Thanksgiving

I'm in a fucking snit about Thanksgiving. I'm completely uninterested in participating because participating means cringing at very questionable beliefs about various races and sexual identities while all the time keeping my mouth shut and trying not to laugh outloud about my relatives love of the sweet baby Jesus. And last year, at my brother's house, Allen overheard something that at the time I blew off but which has since been really bothering me. It doesn't matter what it was, it was just completely outrageous.

And that's just my family. Without going into too much detail this is Allen's: Tension, Television, Abusive outbursts, Multiple poorly-trained large dogs, Depression. But things are probably different now since "Hoppy" had his stroke. But different how? It's the fear of the unknown that makes me want to cry at the very thought of going there.

I want to see Kenny and Chris so hopefully that will happen. Which reminds me, I need to see if we can get a room at the lovely Best Western across the street from the College. That was the best part of the trip last time, apart from going to Perkins in Newark for breakfast and seeing friends in Philly.

It's just a depressing fucking holiday. Almost as bad as Xmas. :-)

Jeez, I totally hit the Publish button when I meant to hit Preview.

Doesn't matter. But I had something else to say but I forgot what it was...

Oh. I'm going to get fucking whiskey drunk tonight. Cos I've had a rough week. :-( We'll see how that goes.

Check this out: http://www.well.com/~art/suicidenotes.html It's a pretty cool page of delicious suicide notes.

It Gets Better: A Lunchtime Breakdown

I, apparently, am going to spend half my lunch break crying while watching the following video:



I am so glad that this guy was brave enough to do this, I was literally shaking while I was watching this. I don't understand why being gay or transgender or whatever has to be an issue... What the fuck is wrong with people? I'm pretty upset right now so I don't know if I can be very articulate about this. I have a few personal reasons for why the It Gets Better campaign and this subject affect me so deeply. There are things in my past, reactions on my part, that I've come to realize were completely the opposite of what I would have liked them to have been and I sincerely hope that... Ugh. I don't know how to say what I want to say.

But I also want to say that this is not new, bullying and suicide is not some new phenomenon, just like being gay isn't, and I don't think it's right to say that this is an "epidemic," this has always gone on, it's just that now people are starting to notice it. But if calling it that helps, then I'll go with it. I am so glad that this is getting attention and I hope it turns out to be for the better.

I don't know what to say, I just hope that it does get better for all of us.

Taken from Fuck This Depression Blog

I want to share all these amazing things this girl has on her blog because they're also about me and maybe you.

Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I'm always missing someone or someplace or something, I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing.   -Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

                                

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.  

"Beautiful Suicide"

It's strange how a Kanye West song can remind me of this:

Truthfully, it's not strange at all, he pretty much mentions it in the song.  I'm sorry the dl link there doesn't work any more, it's a good song.  If you like that kinda thing.  That photo, by Robert Wiles, is truly gorgeous.  It's from 1947 and I only first saw it in 2009.  Disappointing since it looks like something that was made for me.

Entries are going to be a little sporadic over the next few weeks while I jock out about the WORLD CUP.  Maybe you've heard of it.  It's one of my most favorite things in the WORLD.  I'm such a jock about it that one of the faculty members I've been working with gave me a copy of the New Yorker because it has an article about the England/US rivalry and Tim Howard which she wanted me to read and, inexplicably, a recent issue of France Football, which is all in French but has an article about the French national team.  I spent some time reading it this morning.  No, I don't generally claim to know French, I took a few years of it in high school but that's it.  It's day five and I haven't missed a match yet.

As for what's really going on, and to get back to that photo up there, let me just say that June is a bad month for me.  It's always been the month of the year that I think most about death, dying, and wanting to die.  It's the month when I "tried" to die when I was 16 (or was I 15? I don't recall, it was that profound...).  But a lot of people I know have "tried" to die at some point in their lives so it doesn't make me special.   

Another reason I may be sporadic is that when I start a depression cycle it comes on hard and it comes on fast, faster if I'm drinking too much, and I'm entering one of those cycles now.  Monday was a night of nothing is easy, nothing works right, everything's wrong.  At 9:25 I was in bed after I finally found a working, decent quality upload of True Blood around 8.  Then I took a shower and climbed into bed, hoping to retreat into the Henry Darger-esque saga I've been writing for the past 10 years.  Wiki that.

Another reason I may become sporadic is that, as with most things in my life, this will (has already begun to) become like a chore to me, this blog.  Anything that initially excites me, soon, very soon, begins to bore me.  I remember being so angry at my sister when she called me "fickle" when I was 17 years old.  But she was right.  I was then and I am now.  And I get bored so easily or lose interest in things or people (maybe you), jobs, eating right, exercise...  Then I found $5 and  I had a dream and you were in it...

And did you ever notice that summer is never idyllic anymore?  It definitely isn't here, where I live.  It's like summer isn't even an event here as far as I can tell.  I remember having fun summers, I swear.  But I could be making that up.  BTW, Lily Dale opens for the season on 25 June.  Mike, Jeanne, I'm looking at you...   

I'd like to thank the people who have told me in person that they read this blog.  I appreciate it mightily.  You may also feel free to comment here once in a while if the spirit moves you.

C'mon England!  But if not England then Germany... or Brazil!  WORLD CUP 2010!!!