#i am simply DRAWING from my LIVED EXPERIENCE as a BORING LOSER who takes NO ACTION

[sodrippy]

me reading: christ alive can something HAPPEN already i dont need all this excess description and whatever lets GO

me writing: these two pages of circular internal monologue and convoluted prose is vital. sorry.

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Y2K, Head lice, Britney Spears, Alcoholic’s Anonymous and other things that happened to me..

It was around this time that I got head-lice for the first time. Which was a pain in neck, as I am sure anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be blessed with the little fellows can tell you. I begged my father not to make me have to cut my hair off and it was a tough sell. I had to keep washing my hair with this weird shampoo. And I guess we got rid of it for a year, but then it came back. And I ended up giving it to Sarah. I think eventually they left. I've been checked several times, and there is no itching at all. If they for some crazy reason stuck around, all of them would be long dead for the amount of times I bleached my hair when I was fifteen. I had so much bleach going onto my head, it's a wonder I am alive to tell about it.

It was a huge relief to have Sarah-Mae as a friend. I felt enclosed and safe from complete ostracization. I finally had a place in the female social order now and cursed Catherine was out of my hair – burned in my stead, but with that sureness was the unspoken understanding that I was to be the welcome mat and the whipping boy. It would be a far cry to call me a peer. The benefit that I gave to the group was to make the other girls feel better about themselves. Whenever anyone felt like it at the lunch table, they could explain to me how and why I was ugly or annoying. I was not to think of myself as an equal by any means to Samantha or Sarah-Mae. Privately, Sarah-Mae's really cherished my friendship. We talked a lot and were very close. She really liked me. But in public, when we weren't drawing or watching reruns of Full House, she felt compelled to shame me in public, make sure I knew that I was ugly and stupid and make sure the popular girls knew that too.  And Samantha absolutely saw no use for me in the girl group whatsoever. She openly said she could not stand me when people asked her why she kept me around. So long were the days when we were sweet little kindergarten girls sharing cookies and pretending to be penguins. I was a pain in her backside.

I withstood many years of this. It wasn't good for my self esteem to be the at the bottom of the stack. It hurt my self esteem in ways that took years to get over. I spent countless nights hating everything about me and wishing I were dead feeling ugly and worthless, and having a puffy face from secretly crying in the bathroom stalls. But I eventually learned the power that can be held by being at the bottom. And mark my words, there is a power in being the servant, the slave, the black sheep, the loser, the mousy forgettable beta. You see a side to your superiors that they themselves don't have the angle to really grasp as the egotistically assume they are impervious. You secretly get stronger than them, but you don't let them know that at first. And if you are strong and lucky, and fight past the despair, you learn who you really are, and you learn to be your own best friend, and if you are cunning when you do strike back strategically, it brings down the entire established order. And this all comes from learning how to be humble and seemingly docile.

That of course had not dawned on me at eleven or twelve though. It would take many more years of repeated ridicule at school, neglect and abuse from my parents before they finally broke me and I learned how to manipulate and command my situation. You have to hit that place where nothing could be any worse. And if it doesn't destroy or break you, it bends you and you become a weapon. Not that I have never been a victim. It still happens. I am still learning. I have been taken advantage of, a lot – and I have let it happen more than once, though I try to learn from my situations and I try to reflect on my experiences with a degree of reflection and acceptance and even appreciation. There have been many situations where I had no good options too, where my position gave me no benefits. I think there is a strength and weakness at every level one finds oneself in, but there are times when you are in a pit surrounded by bows and arrows, and there is no flying out of these situations. Also, I do realize that there are people in this world that are far more cut throat than me. There are lengths to getting one's way in the world that I either am too weak and comfortable to resort to, or too idealistic and humanitarian minded to really venture into. Some tunnels are too dark even for the likes of me.

My father found me crying one day, and surprisingly he did not respond with frustration or fury. I don't understand why, but he seemed shocked and horrified that I was so upset. When he asked me what was wrong, I told him that there was no point to being alive. Why this shocked him I have no idea, since he brought me to tears often enough to not be surprised by how I wore my misery. So he took me to the doctor. This doctor was a real creep. He assessed that I had depression – which he was right about. But he did so because he said I was too fat for my age, which he told me, and I didn't do anything nice with my hair. He asked what my grades were. And then he prescribed pills to me. I could just tell that he was a conceded prick. My dad then told me that he didn't think I was depressed and we never refilled the prescription.

Maria had her baby. She named her Jasmine. Jasmine had these light blue little eyes, and this golden hair. Going to my mother's place became extremely pleasant to me because I loved being around Jasmine all the time. In my mind, for all the times Maria had put me through hell, I considered Jasmine partially my own baby. I spent all my spare time playing with Jasmine. We grew very close. I shared all my food. I became her favorite person over the course of two years. She was a weird baby. Her first word was not mama, or baba. Her first word was MINE, and she seemed to enjoy watching movies more than she really liked people, though she was very attached to her mother and to me. She would sometimes stare at the wall for an hour straight at seemingly nothing. Word here and there was that she had mild autism perhaps, but nobody ever really took her to the doctors. Since Maria was working at KFC, she wanted Jasmine to be awake when she got off at 2:00am. I became Jasmine's babysitter, and it was my job to keep her awake till then. Because of this, Jasmine's internal clock is set for her to stay up very late at night to this day.

Roxanne was pregnant with her second baby, who ended up being her oldest son Alex. She had Alex, Issac, and Hailey with her first serious boyfriend Jody the boring lazy dunce. Throughout the next five years, she was either pregnant or on drugs. By the time she was eighteen, she had four kids.

My father got a DUI. He had been drinking excessively – I am guessing probably because of the stress of splitting his 4O1K money in half with my mom as part of the settlement of divorce. And it just upset him that he was getting a divorce. She took the 40,000 all at once and spent every dime on stupid stuff. God, I wish I had that money now. I have watched so many people waste tens of thousands of dollars on nothing. If I had that money, I would go to the doctors, I would go back to school. I would make decisions that would permanently improve my life and the lives of those around me. I would spend the money in a way that would hopefully ripple into the future and make the lives of people in the future better.

He managed to avoid losing his license. If he had lost his license, he would have lost his job. And in that case, he was afraid to the point of death that it would force me, Allison and David to live with my mother full time. Which would not have been good for our well being – but I think a part of his fear of that was also him having to concede to my mother in some way. He talked the judge into letting him keep his license, but he still had to pay the fine, and we had to start going to AA after school every other day. He would pack us all into the car and we would drive the forty miles into Lewiston where we would stay in a nursery like daycare area for three hours while my father went into his meetings. Because my dad yaks and yaks, I ended up learning everything about AA. I learned all the steps, and he told me about everyone's  lives that they opened up about as they went around the meeting.

I have nothing against AA. Normally, a lot of people who go simply go back to drinking once their probation is up or they have fulfilled their requirements, but if it helps one person permanently quit drinking, if it gives one little child a better life because their parents have cleaned up their act, than I really do support it. With that said, while I think some of the elements of AA are actually really healthy and reflective things people should do, the whole concept of a 'higher power' has never worked for me in the least. I don't see the rhyme or reason in embracing powerlessness and giving yourself up to that higher power. The whole program is very seeped in Christian rhetoric and I am not fully buying it. There are phrases that I actually agree with, and I can see the principle and reason for the steps that need to be taken, but I can read between the lines of AA's twelve steps to know it's kind of a self-deception game that hopefully sticks. I will never criticize it though to people who it is working for. If believing in that stuff really is making their lives better, I absolutely in no way want to tear them apart for it. If I ever had a drinking problem, I most likely would not be able to incorporate those steps into my life. And actually, there are other methods that people use to overcome addiction, that I feel don't get taken into consideration often enough.

The daycare system brought me into a group of other kids, some of them being my age. Some of them a little younger. All of our parents got busted. I don't remember all of them, only there were about ten of us, and a little baby. And somehow I became the leader of these kids over the course of the next year. Whenever I become the leader of a group of people, it has to be some kind of fluke. I am no leader. But when I am put in a leadership position, I always end up feeling this creeping feeling entering my ego immediately. It comes so intrinsically with power that there is nothing I can do to balance myself out that won't also make my followers dissipate with uncertainty. Suddenly everyone thinks I am funny and right after years of literally no recognition at all. I try to control it, but I instantly become corrupted by power. I have to find ways to balance myself out. I have gotten a little better, but I still don't entirely trust myself.

There was this boy named Michael who I almost had a crush on. I didn't, but I almost did. It was like a precrush. He had a little brother named Sky. I don't remember much about them other than their father robbed someone's house eventually and got arrested. Then they weren't there anymore. Which was a bummer. Michael and I were the group leaders.

We had two alternating babysitters, Veronica and Jennifer. They were both seniors in high school. Back in these days, high school senior girls were these elusive unicorn like beings full of wisdom, they always smelled good and had figured out what to do with their hair (though year book pictures time and time again demonstrate that this is indeed not the case). They were always catty in a mysterious way. A strange mixture of kind hearted and pretentious. It was hard to imagine that me, or any other girl my age would ever grow up to be one of these mystical creatures.

At first we all liked Veronica. She was far more chipper and made a better first impression. She was really into cheerleading. She liked to tell me all about her boyfriends. She openly talked in detail about her dumb teenager sex life. She was VERY confident her and Brad, Tyler, or whoever her quarterback boyfriend was were going to get married and move to Malibu. She always chewed gum. She told me that if I ever wanted a boyfriend, all I had to do was flip my hair a lot in class. She was really into Christina Aguilera. She didn't care what we did very much. She sometimes would spend her time on the phone if she could get away with it.

Then there was Jennifer. She was kind of boyish. She had short  blonde hair and glasses. The side of her face had a scar that she got from falling into a fire when she was a child. And she took her job a little more seriously. She didn't have a boyfriend. She mostly was concerned with getting into college. She let us know that she was not that popular in school. She didn't let me do whatever I wanted either. And she seemed to be more controlling over what we said and did. I didn't like her much at first. But over time, I grew to like her a lot more. She started talking to me and much like Veronica she gave me her own life advice. She told me about how she had been raped by a neighbor when she was a little girl, and she really wanted us to respect ourselves and not date dumb teenage boys who would take advantage of us. She was a very real person, and I grew to like her a lot better than Veronica.

Eventually Veronica tried to get me to talk shit about Jennifer. She started talking about how Jennifer was super ugly and no boys dated her. She made fun of the scar on the side of her face. I refused to participate, and decided then and there to become an informant to Jennifer. I assume things must have happened between them in the hallways of the giant people school because Jennifer said she was going to confront Veronica, who Jennifer informed me was not a nice person. There was a lot of tension after that, and Veronica started skipping her sessions. Eventually kids fell away, and after a year of this, I think they reduced the amount of times per week my father was required to go to these sessions. I missed Jennifer, who I am hoping went on and had a good life. Michael's father ended up going to jail, and so him and Sky left. I was happy to not have to eat those cold make-your-own-pizza lunchables, which, though the idea is intriguing, is actually awful in every sense of the word.

My fathers wanted to get in shape to kind of reestablish himself after the divorce, so he joined a gym. I used to go into the kids room, which was nothing more than a small closet-like room with a terribly small television always playing Dragon Ball Z (which ironically, I had no appreciation for till I was in my twenties). The whole room was covered in toys, and it was very difficult to get through the mess. In just about every gym, there is always a man who is screaming his head off like he is dying, trying to squeeze one more lift out of himself. I always found this extremely alarming. I would sit in there and watch over Allison and David to make sure they were not fighting. Which they seemed to do more and more of as they got older.

There was also a lady-friend that my father had made. To this day I could not decipher if they were dating or not. Asking him now, I am sure my father would have no clear answer either and honestly, I don't know if he actually knows. Her name was Denise. She was a waitress at Shari's. She was kind of a tough lady. She had raised 5 boys, one of them being the son of one of her cousins. They were all very wild, and she raised them all by herself. She was always pretty nice to me, and we would go over to see her at least once a week. Though I never saw my father and her kiss at all. I could not decipher the established relationship. They didn't sleep together or kiss, but if either one of them began to see someone else then they probably would have been angry.

Jimmy was the oldest – he eventually went crazy and became homeless, then Marques who was very popular among girls, he was one of those people who looks like they are wearing mascara and eyeliner but are not, Anthony who had a lot of friends who came and ate everything in the cupboard and generally no one in the family liked him but I never knew why, and finally Clayton, who was a truly monstrous little boy with missing teeth. It was very difficult to be around Clayton. He took things out of your hands, screamed, broke things. He was a little tyrant. I had to be in the same room with him a lot. It's also worthy of note that Denise had two iguanas that she was obsessed with. She called them her lovers. Her regard for them made them like her children, though it is questionable if they regarded her quite as favorably. My dad and Denise were in a relationship-not-relationship for almost two years. My father would often times complain to me about people, and as history repeated itself, I eventually complained openly about Clayton in front of Denise, basically repeating what my father had said and how he ruined one 4th of July at the beach in the car, with Denise in it. And it really upset her. She could not talk the rest of the way home. I was completely block-headed and had no idea I had said anything remotely offensive. She was furious, and my dad tried to say something to her, but she shushed him up. And this kind of ended their whatever-it-was. We visited a few more times, but eventually she told my father to buzz off.

The other friend my dad made that didn't make any real sense was a woman named Judy Burns. She was a married office lady at the factory my father worked at. She was extremely wealthy and lived in a part of town I had never known existed. She was a woman still dealing with a seriously traumatic event that happened just a few short years previous to my father and her's decision to hang out. Her twelve year old son had died of an asthma attack and she had not realized he was dying while he was in another room. So she came in and found her son dead and she carried enormous guilt with her. And this horrible situation had made her entire life fall apart even though it did not seem like it. She was extremely chipper and friendly. But she began eating to cope with the death of her son. She became obsessed with candy. I had never in my entire life seen so much candy. She had in her kitchen, hundreds of bags of candy. When she laughed, she had this twinkle in her eyes of pure sadness.

My dad went to Judy I think talking about the divorce. He could not stop talking about the divorce if someone had a gun to his head. She probably enjoyed the attention she got from my dad. After her son had died, her husband had completely disattached from her. He would walk around the outside part of the house completely drunk and not answer anything she said. He seemed kind of crazy with grief as well. He never smiled or laughed or looked anyone in the eyes at all. She responded to her sons death by almost pretending nothing was wrong, and he did the very opposite.

He must have told her that I had no mother figure in my life. And she saw this as an opportunity to perhaps do something good for a kid who was close to the age her deceased son. So my father came into my bedroom one day and told me that I was going with this lady on a shopping expedition to get fashionable school clothes and such. My dad has always apologetic and forewarning about people's weight. He warned me cautiously that she was 'VERY HEAVY'. I have absolutely no idea why he does this. Was she going to sit on me? Why would he even mention this to me at all? He ended up giving me a bigger stigma by reacting and assuming so much about overweight women. And he never apologized for men's weight. Only women's.

Judy took me to a bunch of super rich girl stores. She got me the classic late nineties dragonfly necklace. She decided that I needed to be up to date with 'cool' new music, so she bought me a bunch of Back Street Boys albums,  NSYNC, and Britney Spear's album that had Hit Me Baby One More Time on it. It was a bit confusing getting all this stuff. I didn't know how to feel about it. I wasn't into that kind of music at all. She also bought me a bunch of preteen magazines. I knew that all the girls in my class thought these guys were hot, but to me their hair was absurd, and I couldn't get into their silly soulless faces. I remember other than the dragonfly necklace, I didn't really like this stuff all that much. But my dad was insistent I be grateful. I really liked patchy homemade hippie clothes that my mother was capable of sewing but wouldn't. I wanted to dress like a more tomboy hip Raggedy Anne.

She also got me a bunch of beanie babies. Word was, that they were going to stop making these things once the year 2000 rolled around. So she bought me a whole bunch of beanie babies, since that was what 'the kids' were into these days, and presumably these stuffed animals would be worth so much some day that my grandchildren would have their tuition paid for. I thought these stuffies were boring, but I accepted them as graciously as I possibly could. Word was also, that Y2K was going to wipe out everyone's computers and as my friends at school informed me, all electronic devices would end. I could not wait for New Years to arrive to see if it actually happened.

I spent two weekends with Judy before either she made my father feel weird, or I once again messed things up by saying something questionable or judgmental, it's never been made clear to me why the visits stopped. The second weekend, she took me camping. She had this camper that had a running toilet, air conditioning, a heater, and a television, nothing about it was dirty or gritty in the least. The camper had bedrooms. We camped at a really crowded campground. This was so foreign to me I simply could not understand it. This was not the kind of camping I was used to at all. We didn't even need a fire. We stayed on night out in the woods, but her husband got drunk and began doing something strange outside at night, I am not sure what. I just heard her crying and them fighting outside. So in the morning she said we would hang out at her place.

Her home was opulent. I had no idea what two people could do with a ten bedroom home. They had these two yappy dogs and one of them tried his very best to impregnate my leg. It was somewhat awkward. I felt strange, like I was using her somehow. There was a very strange pressure about the whole situation. If her husband was mad about her doing this for me or her involvement with my father, I didn't hear any direct fighting from it. They offered me too many options of everything. It was difficult to know how to respond to all of this. If I took too much of something I felt I would be rude, and if I refused it then I would also be rude. Judy seemed to stare at me expectantly, waiting for me to do something, i didn’t know what. Judy wanted me to go swimming in the new bathing suit she bought me, so I went into her pool and chubby little me was swimming around. She insisted that I ask her husband to set up the water slide. I didn't want to go on the water slide, but she made me feel bad if I didn't. So eventually, I decided the right thing to do was to ask him to set it up for me.

He seemed annoyed and resentful towards this. Like I was some kind of rich impudent girl asking a slave for something absurd. The whole thing was awkward. He would not speak to me when I asked other questions and he seemed to slam things about getting this water slide – that I didn't even want to use, set up. On looking back, I imagine that perhaps it was hard to set up the pool. It was likely something they had put together for their son. There was probably memories associated with the water slide that were incredibly painful. In any case, nothing could have made it worse. Once he had the thing set up, I realized that if I were to go on it, then when I hit the water I would be submerged. I was fearful of getting water in my nose. So, after setting it up for the last half hour, he sat and watched me expectantly. I swam around and waited for him to go. Eventually he gruffly asked me ARE YOU GOING TO USE THE SLIDE OR WHAT?!. And I told him no. I didn't think I would. He was so pissed off. I quickly got out of the pool and went inside, with that dumb dog chasing after my leg.

So it was officially the day of Y2K. I was at my mother's. I remember sitting up that night, determined to stay up all night long to watch the end of the modern world crumble into chaos. I watched an interview on television with George W. Bush. I was informed that he was the next president of the United States. I didn't understand what they were saying. He seemed rather boring to me. Allison was four and a half by that time and she very much aware that everyone was going to be staying up. She wanted to stay up as well. My mother said no, but Allison was relentless. I watched my mother give Allison half an adults sleeping pill in a piece of food. She also put a little bit of NyQuil in Allison's kidcup. As she did so, she said 'Watch this'. Allison walked around for another five or ten minutes, but she started to falter and look super drowsy. She then passed out on the floor from exhaustion.

I was very into black tea at the time. I made a lot of tea that night. As it has turned out the world did not end at all. However, I ended up having the flu that night and I throwing up several times. The beginning of a good new millennium.

In case you want to read the first parts of my personal tale here are the links to the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth parts.

Also, i usually post these things twice. There seems to be people who like what i write for some reason randomly - sometimes not, but not everyone is on tumblr at the same time.

PART 5

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/160817595789/my-life-story-continued

PART 4

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/160729982054/being-10-in-1999

PART 3

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/160399693214/about-me-the-third-part-i-did-it-after-all

PART 2

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/160333575899/life-story-part-2

PART 1

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/160186590059/about-me-life-story-part-1

[punkwhodrinkstea-blog]

Lacking Hope and Numb

Hello humans. Much like my last post, I don’t have much to talk about.  However I think I have reached a new level of feeling absolutely nothing. I don’t remember if I’ve been this numb before. However I think my negative thoughts have also been suppressed but honestly this could change by the hour I think. I guess I don’t really know since I don’t think anyone really knows how depression works along with it being different for each person depending on circumstances and stuff. The only negative thing I can pin point is that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen my girlfriend and not to get to soft and mushy but I miss her. It doesn’t help that I don’t feel totally safe in my own house and she makes me feel safe which is always a good feeling. I am happy to say that I’ve been somewhat productive working on art stuff. Today I went roaming around town for some fresh air and it kinda acts like therapy. Anyway I went by my old highschool and found a memorial plaque in front of a young tree. It was for a girl who committed suicide almost 2 years ago. She got a plaque because she was an art student who helped with some art event or something. Honestly from my experiences with people who have mental illness or suicidal intentions or something to that effect, art is a very popular hobby since it lets us express ourselves and tell our side of thing, plus we get to present it in a cool, fun or emotional way. I don’t know the whole story but if an artist takes their own life, I’m willing to bet she made some great art before hand which would have been pretty decent clues of her struggle. But what do I know, I’m just a depressed punk who likes to make art about my struggles. Lastly I want to note that suicide used to be a crime about 20+ years ago… think about that for a second… let that sink in. So if you were caught attempting suicide you would be charged and thrown in jail. Wouldn’t it just be better to let them kill themselves? Isn’t that a worse penalty even though they choose it? This was before the time when it was more known that people kill themselves due to some kind of mental illness or extreme overwhelming life circumstances. Also lets just get this straight ‘cause I still want to dwell on how dumb this is…….. You were considered a criminal for killing yourself, that was a crime? How about the people who were involved in letting that person come to the place where suicide seemed to be the only option? They should have their tongues cut out or something. I don’t know just spit balling here.

 Moving on. I went about 2 weeks with hardly any sleep.  I got maybe 4 hours a night or no sleep on some nights but now my body is so tired. I accidentally fell asleep on my living room floor last night. I haven’t accidentally fallen asleep since 2014. It feels so good, to just drift into a peaceful sleep and wake up feeling rested. Oh the joy I hope I can do it again soon. Anyway another exciting thing I’ve been doing is replacing my urge to cut myself with drawing on myself in permanent marker. Now I can’t just start writing on my arm without my parents reading it so I’ve been writing in Hylian (the language from The Legend of Zelda) it may just be from a videogame but it has full punctuation and is really just script. So yeah, I currently have “Help”, “Cut here” and “Love” written on my arm in Hylian. My family is lost and I think it’s hilarious. Ok last thing about me lately is that I am swamped with homework that I don’t even want to do. I am taking 2 online college courses for “concept art” and one course is great, the other is simply a series of youtube tutorials taking a simple thing and making it into a one hour lecture. You know when you’re doing math homework but you forget a formula and you’re too lazy to flip back in your notes so you just google it on your phone? That is what this class is. The homework is boring, easy, sucks up time, expressionless and is meaningless. At least my other class is good, basically it teaches you how to draw using several methods to teach you along side being complex and worthy enough of the hour time slot the class takes up, plus the homework is reasonable and helpful unlike the other class. Anyway let’s move on to something else.

 I’ve been feeling fairly of hopeless. As in I won’t ever have a decent future due to a lack of motivation to live life and therefore I probably won’t get a job or even decent grades in school. I used to not really be concerned but I have a girlfriend whom I care for very much. I want what’s best for her and I want to be the best for her and thus far I  don’t see myself being the best for her in the long run. What if I crash and burn? I would never want to drag her down too or be some failure she has to carry through life. The thing is, she is amazing and would probably do it too… I can’t screw this up. So far all of my skills don’t really earn money. I mean no one buys art anymore unless some hot shot museum is selling it for some reason and unless my writing somehow makes me money which I have a hard time understanding how I can make money by writing unless my book sells or if my blog is somehow worth having on some site which would pay me. I guess there are just a lot of variables that I don’t have a solution for and I can’t even imagine what God’s plans are for me. Lastly another fear of mine is becoming exactly what everyone has told me. Some gamer punk loser who lives in the basement making nothing of his life. I watch as everyone else moves on and I am here just trying to cope with my depression and attempting to be productive but in reality I have no idea what I want to do for a career. All I know is that I want to move out and eventually spend the rest of my days with my girlfriend away from the toxic people which I’ve went through life with thus far. End of Rant. Oh fuck I got some blood on my keyboard. Guess I was venting a bit too hard. Anyway… uh. I’ve got reading to do and sleep to get… hopefully by accident I’ll fall asleep. Peace out humans, hope y’all are doing better at this “future” thing then me. *static sounds*..........