Me, Travis, Roman, and Roman's friend Matt all stood around the stereo, holding the liner notes that had the lyrics to this song, and tried to sing and keep up with it. Far more than one time. Seriously. And at that time, taste was so strongly communally oriented that I can't even say for sure who first liked the song. Not to say this worked every time, because back when the Spice Girls were popular, Roman brought home the CD and tried to get us into it. It didn't take, but at least from my perspective, my desire for acceptance kept me from outright making fun of him, because I didn't want to damage this thing that I for some reason perceived we all had.
And in at least one occasion, my dad also unwittingly had a hand in this, when a coworker lent him a CD with a song that made him laugh.
http://www.youtube.com/v/CMRaSXh9-n4?
My dad didn't think all to much of this band beyond this song, Dune Buggy and We're Not Gonna Make It, and honestly, before I bought this CD, I didn't even realize there were more than 5 or 6 songs on it. But we LOVED this song, and we listened to it again, and again, and again. I remember this all very clearly, and this ended up becoming the first album that I ever bought with my own money.
My overarching point is, knowing all these things, if given the chance, I could easily redo this entire era of my childhood better. I would have a lot more confidence in my own place in the dynamic. I could easily have brought in a lot more music, and maybe even redefined the (for lack of a better term) balance of power amongst my brothers. But these memories are a product of that unknown fumbling, that lack of confidence in myself. That experience of being embarrassed, and hopeful, slightly ashamed and yet eager, they all form into one rich narrative that defines a large part of who I am now, and who I'll always be. The value of screwing up is so often understated in the world. It always has a negative connotation. But some of my fondest memories are a direct result of mistakes, and in retrospect, many of them are so endearing because they're embarrassing. It's impossible to calculate the exact synthesis of anyone's personality, but you can very easily say that a lot of my eccentricities today owe themselves to the fact that for 8 months after Tenchu came out, I was the kind of kid who thought I sounded EXACTLY like the soldier that says, "WHAT?" when you make too much noise, and the basis of that belief turned into a game we played in the backyard pool for literally years. I was the kid who read a two sentence synopsis of Resident Evil, and then not only completely fabricated a plot for three games on the spot to impress Roman's friends, but then decided we should film a parody/homage to each of them. And we <span style="font-style:italic;">did.</span> Putting this to paper makes me realize two things: that embarrassment also gets a bad rap, and that our desires as children towards acceptance can lead us to hilariously awesome and ridiculous circumstances and ideas, and the formulation and execution of those ideas define who we are.
I went pretty far into the memory pool here and kind of lost my page, so I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because we're adults, doesn't mean we should be any different. Instead of regretting the mistakes we made as younger people, we should embrace them for what the realization of them has brought to us in our current places. We live in a culture that seems to have a fetish for shaming others, and the more I think about it, the more I realize that shame is exactly the wrong emotion to have over a lot of our fuckups. Right now, I really feel like there is never a more perfect time than the moment you inhabit now to commit to bold foolishness. And the only way to do that is to step outside of the tiny worlds we've made comfortable for ourselves.
I moved out, found a girlfriend and haven't seen my new place for more than a few hours at a time in months. Life is weird.
I just got fucking real with my brother.
From Facebook:
Travis: fuck all of you strait up
Me: Ironically, you forgot the G
Rebecca: lol it would be ironic if he remembered the G
Travis: both of yall some knocks strait up
Ronda: Knocks? Really? Learn the term retard cus I believe Rebecca and B.j. Both have jobs and aren't on drugs and are definately not homeless low lifes. Don't even get me started on you're faggot ass.
Travis: oh okay so when i slap the shit outta of u u dont have to ask y now dumbass rip go have another baby
Ronda: Ooooo ouch. Lmao grow up!
Me: The English language can be a powerful weapon when wielded properly.
Rebecca: Yes... yes it can
. Obviously someone got their feelings a little hurt and felt the need to verbally attack to make himself feel better. The problem is; it is difficult to effectively verbally attack someone when you don't have a firm grasp of the English language to begin with. Ronda thanks for sharing this video, it gave me a good laugh today, as did the comments that followed .
Travis: wow okay becca i aint even gunna start on u so ima just stop rite now
Me: It just astounds me that you are so content to be a product of your environment, rather than surpassing it. You have the ability to be a lot smarter, much more well expressed, and above the bullshit that you instead choose to celebrate. I find that really sad. I find it sad that you're surrounded by immature, coarse thugs who barely have the ... See morecapacity to read and write and are going to be exactly where they are right now in fifteen years, and you skip along with them with glee.
I remember when you were what, maybe 6 or 7 years old and me you and Roman made up our own laser tag game in the house because we didn't have the equipment, and we even wrote up our own scorecards after each 'round.' I remember I looked at your scorecard and you drew a triangle on a horse or something ridiculous like that. It was fucking adorable. Now I see you and you're posting these poorly-spelled, error-laden and idiotic lyrics about shooting people and getting money, saying nigger like it's okay, and it's just fucking sad and silly. You have so much cleverness as a man that you just throw away completely trying to be hard. In the real world, the one outside the hood, no one gives a shit if you're hard. I sit at my job and watch hard people lose theirs because they have no discipline all the time. It's just a goddamn shame, because you deserve more than you'll allow yourself to have, or be.
Life is fucking weird. It's hard to see a relative in a glass box and literally be able to do nothing to avert their course beyond hope that your words have meaning. Travis is my half brother who I've known since he was born but has been on my dad's side of the family while I stayed with my mom. Great for me, shit for him, because as you may have garnered from reading past posts, my dad is a douche of monumental proportions and an utter failure as a father.
Anyhow, Travis moved to Oakland not too long ago into what I can only presume is a ghetto area, because ever since he moved there he's become the biggest wigger on the face of the fucking planet. I'm not kidding.
This kid is nothing but shitty rap lyrics, underage drinking and flashing money that he got...somehow. His grammar and spelling have more or less degenerated back to a 1st grade level. He's pushing 19 and he talks like an 8 year old. It's hard to come up with a kid and then watch him as he basically decides he's going to smoke pot and drink all day. I understand people go through phases, and for some they can last years. He might turn it all around and become a really fucking interesting 40 year old. Or you know, he could drunk drive into an abutment and be dead before he reaches my age, or get shot yelling "NIGGA!" on the corner of 43rd Street.
From Facebook:
Travis: fuck all of you strait up
Me: Ironically, you forgot the G
Rebecca: lol it would be ironic if he remembered the G
Travis: both of yall some knocks strait up
Ronda: Knocks? Really? Learn the term retard cus I believe Rebecca and B.j. Both have jobs and aren't on drugs and are definately not homeless low lifes. Don't even get me started on you're faggot ass.
Travis: oh okay so when i slap the shit outta of u u dont have to ask y now dumbass rip go have another baby
Ronda: Ooooo ouch. Lmao grow up!
Me: The English language can be a powerful weapon when wielded properly.
Rebecca: Yes... yes it can
. Obviously someone got their feelings a little hurt and felt the need to verbally attack to make himself feel better. The problem is; it is difficult to effectively verbally attack someone when you don't have a firm grasp of the English language to begin with. Ronda thanks for sharing this video, it gave me a good laugh today, as did the comments that followed .Travis: wow okay becca i aint even gunna start on u so ima just stop rite now
Me: It just astounds me that you are so content to be a product of your environment, rather than surpassing it. You have the ability to be a lot smarter, much more well expressed, and above the bullshit that you instead choose to celebrate. I find that really sad. I find it sad that you're surrounded by immature, coarse thugs who barely have the ... See morecapacity to read and write and are going to be exactly where they are right now in fifteen years, and you skip along with them with glee.
I remember when you were what, maybe 6 or 7 years old and me you and Roman made up our own laser tag game in the house because we didn't have the equipment, and we even wrote up our own scorecards after each 'round.' I remember I looked at your scorecard and you drew a triangle on a horse or something ridiculous like that. It was fucking adorable. Now I see you and you're posting these poorly-spelled, error-laden and idiotic lyrics about shooting people and getting money, saying nigger like it's okay, and it's just fucking sad and silly. You have so much cleverness as a man that you just throw away completely trying to be hard. In the real world, the one outside the hood, no one gives a shit if you're hard. I sit at my job and watch hard people lose theirs because they have no discipline all the time. It's just a goddamn shame, because you deserve more than you'll allow yourself to have, or be.
Life is fucking weird. It's hard to see a relative in a glass box and literally be able to do nothing to avert their course beyond hope that your words have meaning. Travis is my half brother who I've known since he was born but has been on my dad's side of the family while I stayed with my mom. Great for me, shit for him, because as you may have garnered from reading past posts, my dad is a douche of monumental proportions and an utter failure as a father.
Anyhow, Travis moved to Oakland not too long ago into what I can only presume is a ghetto area, because ever since he moved there he's become the biggest wigger on the face of the fucking planet. I'm not kidding.
This kid is nothing but shitty rap lyrics, underage drinking and flashing money that he got...somehow. His grammar and spelling have more or less degenerated back to a 1st grade level. He's pushing 19 and he talks like an 8 year old. It's hard to come up with a kid and then watch him as he basically decides he's going to smoke pot and drink all day. I understand people go through phases, and for some they can last years. He might turn it all around and become a really fucking interesting 40 year old. Or you know, he could drunk drive into an abutment and be dead before he reaches my age, or get shot yelling "NIGGA!" on the corner of 43rd Street.
So I just discovered that I have testimonials from people. Man, I rock at navigating this site
Anyhow, I was going to get to copy-pasting from my actual blog, since that's where I do any kind of updating, so I guess I'm overdue:
I was talking with my mom one time about her friend who was having troubles with panicking. This friend I guess would get overwhelmed in a way that made her freeze up in a situation and unable to do anything. And I mean that, the difference between having a moment of panic and being a panicker is wide. Everyone has moments where they're not sure what to do. I'll tell you about mine in a moment. But a panicker will panic for no reason, and be unable to do anything. A panicker will be holding a piece of toast and for no reason at all, will freak out, and can't eat it, can't put it down, can't do anything except freeze, and freak the fuck out. And most importantly, they have trouble going, "I'm panicking right now, for no reason, and I can make myself stop." In that moment, it's hard for them to step back in that way. I told my mom, "I've never had that problem, I never seem to panic." She said, "we're not panickers. We're obsessers."
Boy, she couldn't be more right. It seems I spend every waking moment over-thinking every other one. It's just my way. And it's comfortable. In analyzing a moment, I feel in control. I feel like I can understand anything if I just have the time to look at it and think it over. This has an interesting effect on my waking life: whenever I have moments that didn't go my way, conversations in which I didn't accomplish what I wanted to, events that didn't turn out as I had planned, I cannot help but feel that it was because I was unprepared for them. Is this correct, or just a feeling due to my obsessive nature? To me, that's an interesting question. Regardless, this in turn makes me analyze such events even more vigorously, and attempt to alter my following actions to see how the situation changes. And there's problems with that: my perception of a situation is inherently limited to what I think, hope and fear. It is all of those things at once, and reason is rarely the predominant force. More often than not, fear is a major silent partner with hope, supposition, superstition, and despair. Here's a case in point of why that's a problem.
I've been seeing this girl for the past couple of weeks. I of course met her on the internet, so insert your cynicism here. Trust me, my views tend to see it as an unlikely lottery too, except instead of spending money I'm spending time and energy. Her name is Kendall, and yes I'm saying her name because in ten years it won't matter one way or the other. You're not getting her last name so I figure, irrelevant. I guess I'll wait to see if this burns me before I change my thoughts. I don't want to have to explain this later because I've already detracted too far from my post.
I use the term 'seeing' almost literally: I've seen her a couple of times, and I attribute that to a couple of things. First of all, I'm intimidated by her on a certain level. A romantic intimidation. This is not unique to her in my life certainly, but this is the strongest it has ever been. She has inspired moments of panic in me that have no place being there. Travis was around the first day I met her, it was a street art show in Oakland; she was with a friend, I was with a friend. I was kind of stiff but I was also a fish out of water. The truth is that I'm not used to just organically meeting girls, divorced from the obvious agenda that a date entails. I just ran into this girl like I could any girl on the street, and how we spent our time together, I could have spent with any other person there. And this was foreign to me. Now, maybe the art show added an extra element that I was unaccustomed to; I am not anti-social but handling a large crowd is not my strength either. What threw me off was I had no opportunity to be 'on': no chance to try and sell myself as (for lack of a better term) a suitable mate. And that was a good thing. I mean, I was smart enough to know to just roll with whatever was happening, even if I didn't get it in that moment.
The next time I saw her was a short time later, at her place. I watched her cook dinner and we chatted about this and that. I was mostly whimsical wordplay humor guy, because that's sort of what she brings out of me and it was working. We ended up renting the Hurt Locker (SO romantic, a bomb movie) and laid down in her bed. She cuddled up against me and once again I was feeling this anxiety. Not because she was getting close to me, I liked that a lot, and I of course wanted more. I was feeling anxious because my gentleman switch went haywire and my brain interpreted what was happening in reverse: I was getting close to her. You may or may not know about me that I have a MAJOR issue with perceiving myself to be overstepping physical bounds. I've had this dumb problem for a while, and while thankfully it only applies to the first couple weeks of a relationship, it's still there in the first place. Basically, I am terrified of the following: I will do _____ action to a girl; kiss her, touch her, fill in the blank, and she will pull away briskly and go, "What are you doing?" That thought mortifies me. I really wish I could hash out where that comes from. Anyhow, the stupidity of this situation was that I had that exact feeling of trepidation with an action I wasn't performing, and by nature of the situation would be conversely welcomed! This was a minor kick though and I welcomed her affection cautiously, although when came the chance to explore further I sort of softshoed it and (I'm fairly sure) because of that, we didn't have sex. In fact, I didn't even stay the night. She had work the next morning which I already knew, but I can't help but wonder how it might have gone differently.
Now already you can tell two things from this story that is not yet complete: first, I wasn't kidding when I said I over-think things, and I'm obviously comfortable with that thought process and sharing it. It's familiar. It's the way I am. I care about things to levels of extremity. It's just my nature. Second, I am sending poor Kendall all kinds of mixed messages (or at least, I think I am). I'm not used to things moving quickly, and this was most certainly doing that. In fact, quickly triggers suspicion, because most of the girls I've dated who moved quickly, went quickly through the entire process. But maybe it's me. Maybe the fact that I'm so in my head about all this minute bullshit puts up a wall, changes the energy, and girls decide, "Wow, I don't want to deal with this headache." Truth is I don't know, and I want to know so I can change it because this situation opened my eyes to how at least part of the problem is my subconscious inertia and energy. You don't know how you come off to other people, after all, only how you think you do. Maybe I should have just stuck my hand in her pants and saw what happened next. I did and DO want to do that, because here's something you may not know about this girl: she's fucking hot and everything I didn't do with her is exactly where my mind was the second she sat next to me. But wait, this story gets more cringe-inducing.
The third day I see her begins. Now, after a night of being affectionate, you'd think I'd greet her at her door with a kiss, or fucking something, I dunno. But no, I didn't. And worse, I saw her bristle when it didn't happen. So we sit down, she cooks dinner for herself, and we're just chatting. She realizes she needs some oil or something to continue cooking, so we walk down to the store. It's raining, I'm holding the umbrella, and she's holding onto me, who has magically turned into a robot. This is my retarded gentleman haywire again, and though I'm reciprocating, it's closed off and unsure. This is my perception of it, anyhow. Ugh, how annoying. Get over it and just fucking roll with it! I tell myself this, but was unable in that moment to put impulse to action. We get back, and she finishes cooking. She has a karaoke birfday party she needs to go to at a gay bar in Oakland and she wants to know if I want to come. Sure, sounds like fun. So I drive us down there and we head to the bar. This is just what I need. One fucking drink, that will loosen me up a mile here, because typically one drink loosens me up a bit but for some reason tonight my screws are really tight.
So of course I don't order one. I'm the driver! Like one beer makes a fucking difference. And boy do I hope an intoxicated person's perception of a stiff is not as exaggerated by alcohol as my perception of my demeanor was affected by the mood of the general group. I was agreeable certainly and not at all unpleasant. But I was also safe, septic, the kind of uninteresting person I only am when I'm trying to figure out my situation. In retrospect, this part is pretty minor because I wasn't bad, I was a little too "oh golly shucks, you guys." We drive back to her place and I go to drop her off because she needs to get to sleep for school, and fucking FINALLY I go "just kiss her you fucktard" and I do. Yay me. She tells me the next two weeks are going to be crazy because school is ending, so I may not see her. I say if she finds a spot, let me know.
This is a fair end, and one that in the ensuing week, I would needlessly over-complicate again, because when I'm feeling insecure about something I can't just sit on it and see what happens. See, I was worried about how things ended. Not because of the ending, but because of what preceded it, which added a tone of uncertainty to "busy with school." When I'm nervous about something, shadows are taller. AND I'm an excuse-teller, so I see everything as an excuse. I was afraid this was her way of slowly pulling away in the way that girls do, where it's technically over now, in this moment, but the moment extends out over days or weeks instead of just being in a statement like "Thanks but no thanks." I just felt robotic, which as you know is not my persona at all. I'm the opposite of robotic, and I'm even decent at bringing out the lively side of people. I really wanted to show this girl how comfortable I was with her personality and life because everything I saw about her I liked, and still do. She's cute, and her idiosyncrasies are frankly adorable. She licked my nose. How delightfully strange! And maybe that's where all this comes from: I genuinely like this girl, and for once because of circumstance I had to meet her on honest terms, not selling myself but just meeting her and being myself. I didn't try to impress her with some kind of intellectual discussion or be the funny fucking guy or any of the bullshit that I pull out with girls. I had no agenda. I just knew that I liked her and she seemed to like me. And that's the problem: on some stupid dysfunctional level, I'm afraid she's going to be disappointed by me in all the ways that I've been pleasantly surprised by her. It's that simple. But that dumb fear drives me to sabotage this into the same place her being unimpressed would take us.
So let me tell you about last week.
It started off with a text to her, asking her if she was at all interested in reading my writing, which up until this point we had sparsely talked about. And this was my first moment of falseness with this girl on some level: while I do want her to be interested in my writing, the offer itself in this case is disingenuous; what I want is some acknowledgment that the last time we saw each other wasn't so disappointing that you've written me off. That's what it was. And you can't just ask that, because then the person will go, "ugh, how needy are you?" Truthfully, I think we all have this level of neediness sometimes but to get around it we've entered a specific ritual into the social contract: talking about other shit. Engaging is engaging, and in bringing up what is essentially a nothing, I'm asking you to return a nothing back to signal me that yes, you've still got interest. Now here's the problem with this theory. IT'S MY FUCKING THEORY. It could be totally untrue, and while I know that more than just I subscribe to it, some people are oblivious. Some people aren't and don't care, some people disagree, and all people are busy. In essence, to restrict yourself to believing "this is the way it is" is to fall victim to interpreting the response or lack thereof you get in return as part of the same formula when it might not be. In other words, just because I texted you bullshit, does NOT mean that your lack of a reply indicates disinterest in me. Yes, I took the roundabout, overly-wordy explanation of that. That's in my fucking nature too. And that's exactly what happened: I sent a "please acknowledge me text" and got no acknowledgment. And it could be for a thousand reasons. Like, maybe she's busy with the school she told me about! This occured to me at the time but in the way that maybe Alameda will be destroyed by an earthquake occasionally occurs to me. Like the possibility is so distant, I'm only acknowledging it for the sake of showing that I was smart enough to conceive it. I've minimized the possible reality into irrelevance in my mind. And here's where the subject of dumb panic comes back again. So I don't get a reply, and I send an email, AGAIN, totally unrelated bullshit, which has nothing to do with my writing. No reply. Now at this point, you can imagine where my head is at, because I'm a pessimist. And to be fair, what makes this hard is I could totally be right. I have been right about this kind of thing before, more than once. So I also have the certainty of past experience spurring me.
And this is the part that's in my mind slightly less ridiculous because it feels like the first adult thing I've done about this feeling: I called her. And when she didn't pick up, I just left an honest message. I said basically that I felt like kind of a spaz, and I wanted to see her and show that I wasn't such a bumbly mess. Best move? No, but the first move I felt okay about, because it put me at ease, since I got my feelings out there. And if she took it or left it, at least I was straight with her about it. And then finally on the weekend or something, I can't remember now, I saw her pop up online and basically did the haven't seen you in awhile message. The conversation in my mind didn't go well, but at this point the only way to make myself feel better about it was to flesh everything out entirely. I apologized for messaging her so much, she said it didn't help, and I explained where my head was at and that I did like her and I just tried too hard to catch the ball I thought I dropped. She seemed pretty unreceptive and that actually made me feel better because now I felt like I knew where her head was at, even though it was not where I wanted it to be.
I was smart enough to not say anything for a day. I actually told myself I wouldn't say anything until around the end of the week, even if I wanted to because at this point, I've dug my six feet, this hole doesn't need to be any deeper. It is now purely up to her whether she wants to deal with a guy who has established himself as over-reactionary, uncomfortable, occasionally funny and earnest, for better or worse. And then I saw that she had a Facebook update about Scorpios being intense with a smiley face, and I am not a Scorpio, so I thought, "fuck it, just take your shot and know if it bombs" because now I felt like there's another guy and I most definitely lost out on this girl. Of course it could be absolutely nothing and of course it's up to interpretation but at this point even I'M sick of interpretation and I just want to stop thinking about this one way or the other. So I text, "Hey, are you free sometime this weekend?" which I'm 99% sure will be met with the "look, I gotta cut you loose" response. And she says, "School's out on Wednesday!!!!!" So I still have no idea where I stand, but finally I just don't worry about it one way or another. If she likes me, fucking great! And let's move forward with me finally shelving my dumb anxiety. If she doesn't, well fuck. At least I learned something about myself. I learned that dating has taught me absolutely nothing about how to handle what could legitimately be a relationship. It's so fraught with falseness and dishonest communication that it's ingrained me into a system of thought that doesn't work. And when I discard that system, I have nothing but my reactions to go by. I always kind of knew this to some degree but I didn't realize just how severe it was. And for once in a long, long fucking time, I feel like I've actually legitimately made a progressive step towards being who and what I want to be with who and what I want to be with. So ironically, as dissatisfied as I am with my performance throughout this entire thing, I'm so fucking glad it happened in such a way that I was able to break out of myself and see me in a totally different light. So thank you, Kendall, who is almost certainly not reading this, and hopefully you're just weird enough to say 'fuck it' and see how it goes from here but if not, my short fucking collection of moments with you was valuable, and I appreciate the experience immensely. Truthfully, writing this out helped me sort the entire experience, and I hadn't thought of it all in this level of detail, I just wanted to get the situation out exactly as I remember it happening for the sake of the page. So I guess I'm not nearly as obsessive as I could be. But still.
My problem remains thus: I care about everything way too much. And because of this, I erect barrier after barrier, trying to contain that so that I can function in society. I'm afraid that my intensity is too much to deal with. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but it's why I am the way I am with everything. Why when I get upset, I try to rationalize my upsetness, why things piss me off and I step away from them and force myself not to pay attention. It's why I'm a pessimist at all: I care so much about things like society and having a good life that when people and situations let me down, I have to restrain my reaction to them to be a functional person. The world is a fucked up place, and no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to change it, and I have nothing but the impetus to try. When injustice happens, I want to scream about it. my rants are just tiny bursts of what's underlying. At my core, I want to do things like set rapists on fire. When I care about someone, I just want to fully and completely embrace them with every part of myself. But I know that sweeps people away, so I contain it, divert it, restructure it as best I can. I think it affects my writing too, because I'm afraid that what I put on the page is going to be too incendiary, that it's going to hit people in ways they don't want to deal with. That it's going to hit ME in ways I don't want to deal with. In writing this post, I realized exactly where my main character's forceful personality comes from: he's me without restraint. In reality I'm paced a lot differently, but my passion for everything still peeks out like this.
It's one of the major reasons why I was initially attracted to this girl, was because she described herself as emotionally intense. But you know how it goes, a trait can be expressed a thousand ways, and can be misinterpreted in countless more.
One final thought, on love, which is the end goal of any real relationship. Love is a weakness to me, in that it's a lack of flexibility and perspective, traded off for massively intense focus. It's something I want, but having it means being utterly vulnerable in a way we all pretend to understand but honestly, I don't think any of us do. To be utterly vulnerable is to be connected to someone who can easily destroy you. That is the pinnacle of unrestrained love. It's absolute and total madness. And it doesn't work for just anyone. The closer I get to someone, the closer they get to me, and up to this point in my life, I've mashed a lot of emotion down, just for the sake of making it through the day. It can be exhausting. It IS exhausting. And this isn't my thing alone, to a certain extent we all have to play the game of how close to that madness we will let ourselves be, over time and ultimately at what point we step no further. And that's extraordinarily difficult for me because deep down inside, I want to explode in all directions, for everything around me to glow and breathe with new life and for the people around me to be carried with me in my crazy current. I wish that could work. I hope I can meet a person who shows me that it can. I understand talking about it in this way makes me look nuts, because it's the extreme end of an emotional spectrum, but it's something I definitely think about. And it makes me sound so young, I get that too. But I still feel it. It's still true about me right now, even if it won't always be. How do you reconcile that?
Yikes, that is long.
Anyhow, I was going to get to copy-pasting from my actual blog, since that's where I do any kind of updating, so I guess I'm overdue:
I was talking with my mom one time about her friend who was having troubles with panicking. This friend I guess would get overwhelmed in a way that made her freeze up in a situation and unable to do anything. And I mean that, the difference between having a moment of panic and being a panicker is wide. Everyone has moments where they're not sure what to do. I'll tell you about mine in a moment. But a panicker will panic for no reason, and be unable to do anything. A panicker will be holding a piece of toast and for no reason at all, will freak out, and can't eat it, can't put it down, can't do anything except freeze, and freak the fuck out. And most importantly, they have trouble going, "I'm panicking right now, for no reason, and I can make myself stop." In that moment, it's hard for them to step back in that way. I told my mom, "I've never had that problem, I never seem to panic." She said, "we're not panickers. We're obsessers."
Boy, she couldn't be more right. It seems I spend every waking moment over-thinking every other one. It's just my way. And it's comfortable. In analyzing a moment, I feel in control. I feel like I can understand anything if I just have the time to look at it and think it over. This has an interesting effect on my waking life: whenever I have moments that didn't go my way, conversations in which I didn't accomplish what I wanted to, events that didn't turn out as I had planned, I cannot help but feel that it was because I was unprepared for them. Is this correct, or just a feeling due to my obsessive nature? To me, that's an interesting question. Regardless, this in turn makes me analyze such events even more vigorously, and attempt to alter my following actions to see how the situation changes. And there's problems with that: my perception of a situation is inherently limited to what I think, hope and fear. It is all of those things at once, and reason is rarely the predominant force. More often than not, fear is a major silent partner with hope, supposition, superstition, and despair. Here's a case in point of why that's a problem.
I've been seeing this girl for the past couple of weeks. I of course met her on the internet, so insert your cynicism here. Trust me, my views tend to see it as an unlikely lottery too, except instead of spending money I'm spending time and energy. Her name is Kendall, and yes I'm saying her name because in ten years it won't matter one way or the other. You're not getting her last name so I figure, irrelevant. I guess I'll wait to see if this burns me before I change my thoughts. I don't want to have to explain this later because I've already detracted too far from my post.
I use the term 'seeing' almost literally: I've seen her a couple of times, and I attribute that to a couple of things. First of all, I'm intimidated by her on a certain level. A romantic intimidation. This is not unique to her in my life certainly, but this is the strongest it has ever been. She has inspired moments of panic in me that have no place being there. Travis was around the first day I met her, it was a street art show in Oakland; she was with a friend, I was with a friend. I was kind of stiff but I was also a fish out of water. The truth is that I'm not used to just organically meeting girls, divorced from the obvious agenda that a date entails. I just ran into this girl like I could any girl on the street, and how we spent our time together, I could have spent with any other person there. And this was foreign to me. Now, maybe the art show added an extra element that I was unaccustomed to; I am not anti-social but handling a large crowd is not my strength either. What threw me off was I had no opportunity to be 'on': no chance to try and sell myself as (for lack of a better term) a suitable mate. And that was a good thing. I mean, I was smart enough to know to just roll with whatever was happening, even if I didn't get it in that moment.
The next time I saw her was a short time later, at her place. I watched her cook dinner and we chatted about this and that. I was mostly whimsical wordplay humor guy, because that's sort of what she brings out of me and it was working. We ended up renting the Hurt Locker (SO romantic, a bomb movie) and laid down in her bed. She cuddled up against me and once again I was feeling this anxiety. Not because she was getting close to me, I liked that a lot, and I of course wanted more. I was feeling anxious because my gentleman switch went haywire and my brain interpreted what was happening in reverse: I was getting close to her. You may or may not know about me that I have a MAJOR issue with perceiving myself to be overstepping physical bounds. I've had this dumb problem for a while, and while thankfully it only applies to the first couple weeks of a relationship, it's still there in the first place. Basically, I am terrified of the following: I will do _____ action to a girl; kiss her, touch her, fill in the blank, and she will pull away briskly and go, "What are you doing?" That thought mortifies me. I really wish I could hash out where that comes from. Anyhow, the stupidity of this situation was that I had that exact feeling of trepidation with an action I wasn't performing, and by nature of the situation would be conversely welcomed! This was a minor kick though and I welcomed her affection cautiously, although when came the chance to explore further I sort of softshoed it and (I'm fairly sure) because of that, we didn't have sex. In fact, I didn't even stay the night. She had work the next morning which I already knew, but I can't help but wonder how it might have gone differently.
Now already you can tell two things from this story that is not yet complete: first, I wasn't kidding when I said I over-think things, and I'm obviously comfortable with that thought process and sharing it. It's familiar. It's the way I am. I care about things to levels of extremity. It's just my nature. Second, I am sending poor Kendall all kinds of mixed messages (or at least, I think I am). I'm not used to things moving quickly, and this was most certainly doing that. In fact, quickly triggers suspicion, because most of the girls I've dated who moved quickly, went quickly through the entire process. But maybe it's me. Maybe the fact that I'm so in my head about all this minute bullshit puts up a wall, changes the energy, and girls decide, "Wow, I don't want to deal with this headache." Truth is I don't know, and I want to know so I can change it because this situation opened my eyes to how at least part of the problem is my subconscious inertia and energy. You don't know how you come off to other people, after all, only how you think you do. Maybe I should have just stuck my hand in her pants and saw what happened next. I did and DO want to do that, because here's something you may not know about this girl: she's fucking hot and everything I didn't do with her is exactly where my mind was the second she sat next to me. But wait, this story gets more cringe-inducing.
The third day I see her begins. Now, after a night of being affectionate, you'd think I'd greet her at her door with a kiss, or fucking something, I dunno. But no, I didn't. And worse, I saw her bristle when it didn't happen. So we sit down, she cooks dinner for herself, and we're just chatting. She realizes she needs some oil or something to continue cooking, so we walk down to the store. It's raining, I'm holding the umbrella, and she's holding onto me, who has magically turned into a robot. This is my retarded gentleman haywire again, and though I'm reciprocating, it's closed off and unsure. This is my perception of it, anyhow. Ugh, how annoying. Get over it and just fucking roll with it! I tell myself this, but was unable in that moment to put impulse to action. We get back, and she finishes cooking. She has a karaoke birfday party she needs to go to at a gay bar in Oakland and she wants to know if I want to come. Sure, sounds like fun. So I drive us down there and we head to the bar. This is just what I need. One fucking drink, that will loosen me up a mile here, because typically one drink loosens me up a bit but for some reason tonight my screws are really tight.
So of course I don't order one. I'm the driver! Like one beer makes a fucking difference. And boy do I hope an intoxicated person's perception of a stiff is not as exaggerated by alcohol as my perception of my demeanor was affected by the mood of the general group. I was agreeable certainly and not at all unpleasant. But I was also safe, septic, the kind of uninteresting person I only am when I'm trying to figure out my situation. In retrospect, this part is pretty minor because I wasn't bad, I was a little too "oh golly shucks, you guys." We drive back to her place and I go to drop her off because she needs to get to sleep for school, and fucking FINALLY I go "just kiss her you fucktard" and I do. Yay me. She tells me the next two weeks are going to be crazy because school is ending, so I may not see her. I say if she finds a spot, let me know.
This is a fair end, and one that in the ensuing week, I would needlessly over-complicate again, because when I'm feeling insecure about something I can't just sit on it and see what happens. See, I was worried about how things ended. Not because of the ending, but because of what preceded it, which added a tone of uncertainty to "busy with school." When I'm nervous about something, shadows are taller. AND I'm an excuse-teller, so I see everything as an excuse. I was afraid this was her way of slowly pulling away in the way that girls do, where it's technically over now, in this moment, but the moment extends out over days or weeks instead of just being in a statement like "Thanks but no thanks." I just felt robotic, which as you know is not my persona at all. I'm the opposite of robotic, and I'm even decent at bringing out the lively side of people. I really wanted to show this girl how comfortable I was with her personality and life because everything I saw about her I liked, and still do. She's cute, and her idiosyncrasies are frankly adorable. She licked my nose. How delightfully strange! And maybe that's where all this comes from: I genuinely like this girl, and for once because of circumstance I had to meet her on honest terms, not selling myself but just meeting her and being myself. I didn't try to impress her with some kind of intellectual discussion or be the funny fucking guy or any of the bullshit that I pull out with girls. I had no agenda. I just knew that I liked her and she seemed to like me. And that's the problem: on some stupid dysfunctional level, I'm afraid she's going to be disappointed by me in all the ways that I've been pleasantly surprised by her. It's that simple. But that dumb fear drives me to sabotage this into the same place her being unimpressed would take us.
So let me tell you about last week.
It started off with a text to her, asking her if she was at all interested in reading my writing, which up until this point we had sparsely talked about. And this was my first moment of falseness with this girl on some level: while I do want her to be interested in my writing, the offer itself in this case is disingenuous; what I want is some acknowledgment that the last time we saw each other wasn't so disappointing that you've written me off. That's what it was. And you can't just ask that, because then the person will go, "ugh, how needy are you?" Truthfully, I think we all have this level of neediness sometimes but to get around it we've entered a specific ritual into the social contract: talking about other shit. Engaging is engaging, and in bringing up what is essentially a nothing, I'm asking you to return a nothing back to signal me that yes, you've still got interest. Now here's the problem with this theory. IT'S MY FUCKING THEORY. It could be totally untrue, and while I know that more than just I subscribe to it, some people are oblivious. Some people aren't and don't care, some people disagree, and all people are busy. In essence, to restrict yourself to believing "this is the way it is" is to fall victim to interpreting the response or lack thereof you get in return as part of the same formula when it might not be. In other words, just because I texted you bullshit, does NOT mean that your lack of a reply indicates disinterest in me. Yes, I took the roundabout, overly-wordy explanation of that. That's in my fucking nature too. And that's exactly what happened: I sent a "please acknowledge me text" and got no acknowledgment. And it could be for a thousand reasons. Like, maybe she's busy with the school she told me about! This occured to me at the time but in the way that maybe Alameda will be destroyed by an earthquake occasionally occurs to me. Like the possibility is so distant, I'm only acknowledging it for the sake of showing that I was smart enough to conceive it. I've minimized the possible reality into irrelevance in my mind. And here's where the subject of dumb panic comes back again. So I don't get a reply, and I send an email, AGAIN, totally unrelated bullshit, which has nothing to do with my writing. No reply. Now at this point, you can imagine where my head is at, because I'm a pessimist. And to be fair, what makes this hard is I could totally be right. I have been right about this kind of thing before, more than once. So I also have the certainty of past experience spurring me.
And this is the part that's in my mind slightly less ridiculous because it feels like the first adult thing I've done about this feeling: I called her. And when she didn't pick up, I just left an honest message. I said basically that I felt like kind of a spaz, and I wanted to see her and show that I wasn't such a bumbly mess. Best move? No, but the first move I felt okay about, because it put me at ease, since I got my feelings out there. And if she took it or left it, at least I was straight with her about it. And then finally on the weekend or something, I can't remember now, I saw her pop up online and basically did the haven't seen you in awhile message. The conversation in my mind didn't go well, but at this point the only way to make myself feel better about it was to flesh everything out entirely. I apologized for messaging her so much, she said it didn't help, and I explained where my head was at and that I did like her and I just tried too hard to catch the ball I thought I dropped. She seemed pretty unreceptive and that actually made me feel better because now I felt like I knew where her head was at, even though it was not where I wanted it to be.
I was smart enough to not say anything for a day. I actually told myself I wouldn't say anything until around the end of the week, even if I wanted to because at this point, I've dug my six feet, this hole doesn't need to be any deeper. It is now purely up to her whether she wants to deal with a guy who has established himself as over-reactionary, uncomfortable, occasionally funny and earnest, for better or worse. And then I saw that she had a Facebook update about Scorpios being intense with a smiley face, and I am not a Scorpio, so I thought, "fuck it, just take your shot and know if it bombs" because now I felt like there's another guy and I most definitely lost out on this girl. Of course it could be absolutely nothing and of course it's up to interpretation but at this point even I'M sick of interpretation and I just want to stop thinking about this one way or the other. So I text, "Hey, are you free sometime this weekend?" which I'm 99% sure will be met with the "look, I gotta cut you loose" response. And she says, "School's out on Wednesday!!!!!" So I still have no idea where I stand, but finally I just don't worry about it one way or another. If she likes me, fucking great! And let's move forward with me finally shelving my dumb anxiety. If she doesn't, well fuck. At least I learned something about myself. I learned that dating has taught me absolutely nothing about how to handle what could legitimately be a relationship. It's so fraught with falseness and dishonest communication that it's ingrained me into a system of thought that doesn't work. And when I discard that system, I have nothing but my reactions to go by. I always kind of knew this to some degree but I didn't realize just how severe it was. And for once in a long, long fucking time, I feel like I've actually legitimately made a progressive step towards being who and what I want to be with who and what I want to be with. So ironically, as dissatisfied as I am with my performance throughout this entire thing, I'm so fucking glad it happened in such a way that I was able to break out of myself and see me in a totally different light. So thank you, Kendall, who is almost certainly not reading this, and hopefully you're just weird enough to say 'fuck it' and see how it goes from here but if not, my short fucking collection of moments with you was valuable, and I appreciate the experience immensely. Truthfully, writing this out helped me sort the entire experience, and I hadn't thought of it all in this level of detail, I just wanted to get the situation out exactly as I remember it happening for the sake of the page. So I guess I'm not nearly as obsessive as I could be. But still.
My problem remains thus: I care about everything way too much. And because of this, I erect barrier after barrier, trying to contain that so that I can function in society. I'm afraid that my intensity is too much to deal with. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but it's why I am the way I am with everything. Why when I get upset, I try to rationalize my upsetness, why things piss me off and I step away from them and force myself not to pay attention. It's why I'm a pessimist at all: I care so much about things like society and having a good life that when people and situations let me down, I have to restrain my reaction to them to be a functional person. The world is a fucked up place, and no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to change it, and I have nothing but the impetus to try. When injustice happens, I want to scream about it. my rants are just tiny bursts of what's underlying. At my core, I want to do things like set rapists on fire. When I care about someone, I just want to fully and completely embrace them with every part of myself. But I know that sweeps people away, so I contain it, divert it, restructure it as best I can. I think it affects my writing too, because I'm afraid that what I put on the page is going to be too incendiary, that it's going to hit people in ways they don't want to deal with. That it's going to hit ME in ways I don't want to deal with. In writing this post, I realized exactly where my main character's forceful personality comes from: he's me without restraint. In reality I'm paced a lot differently, but my passion for everything still peeks out like this.
It's one of the major reasons why I was initially attracted to this girl, was because she described herself as emotionally intense. But you know how it goes, a trait can be expressed a thousand ways, and can be misinterpreted in countless more.
One final thought, on love, which is the end goal of any real relationship. Love is a weakness to me, in that it's a lack of flexibility and perspective, traded off for massively intense focus. It's something I want, but having it means being utterly vulnerable in a way we all pretend to understand but honestly, I don't think any of us do. To be utterly vulnerable is to be connected to someone who can easily destroy you. That is the pinnacle of unrestrained love. It's absolute and total madness. And it doesn't work for just anyone. The closer I get to someone, the closer they get to me, and up to this point in my life, I've mashed a lot of emotion down, just for the sake of making it through the day. It can be exhausting. It IS exhausting. And this isn't my thing alone, to a certain extent we all have to play the game of how close to that madness we will let ourselves be, over time and ultimately at what point we step no further. And that's extraordinarily difficult for me because deep down inside, I want to explode in all directions, for everything around me to glow and breathe with new life and for the people around me to be carried with me in my crazy current. I wish that could work. I hope I can meet a person who shows me that it can. I understand talking about it in this way makes me look nuts, because it's the extreme end of an emotional spectrum, but it's something I definitely think about. And it makes me sound so young, I get that too. But I still feel it. It's still true about me right now, even if it won't always be. How do you reconcile that?
Yikes, that is long.
Tiger Woods is all class. Viawwtdd.com
05:46 PM 07/30/2009: Heading back from the course now.
05:52 PM 07/30/2009: How close are you
06:01 PM 07/30/2009: I will leave an envelope at the front desk under ms daniels. Your room will be 305. Get settled and let me know when you are ready to see me. I will be i
06:01 PM 07/30/2009: n room 201. You can come down the stair well next to your room. Make sure absolutely no one sees you
06:17 PM 07/30/2009: Just so you know i have to get up at 415 tomorrow.
07:30 PM 07/30/2009: Just let me know when you are headed down
09:46 PM 07/30/2009: What time is car picking you up tomorrow
01:14 AM 07/31/2009: Yes
01:27 AM 07/31/2009: Did you get lost. Door is open
02:16 PM 07/31/2009: What time do you leave. Im trying to leave. Im trying to get back
03:57 PM 07/31/2009: Will back in 5. Let me take a shower and i will text you after
04:18 PM 07/31/2009: Oh i know. Not at all. Just glad and suprised i can do that to you Im all clean. Come on down
04:22 PM 07/31/2009: Hurry
05:08 PM 07/31/2009: I’m glad you came out
06:36 PM 07/31/2009: Awesome baby. Be Safe
03:13 AM 08/01/2009: Thank you sexy
06:34 AM 08/06/2009: In ohio playing
05:54 AM 08/09/2009: I told you im playing these two weeks
06:50 PM 08/09/2009: In about a month
06:51 PM 08/09/2009: Maybe sooner. Can’t talk now. Will text when i can
01:53 PM 08/13/2009: Me to
10:27 AM 08/20/2009: I hope not. So you have been with others huh since
10:35 AM 08/23/2009: I hope so
10:45 PM 08/23/2009: Not a bad thing thinking about me
11:00 PM 08/23/2009: I totally agree
11:03 PM 08/23/2009: In conn
11:07 PM 03/23/2009: Ditto
11:08 PM 08/23/2009: I like when you do that to me
11:11 PM 08/23/2009: Ditto sexy
04:06 PM 08/28/2009: I want to be deep inside you
04:10 PM 08/28/2009: Maybe in two weeks in chicago
03:19 PM 08/29/2009: I need that so bad
03:29 PM 08/29/2009: Now
03:30 PM 08/29/2009: Me to. I would wear you out
03:32 PM 08/29/2009: I have no idea. I would love to have the ability to make you sore
03:35 PM 08/29/2009: In a week. I will try to wear you out
03:36 PM 08/29/2009: After i cum you better start sucking my cock to get it hard
03:37 PM 08/29/2009: Do you ever hook up with other guys or girls
03:41 PM 08/29/2009: You didnt answer the question
03:43 PM 08/29/2009: Ok. I would like to have a threesome with you and another girl you trust
03:48 PM 08/29/2009: Does that excite you at all or no
03:52 PM 08/29/2009: God girl. You better want to take care of me
03:56 PM 08/29/2009: You do. Need more of it
03:59 PM 08/29/2009: of you
04:02 PM 08/29/2009: I want to treat you rough. Throw you around, spank and slap you
04:06 PM 08/29/2009: Slap your face. Treat you like a dirty little whore. Put my cock in your ass and then shove it down your throat
04:07 PM 08/29/2009: You are my fucking whore
04:08 PM 08/29/2009: Hold you down while i choke you and Fuck that ass that i own
04:10 PM 08/29/2009: Then im going to tell you to shut the Fuck up while i slap your face and pull your hair for making noise
04:21 PM 08/29/2009: Where do you want to be bitten
04:24 PM 08/29/2009: Ok. Now your talking. Whatever i want. You are mine
04:39 PM 08/29/2009: Whatever else turns you on
04:43 PM 08/29/2009: You tell me what you like
04:48 PM 08/29/2009: You are. Always will be. Don’t trust people
04:48 PM 08/29/2009: But you still have not told me what turns you on
04:53 PM 08/29/2009: I know you have tried every positing imaginable but what turns you on besides a dp
5:00 PM 08/29/2009: I really do want to be rough with you. Slap you around
05:12 PM 08/29/2009: For years. And punish you for not seeing me more
05:15 PM 08/29/2009: I want you to beg for my cock. Kiss you all over to convince me to let you have it in your mouth
05:18 PM 08/29/2009: We will see how bad you want me
05:26 PM 08/29/2009: Next time i see you, you better beg and if you don’t do it right i will slap, spank, bite and fuck you till mercy
09:20 AM 09/03/2009: Was playing sexy
04:17 AM 09/04/2009: Maybe you can fly out to chicage on monday night and leave early wed
04:23 AM 09/04/2009: I land at 930 or 10 monday night
11:57 AM 09/04/2009: Great. What time so you land
12:06 PM 09/04/2009: I land at the earliest at 8 and the latest will be 10
12:08 PM 09/04/2009: Midway
01:42 AM 09/07/2009: I cant wait to see you as well. What time do you land again
03:15 AM 09/07/2009: You are going to be headed to the hyatt lodge. 2815 jorie blvd oak brook, il 60523. Phone 630 990 5800
11:38 AM 09/07/2009: Did you get my text with all the info
11:41 AM 09/07/2009: I will text you the room number when i get there. Im still in boston
11:43 AM 09/07/2009: I have to check in to get the room
11:44 AM 09/07/2009: I should get there before you anyways
12:27 PM 09/07/2009: In about 3 hours
12:30 PM 09/07/2009: I will be there before you for sure
12:35 PM 09/07/2009: You just make sure you take care of me when you get here
06:28 PM 09/07/2009: Great
06:30 PM 09/07/2009: Let me know when your about 20 out i will order dinner. And what would you like to eat
06:33 PM 09/07/2009: I am pretty tired after today. I am going to go to sleep early
06:53 PM 09/07/2009: How close are you
07:09 PM 09/07/2009: What do you want to eat
07:10 PM 09/07/2009: Anything simple
07:32 PM 09/07/2009: How close
07:38 PM 09/07/2009: Head to the elevators and go to 334. Thats your room. The door will be open with the dead bolt. I have to get back here to wait for the food. Im in room 358.
07:42 PM 09/07/2009: Let me know when you are in the room. Food just got here
07:47 PM 09/07/2009: Sweet. Dont come down here yet. Lots of people in the hall. I will let you know when it clears
08:16 PM 09/07/2009: Are you close to being ready
08:32 PM 09/07/2009: Come on down. Its quiet here in the hall now
08:35 PM 09/07/2009: There is a room service cart in my hall. Be careful
08:35 PM 09/07/2009: Room358
09:59 PM 09/07/2009: Make it ok
10:01 PM 09/07/2009: Ok. Lights out. Good night sexy
08:49 AM 09/08/2009: Hope you slept as good as i did. I just woke up which is un 10:23 AM 09/08/2009: So when can i have that ass again
12:40 PM 09/08/2009: I will be back in a couple hours
12:42 PM 09/08/2009: I have to leave for an appearance at 430 but i will be back at 730 for dinner and lots of dessert with you. How about a quickie before i go
01:28 PM 09/08/2009: Have you ever had a golden shower done to you
01:29 PM 09/08/2009: Just morbid curiosity
01:30 PM 09/08/2009: Really. You. You have done just about everything havent you
01:32 PM 09/08/2009: Never done it. I think i would get stage freight
02:28 PM 09/08/2009: Maybe
03:38 PM 09/08/2009: I will be over in 10mins
03:40 PM 09/08/2009: Why dont you come over here now instead
03:41 PM 09/08/2009: Enter thru room 360. Its next door
03:42 PM 09/08/2009: Hurry so i come in that ass
03:54 PM 09/08/2009: Let me know when you leave your room
07:32 PM 09/08/2009: You felt amazing to baby. How much was your flight by the way
07:35 PM 09/08/2009: Having a few issues at home. Might be a little later before i see you tonight
07:39 PM 09/08/2009: Parent hood melt down
08:01 PM 09/08/2009: How much was your flight
05:03 AM 09/09/2009: Shit i fell back to sleep. just woke up. I have to leave in about 15 mins. I tee off at 700
07:43 PM 09/09/2009: Great thing is we have a life time of this
05:44 AM 10/01/2009: I know that. Thats why i wont do that.
06:02 PM 10/01/2009: Baby im not going anywhere or doing anything. You please me like no other has or ever will. I’m not losing that. You have to understand people love to tal
06:02 PM 10/01/2009: k about me. sometimes its good and sometimes its bad. I have learned to just roll with it no matter how much it upsets me when its not true. My life is a
06:02 PM 10/01/2009: fish bowl
10:40 AM 10/04/2009: Guys from dubai. Investors. So my agent being suggested that we go back to my room at the mansion for lunch. He doesnt know about us, obviously
Tiger:Sent: 11:31 AM 10/04/2009: This has been a total shit trip. Im sorry i fucked up last night. And this shit. We will get it right next time so we can spend more time together.
12:06 PM 10/04/2009: Oh my god. If they were with me. You would have ruined everything
12:07 PM 10/04/2009: I told you. Oh my god. I cant believe what just happened
12:08 PM 10/04/2009: Don’t Fucking talk to me. You almost just ruined my whole life. If my agent and these guys would have seen you there, Fuck
Good one, Tiger
05:46 PM 07/30/2009: Heading back from the course now.
05:52 PM 07/30/2009: How close are you
06:01 PM 07/30/2009: I will leave an envelope at the front desk under ms daniels. Your room will be 305. Get settled and let me know when you are ready to see me. I will be i
06:01 PM 07/30/2009: n room 201. You can come down the stair well next to your room. Make sure absolutely no one sees you
06:17 PM 07/30/2009: Just so you know i have to get up at 415 tomorrow.
07:30 PM 07/30/2009: Just let me know when you are headed down
09:46 PM 07/30/2009: What time is car picking you up tomorrow
01:14 AM 07/31/2009: Yes
01:27 AM 07/31/2009: Did you get lost. Door is open
02:16 PM 07/31/2009: What time do you leave. Im trying to leave. Im trying to get back
03:57 PM 07/31/2009: Will back in 5. Let me take a shower and i will text you after
04:18 PM 07/31/2009: Oh i know. Not at all. Just glad and suprised i can do that to you Im all clean. Come on down
04:22 PM 07/31/2009: Hurry
05:08 PM 07/31/2009: I’m glad you came out
06:36 PM 07/31/2009: Awesome baby. Be Safe
03:13 AM 08/01/2009: Thank you sexy
06:34 AM 08/06/2009: In ohio playing
05:54 AM 08/09/2009: I told you im playing these two weeks
06:50 PM 08/09/2009: In about a month
06:51 PM 08/09/2009: Maybe sooner. Can’t talk now. Will text when i can
01:53 PM 08/13/2009: Me to
10:27 AM 08/20/2009: I hope not. So you have been with others huh since
10:35 AM 08/23/2009: I hope so
10:45 PM 08/23/2009: Not a bad thing thinking about me
11:00 PM 08/23/2009: I totally agree
11:03 PM 08/23/2009: In conn
11:07 PM 03/23/2009: Ditto
11:08 PM 08/23/2009: I like when you do that to me
11:11 PM 08/23/2009: Ditto sexy
04:06 PM 08/28/2009: I want to be deep inside you
04:10 PM 08/28/2009: Maybe in two weeks in chicago
03:19 PM 08/29/2009: I need that so bad
03:29 PM 08/29/2009: Now
03:30 PM 08/29/2009: Me to. I would wear you out
03:32 PM 08/29/2009: I have no idea. I would love to have the ability to make you sore
03:35 PM 08/29/2009: In a week. I will try to wear you out
03:36 PM 08/29/2009: After i cum you better start sucking my cock to get it hard
03:37 PM 08/29/2009: Do you ever hook up with other guys or girls
03:41 PM 08/29/2009: You didnt answer the question
03:43 PM 08/29/2009: Ok. I would like to have a threesome with you and another girl you trust
03:48 PM 08/29/2009: Does that excite you at all or no
03:52 PM 08/29/2009: God girl. You better want to take care of me
03:56 PM 08/29/2009: You do. Need more of it
03:59 PM 08/29/2009: of you
04:02 PM 08/29/2009: I want to treat you rough. Throw you around, spank and slap you
04:06 PM 08/29/2009: Slap your face. Treat you like a dirty little whore. Put my cock in your ass and then shove it down your throat
04:07 PM 08/29/2009: You are my fucking whore
04:08 PM 08/29/2009: Hold you down while i choke you and Fuck that ass that i own
04:10 PM 08/29/2009: Then im going to tell you to shut the Fuck up while i slap your face and pull your hair for making noise
04:21 PM 08/29/2009: Where do you want to be bitten
04:24 PM 08/29/2009: Ok. Now your talking. Whatever i want. You are mine
04:39 PM 08/29/2009: Whatever else turns you on
04:43 PM 08/29/2009: You tell me what you like
04:48 PM 08/29/2009: You are. Always will be. Don’t trust people
04:48 PM 08/29/2009: But you still have not told me what turns you on
04:53 PM 08/29/2009: I know you have tried every positing imaginable but what turns you on besides a dp
5:00 PM 08/29/2009: I really do want to be rough with you. Slap you around
05:12 PM 08/29/2009: For years. And punish you for not seeing me more
05:15 PM 08/29/2009: I want you to beg for my cock. Kiss you all over to convince me to let you have it in your mouth
05:18 PM 08/29/2009: We will see how bad you want me
05:26 PM 08/29/2009: Next time i see you, you better beg and if you don’t do it right i will slap, spank, bite and fuck you till mercy
09:20 AM 09/03/2009: Was playing sexy
04:17 AM 09/04/2009: Maybe you can fly out to chicage on monday night and leave early wed
04:23 AM 09/04/2009: I land at 930 or 10 monday night
11:57 AM 09/04/2009: Great. What time so you land
12:06 PM 09/04/2009: I land at the earliest at 8 and the latest will be 10
12:08 PM 09/04/2009: Midway
01:42 AM 09/07/2009: I cant wait to see you as well. What time do you land again
03:15 AM 09/07/2009: You are going to be headed to the hyatt lodge. 2815 jorie blvd oak brook, il 60523. Phone 630 990 5800
11:38 AM 09/07/2009: Did you get my text with all the info
11:41 AM 09/07/2009: I will text you the room number when i get there. Im still in boston
11:43 AM 09/07/2009: I have to check in to get the room
11:44 AM 09/07/2009: I should get there before you anyways
12:27 PM 09/07/2009: In about 3 hours
12:30 PM 09/07/2009: I will be there before you for sure
12:35 PM 09/07/2009: You just make sure you take care of me when you get here
06:28 PM 09/07/2009: Great
06:30 PM 09/07/2009: Let me know when your about 20 out i will order dinner. And what would you like to eat
06:33 PM 09/07/2009: I am pretty tired after today. I am going to go to sleep early
06:53 PM 09/07/2009: How close are you
07:09 PM 09/07/2009: What do you want to eat
07:10 PM 09/07/2009: Anything simple
07:32 PM 09/07/2009: How close
07:38 PM 09/07/2009: Head to the elevators and go to 334. Thats your room. The door will be open with the dead bolt. I have to get back here to wait for the food. Im in room 358.
07:42 PM 09/07/2009: Let me know when you are in the room. Food just got here
07:47 PM 09/07/2009: Sweet. Dont come down here yet. Lots of people in the hall. I will let you know when it clears
08:16 PM 09/07/2009: Are you close to being ready
08:32 PM 09/07/2009: Come on down. Its quiet here in the hall now
08:35 PM 09/07/2009: There is a room service cart in my hall. Be careful
08:35 PM 09/07/2009: Room358
09:59 PM 09/07/2009: Make it ok
10:01 PM 09/07/2009: Ok. Lights out. Good night sexy
08:49 AM 09/08/2009: Hope you slept as good as i did. I just woke up which is un 10:23 AM 09/08/2009: So when can i have that ass again
12:40 PM 09/08/2009: I will be back in a couple hours
12:42 PM 09/08/2009: I have to leave for an appearance at 430 but i will be back at 730 for dinner and lots of dessert with you. How about a quickie before i go
01:28 PM 09/08/2009: Have you ever had a golden shower done to you
01:29 PM 09/08/2009: Just morbid curiosity
01:30 PM 09/08/2009: Really. You. You have done just about everything havent you
01:32 PM 09/08/2009: Never done it. I think i would get stage freight
02:28 PM 09/08/2009: Maybe
03:38 PM 09/08/2009: I will be over in 10mins
03:40 PM 09/08/2009: Why dont you come over here now instead
03:41 PM 09/08/2009: Enter thru room 360. Its next door
03:42 PM 09/08/2009: Hurry so i come in that ass
03:54 PM 09/08/2009: Let me know when you leave your room
07:32 PM 09/08/2009: You felt amazing to baby. How much was your flight by the way
07:35 PM 09/08/2009: Having a few issues at home. Might be a little later before i see you tonight
07:39 PM 09/08/2009: Parent hood melt down
08:01 PM 09/08/2009: How much was your flight
05:03 AM 09/09/2009: Shit i fell back to sleep. just woke up. I have to leave in about 15 mins. I tee off at 700
07:43 PM 09/09/2009: Great thing is we have a life time of this
05:44 AM 10/01/2009: I know that. Thats why i wont do that.
06:02 PM 10/01/2009: Baby im not going anywhere or doing anything. You please me like no other has or ever will. I’m not losing that. You have to understand people love to tal
06:02 PM 10/01/2009: k about me. sometimes its good and sometimes its bad. I have learned to just roll with it no matter how much it upsets me when its not true. My life is a
06:02 PM 10/01/2009: fish bowl
10:40 AM 10/04/2009: Guys from dubai. Investors. So my agent being suggested that we go back to my room at the mansion for lunch. He doesnt know about us, obviously
Tiger:Sent: 11:31 AM 10/04/2009: This has been a total shit trip. Im sorry i fucked up last night. And this shit. We will get it right next time so we can spend more time together.
12:06 PM 10/04/2009: Oh my god. If they were with me. You would have ruined everything
12:07 PM 10/04/2009: I told you. Oh my god. I cant believe what just happened
12:08 PM 10/04/2009: Don’t Fucking talk to me. You almost just ruined my whole life. If my agent and these guys would have seen you there, Fuck
Good one, Tiger
I just twinkie housed my dad and his wife with the meanest "don't contact me email" I've ever written:
So that being said, if I have done something to hurt you, or make you upset with me, I would like to know so that I can correct it, or make things right with you. I have been hurt many times in my life by the decisions my parents made and completely understand where you are coming from and only want to make things right with you. I can't do the past over, but I will apologise for anything that I did to hurt you, and I can do my damnest to make sure that I don't repeat past mistakes in the future.
"The situation is larger than just one person. It's not as simple as apologizing and being cool. The entire family is a vortex of misery and despair. You are either in it or you aren't. It doesn't matter if I forgive you for whatever has happened in the past because the situation is exactly the same, and it just opens the door for new things to apologize for later. I don't know how to put it more plainly to you: you're married to an abusive alcoholic who has indirectly or directly damaged most of the people who he's had any kind of real relationship with.
I want to love my dad and believe that he is somehow capable of pulling it all around, I really am. I wasn't born hating him and I wasn't brainwashed by my mother. It's been his actions and his lack of connection to me. In my life I've seen far too much shit from him, and throughout the years he's spent basically no time with me when I went out to visit him. The most we ever talked was in the car ride back and forth. Then I get to see him punch a wall and knock all the pictures on it down or kick a hole in something or throw his ring at you. Or hear about him punching Travis up a fucking flight of stairs like a lunatic over a car, of all things. Why would I want to have anything to do with this person. That's called abuse, plain and simple. Just because I didn't get hit doesn't mean it didn't affect me.
But that's not the only negative effect, it's not just what he's actively done wrong. He's never been a father to me, just a dad. There are things that I've had to resolve on my own about being a man because I didn't have a father around to teach me those sensibilities. There are self-confidence issues I have with women that are directly related to the fact that I didn't have a real male perspective in my life until I was almost 9. I've been entirely raised by women because my father was either incapable or disinterested in taking an active role in my life. And honestly, from the above paragraph, thank God for that, because I would end up being a fucking maniac. As it is, I'm hovering at the relatively stable level of just quietly hating most people. The best thing he could have done for me was take such a low interest in my life, but even that has harmed me in a way that has taken a shitload of intellect, patience, and trial and error to even begin to correct.
I will acknowledge that these hardships are not entirely negative in results and truthfully, I do enjoy my own life for all of its shortcomings, whatever that is worth. I have a bevy of good experiences from going there, I would be dishonest to try and frame myself as a victim who has only been hurt. I love my brothers to death. But at a certain point, your family drama is just too much for me to fucking tolerate. Every time I headed down there it was a new set of fucking horror stories, like Ronda being gang raped for a gang initiation. I shouldn't fucking have to hear that shit. Honestly, it's not me you should be apologizing to, it's your own kids. You didn't raise me, my Dad certainly didn't raise me. Apologize to Ronda, and Rebecca and Rachel, because your biggest failures are with them, not with me. Are you aware that for years, literally years, me and Rebecca had a running joke of, "God I hope Rachel never grows up," because she was the only one who didn't seem to be touched by this fucking madness. Apologize to Roman, who enlisted to get out of this shared insanity, or to Travis, who as a young man has already lead a disastrous fucking life. The horror stories this kid has lived is fucking unforgivable, and you know who failed them by allowing them to happen? You guys.
I can't be mad at you personally for my experience with my father. I can't. It's absolutely not your fault and I personally don't have any hard feelings towards you in regards to my life. I think you made a heinous relationship decision, but that's your life. However, I can be mad at you for exposing your kids to it. Because above all, you're their mother, and there is not anything that man can offer you that is worth more than their well-being. And ANY, and I do mean ANY, failing that they have, you can directly attribute to yourself because you are the woman that birthed and raised them. These situations that for you guys are so normal and commonplace should disturb you, but they don't. I am very fucking aware that raising kids is hard, especially if you're a single parent. Do you know why? Because I watched my mother do it for the past 22 years. And somehow, amazingly, she has managed to avoid completely mangling my life, and she's been in charge of 95% of it in terms of parenting. My Dad couldn't even handle five fucking percent!
I love my right arm, but if it was gangrenous, I'd take a machete to it as well. I don't want to be your friend. I don't want to be my Dad's friend, either. Let alone his son. There's a term I want you to look up, it's called "scorched earth policy." And then perhaps my point of view will make sense to you. Instead of trying to fix things with me, you should take the energy you want to give to this relationship and make sure that Brandon comes out with no scars, so you guys can actually give the team a win. Just one, to get that donut off the scoreboard. Because it doesn't matter how well we all handle this thing that you've presented. It doesn't matter if I go on to lead a successful life, have a good marriage, or any of that happy horseshit. Even if we all somehow get to normal, me, Roman, Travis, Ronda, Rachel, and Rebecca, we all still had to get back to that point from a point of trauma. There will ALWAYS be shit that I can't fully connect to emotionally because of my Dad. There will ALWAYS be opportunities that I miss out on romantically, professionally, emotionally, and intellectually, because I have to wrestle with this pinch of sociopath that he helped make for me. There are times where I literally cannot feel pity or sorrow or love because the rage is too loud. There are times where I look in the mirror, and these are times of my greatest level of negativity, where I see a carbon copy of my father, physically speaking. Where I cannot distinguish myself from him. Do you know why? Because he and his choices fucking haunt me, and I am horrified at the thought that I'm going to wake up one day and be just like him.
And there is no greater sign of failure as a father than that feeling.
I would love to believe that you guys have a place in my life. I would love to believe that we can all be a big happy family. But happiness and you are completely incongruous. You are where happiness goes to die. And I won't spend another free second of my life trying to fix you, or understand you, or fucking apologize for you, or try to rationalize your behavior at the cost of my own self-esteem and well-being. I do not hold the capacity to love you as you are. And that is all I have to say to you. "
If there's someone in your life in dire need of a "fuck off and die" letter, I HIGHLY recommend you write one. That shit is liberating. One of my little stepsisters sent me an email about it that just said, "Wow. Owned."
I am not really sure what to write here, I just wanted to write something so that my old post about the worst day ever would be hidden, instead of depressing everyone who wants to leave a lovely comment XD
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