Despicable Me

I am legitimately shocked and awed by how fucking awful this feels. I am living alone. I am alone and eating ramen. Depressed as hell. Be careful what you fucking wish for. It’s only Tuesday. I have only been alone since Sunday morning. Regardless, I have cried every day, starting that morning around 6:20am. I’m finally mourning. Doubly mourning. I know I have to go through this to get to the other side. Like the chicken I’ve been feeling like at work lately. The one without a head. There is so much I want to say. So much I feel I have to hide. I’m tired of hiding.  

Small details: I had planned on going to the gym after work. Instead, I made a conscious decision to allow myself to fall deeper into this sadness. I made a conscious decision to buy a bottle of Irish whiskey (it makes me feel connected to so many things). I made a conscious decision to not make real food. I say I don’t care but it’s because I do care so much that everything weighs on me so heavily. So heavily that bottle follows bottle in a futile effort to stop the pain and disappointment that I feel. Being aware of what I’m doing makes it that much more painful.

So many things are going through my head right now. Thoughts and feelings. Especially “STOP!” But not a positive stop. It’s “stop writing, stop thinking, go to the couch and turn on the tv, forget all this.” But that doesn’t stop it, only delays.

“I don’t know” and “I’m so sorry.” The two most common refrains I hear come out of my mouth or that run through my head. I wish I could say “Yes,” and “I love you” and “Help me.” “Please.” And that I could accept help. And love. It’s enough to make me turn to Jesus, I swear.

I wish I could be less stubborn. Open and gracious and forgiving instead of glancing sideways at everyone and everything offered. Yet still being taken advantage of. That I could work with instead of against. You and me.

There are so many truths about me that I find disturbing. Truths that I have trouble voicing. Truths that make me despicable. Using and abusing. I realized not long after I moved out that I am not necessarily a “good” person. I do what I need to do to survive. Yet people still call me a saint. People still want to help me. People think I am good. It’s not goodness, it’s self-preservation and idiocy. Being who I need to be to get by. Denying myself, hiding myself. Fronting.

That’s all bullshit, that last paragraph. I victimize myself and blame others for making me unhappy. Because I am unhappy and I’m too chicken-shit to do anything about it.

You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

I don’t deserve all the chances people give me. Yet I do. Because I care so much. Because I’ve been hurt so much. By other people who were hurt before me. And it goes on and on. The legacy of hurt. 

Fuck. How did I end up here?

Fear. Fear that I’ve lost another friend. Because of my fear. Because of second-guesses and outside pressure. (Incompatibility and desperation? Insecurity?)

Why can’t I just sit with myself? Why am I so afraid of myself? Because I know how despicable I am? God, that’s depressing. Because I know how much I hurt. I know how much pain is inside of me. And how much rage and anger. And that does scare me. It makes me of absolutely no use to anyone.

So here I am. Finally alone. And scared to death of what I’ll discover. Yet I know I am searching for something in others that I can only find in myself and I’m no good to anyone until I find it.



But do not ask the price I paid,
I must live with my quiet rage,
Tame the ghosts in my head,
That run wild and wish me dead.
Should you shake my ash to the wind
Lord, forget all of my sins
Or let me die where I lie
Neath the curse of my lover's eyes.

And I'll walk slow, I'll walk slow
Take my hand, help me on my way.
And I'll walk slow, I'll walk slow
Take my hand, I'll be on my way.

The Great Divide

This fucking depression is killing me. And the stress. And the “OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?” aspect of it all.

That’s right, I’m going to talk about this.

This past week has been hell. There was the monthly blood-letting, the oppressive humidity, then the spider bite, then the spider bite infection (thankfully the visit to the urgent care center and the antibiotics I had to get on Friday evening were both free), I slept til about 5pm Saturday, woke up, showered, then realized I had nowhere to go. So I went to get beer. Which was when I realized I had parked in a handicapped spot and gotten a $75 ticket. On the way out of the beer store, something in my back just, like, snapped and the pain was so intense I thought I was going to fall over right there on the sidewalk. I remember being really drunk last night, taking a bath, sending weird messages to strangers. Today I didn’t go to work, I don’t even know why. But I do have diarrhea and what I think are the beginnings of a yeast infection from the antibiotics. Sweet.

Throughout all of this there have been copious amounts of tears. It’s still three weeks until I can move out and mourn in peace. Three weeks until I find out if I can even manage to live on my own, a thing I’ve never done. Made all the more thrilling because of how alone I feel. When I feel like I have three friends in the whole world who I can talk to about this and none of them live in the same city as me. Philadelphia, Brunswick, MD, and Holland aren’t really within “Can you come over? I need company” distance.

God, I just want to sleep.

But this is what I want, right? Yes. I made this decision. It’s going to eventually be the best thing for both of us... But right now? Right now there is nothing I can do. Three weeks. It’s already been about 3 weeks since the decision was made and I’m just waiting. Feeling awkward and uncomfortable. My head hurts. My back hurts. I just want to feel comfortable somewhere. To not be scared out of my mind for an hour or two. To breathe and be able to think for a minute in a space of my own.

Three weeks.

Oh, Little Girl, Pick Up the Pieces...

You learn to live without...

I have only just begun to drink so this is going to get much more pathetic as the night goes on. This song is destroying me right now:

I always think, "this time it will be different". It's never different and it always hurts. I wouldn't let myself cry yesterday but things are different tonight. I didn't think there would be much to mourn considering the circumstances but that's exactly what I'm doing. I've reached the second stage of grief. Anger. Actually, I went there first because there's never any reason to deny what's happening when it happens and I'm always so quick to walk away. And it's not like anyone ever regrets that I do.

This wasn't supposed to be a pity party but I think that's what I need right now. He said, "don't take it all on yourself," but how can I not? I know how I am. But he's right and you can't control what other people think about you. You do your best and that's all you can do. So no matter how much you want something maybe the other person doesn't want it as much. And no one's to blame for that.

What is Wrong with You? A Glimpse Inside My "Controversial" Mind

"What is wrong with you?" has been my most commonly used phrase recently. Within the past week I've said it to my husband, to my cats, I think it at nearly everyone I know and everyone who crosses my path (especially when they are running red lights).  But seriously, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? How can you be doing and saying such stupid things and still be allowed to live? (Short answer: Because you are animals and there is no rational order to this world.)

I've also had terrible PMS (oh that shit's REAL) for the past couple of days and drank enough whiskey on Sunday night to make myself cry about something that shouldn't have made me cry. Also, I had trouble falling asleep Tuesday night because I was feeling so jealous of people I know and like. It's been a rough and ugly week.

Yesterday my "What's wrong with you?" was directed at weird, dismissive, passive aggressive internet comments and text messages. You know, those "whatevers" or "so whats" or even worse, "deal with its." WHAT THE FUCK?  Which makes my reactionary self say, okay, if that's how we're gonna play this thing then let's do it. I can burn a goddam bridge and not look back. Believe that.

But now I'm going to sound passive aggressive because I can't really talk about it because of other circumstances. Let me just say that I'm trying not to apply labels to what's going on; outside of my head, anyway.

I don't know what it is about me that encourages these kinds of responses from people. Could it be my own dismissive nature? Oh, could it be? (Sarcasm.) But I have a low tolerance for, and very high expectations of, humans. You know what, maybe it is my dismissiveness a lot of the time but that's not it entirely.

And I'm wrong a lot, I can admit that. (I really was convinced that Sonic Youth song wasn't Sonic Youth.) I'm usually not wrong about people, though. And there ARE a lot (well, maybe not A LOT) of people I like and would like to hang out with, but...

What it all boils down to is that I don't trust you. This statement is not directed at any one person in particular but for all humans. I don't trust you and I will never allow myself to get too close to you. Because sooner or later, you are going to hurt me or betray me or tell lies about me. Because that's what humans do. Humans are shit, and to quote Michel Houellebecq, "I derive only the feeblest sense of solidarity with the rest of the human species." And to quote someone closer to me than Houellebecq, "Yes, I do think I'm better than you."

DEAL WITH IT (ha, ha). Or not, your choice.

"I'd prefer not to" and "I want to be alone"

That brings me to my final comments which are about being alone, being lonely and making a choice, consciously or not, to NOT have friends. The not having friends thing is mostly because of what I was saying in the previous paragraph: I don't trust you. Even though you may not be one of the people who have hurt me, I don't trust you. (You might be one of the people who have, who knows?) Also, I just usually prefer to be alone. Life is less annoying that way. I don't have to do things for or with you. I don't have to "lend a hand," unless I want to. I don't feel obliged to attend any events I don't want to attend. I have cultivated this Aloneness and made it into my own personal art form. I am independent, for the most part, of complicated relationships. 

Which is not always a benefit. When I am lonely for companionship I have no where to turn. I don't get to do FUN things for or with you. When I want people to read my blog or listen to something I made or need an audience for some other reason, I'm up a fucking creek. "Good luck, asshole," I say to myself. "Nobody gives a shit about you because you decided to tell them all that you hate them." Then I wallow in self-pity about a situation of my own making until I shrug it off and return to my normal cold and monstrous personality... 

And sometimes people say things like this to me: "I have to go downstairs for a while then I will be back, hopefully to never leave you again." But he only says that because he doesn't know me very well.

I am painfully self-aware.    

"Eurocastle Peanutter Thinks We Should Just Be Friends"

Everyone I listen to keeps putting out mixes with the songs I put on my "mix" that I made for the blog weeks ago so I gotta get this thing posted!

I also gotta start making my own stuff.  

No whammies.  If you want this or a track listing let me know and I'll provide.

I call it "Eurocastle Peanutter Thinks We Should Just Be Friends." 

 BloogMix2

BTW, here's that Kierkegaard quote I mentioned last post:

Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior -- yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute.

He follows with, "This position cannot be mediated..."  Obviously. I am not making this up. Verbatim. No homo. 

A History of the Song "Tainted Love" Using Wikipedia: Part 1

I've decided to do a special series of posts for one of my all-time favorite songs (?): Tainted Love. I didn't know this was one of my all-time favorite songs but since I just wrote that it was, I'm going to go with it. Enjoy.


In the beginning there was Gloria Jones... She recorded the song as a B-side in 1964 and nobody cared.



Then she recorded it again in 1976, after it began getting underground attention, but again, nobody cared. 



Then, in 1981, Soft Cell released their version and it became a number one hit in the UK, where the Gloria Jones version had originally found its underground popularity in the Northern Soul scene.  It reached #8 in the US.



Next, the industrial/goth-y group Coil released a version of the song which was the first AIDS benefit music release and the video starred Marc Almond, the singer of Soft Cell. The video was banned for being weird or something.



According to Wikipedia, the song didn't really resurface until the 90s. Soft Cell did a remix in 1991, then a British a cappella group called The Flying Pickets who apparently had "radical socialist politics," covered the song in 92. Yeah. Here they are doing their thing in Croatia that same year:



Also in 92, the band Inspiral Carpets, who happen to be one of my favorite teen-angst bands, (see espcecially Two Worlds Collide) recorded the song which appeared on an NME 3-disc collection, Ruby Trax. How crazy is it that one of my favorite songs when I was 15 has "what have I done with my life" as its main lyric? Seriously, I was 15, what was I supposed to have done?



In Part 2 I'll pick up with David Benoit's 1994 cover and we'll go from there. Stay tuned, won't you?

I made you a milkshake... I mean, mixtape.

And don't you dare say you'd prefer the milkshake!!! 

JLG bLooG Mixtape

It's a MediaFire link.

I would like to offer you a way to preview the songs but I'm not that patient or computer savvy.  Believe me, I've wasted way too much time trying to figure out how to put a music player on a blog and I still don't get it.  I could also link to places where you can listen to these songs but then I'd beeee doing way to much work for very little return.  Go to youtube or something if you're super curious.

I tried to make it listener-friendly, I know some of the stuff I listen to can be grating (which is why I removed Sleigh Bells from the mix).  Please enjoy:

1. "I Have High Expectations..." - Hussle Club
2. "All Summer" (f. Best Coast & Rostam Batmanglij) - Kid Cudi
3. "Power" (f. Dwele) - Kanye West
4. "Elastic Love" - Christina Aguilera
5. "Bulletproof" - La Roux
6. "Sticks 'n' Stones" - Jamie T
7. "Ancient Mysteries" - Brakes
8. "Bhang Bhang, I'm a Burnout" - Dum Dum Girls
9. "Buffalo Stance" - Buraka Som Sistema
10. "Soy Raka" - Los Rakas
11. "As We Enter" (Tinie Tempah Remix) - Nas & Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley
12. "Knockout" (f. Nicki Minaj) - Lil Wayne
13. "Dancing on My Own" - Robyn
14. "I Am Not a Robot" - Marina & the Diamonds
15. "Certified Diva" (f. Tifa) - Tami Chynn

One for the Ladies

Je suis un monstre.  

Bien sûr.

Why didn't I realise?  Oh, please, I did realise.    

I'm posting to the wrong crowd.  Which is my own damn fault.  I am neither punk nor metal.  ("Save your breath, I never was one." Of either.)  Nor am I especially feminist.  *GASP*  I'm not terribly fond of women or what they've done to me over the years.  Fuck 'em.  Men are more relatable, at least on my end.  Not on theirs.  They only see me as a girl.  Fuck them as well. 

I just never bothered to make friends as I grew older.  Not really.  Not since my first best friend, who was a boy, started to like other boys more than me when we were seven.  (Fuck you, Garon Sizemore, for stealing my bff.) 

And not since every one of my girl friends turned out to be pathological liars.  

There was Rhonda Sanders, who claimed she could breast feed at age 8 and who, it turned out, was being raised by her grandparents masquerading as her parents while the person whom she thought was her sister was her actual mother.  

Then there was Julie something-or-other.  I don't remember exactly what happened there but it involved her not talking to me any more for some reason in the 3rd or 4th grade.  Whatever, she looked like a poodle.  

Then there was Sam Leaf.  OMG, I don't even want to get started on her and her multiple pairs of Z. Cavaricci's. Her and her jealous bff Pam.  Yes, Sam & Pam are the main reason I hate women.  Oops. I mean, don't trust women.  Sam also stopped talking to me but at the same time convinced the rest of the 8th grade girls to stop talking to me as well.  Overnight.  Because of a quiz in a magazine. Because of my answer.  That I gave her over the phone.  WHILE PAM WAS ON THE OTHER LINE.  WHICH SOMEHOW RESULTED IN ME BECOMING A SOCIAL PARIAH. 

A part I've played ever since.  

Brandi did a good job between about 15 and 19.  I mean, she tried, even though she was initially one of those 8th grade girls who made me an outcast.  Unfortunately, by that point, I was already too damaged to benefit from her friendship.  And I guess I never really trusted her or forgave her completely.

I remember some in-between-friends.  There was Sarah, who I met in French class in 9th grade.  She was at our school for AP Drama.  She was also a lesbian and she took me to Baltimore with her to see this movie, Go Fish, in 1994 (I guess).  I remember she used to call me and send me things when I was at Sheppard Pratt for a few months, and once, when I moved back home to my sister's, she came over and sat with me on my bedroom floor and held my hands while I cried.  She was really sweet.         

Niki was ok.  She didn't wash her hair enough and forever borrowed my Peter Gabriel record, "So," along with some Blondie record I bought at Goodwill or something.  It was at her house that I first became familiar with the "Internet" and "Vampire: The Masquerade."  I thought both were jokes.  It was 1994-95.

There was also Melissa, my first Sheppard Pratt roommate.  She had some eating disorder or something but we quickly became bffs.  Then staff caught on that we were too bff and decided we needed to be separated because we were "bad influences" on each other.  So instead I ended up with Sandra, a 12-year-old with serious delusions, followed by some mentally handicapped girl whom I threatened to kill because she was going through my drawers.  I had to spend a night in the "quiet room" for that.
   
I've been called a "bad influence" more than once in my lifetime.  It's not an easy label to accept.  It feels nice, in a "bad" kind of way.  Like, I'm so bad-ass that parents think I'm a "bad influence!"  But I didn't want to be a bad influence.  I wanted to be some one's best friend.  I think I was smarter than most of my friends' parents and it bothered them.  Maybe in a precocious way but more importantly in an intellectual way.  I guess as a teenager being intellectual = precocious.  Writing this has been infinitely sad for me.  Will you notice?  Probably not.  But maybe that's just me being precocious.