#then a therapy session uncovering some ugly truths

[irl]

ive had a shit awful day and the cherry on top was spraining my ankle just now

who wants to cashapp me like forty bucks so i can buy me some 🍃 greens and smoke myself silly till i pass out lol

[nanamicide]

A life of her own - chapter 4

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Mukuro woke up at 11am that morning. As far as she remembered, she’d never slept in this late before. This didn’t feel too bad, though. She even thought it was refreshing, especially after everything her mind had gone through on the previous day. Besides, it was normal for people her age to wake up late when they had nothing to do, wasn’t it?

Sitting on the edge of her bed, she wondered what she was going to do today. She could have grabbed breakfast in the dining hall of the academy, but she wasn’t too hungry just yet. Plus, it was getting close to lunch break, which meant that by the time she got there, it would be packed with people – something she wasn’t ready to deal with just yet. Sure, her mind felt much clearer than it had in the past few days, but she still wasn’t back to normal. Hell, she didn’t even know what being normal meant for her.

She rubbed her eyes and scanned her room, her eyes landing on her sneakers. Yes, that’s right, she thought, I could just go on a run to start my day. It would be stupid to let my physical abilities go to waste just because I’m not sure what I want to do with myself just yet. Mukuro walked into the bathroom. She splashed her face with cold water and looked at her reflection in the mirror. This was another thing she hadn’t done in a while.

She stared at her own face for a while, studying it. She attempted to smile, but ended up chuckling to herself. I guess forcing a smile would just look ridiculous on anyone, wouldn’t it? She shrugged. At least she didn’t feel as bad as she used to. She was able to face herself in the mirror without being reminded of Junko calling her ugly.

I don’t even look that bad anyway. She ran her fingers through her hair and grabbed a hair tie, putting it up into a tiny ponytail. Sure, I could grow my hair longer, but there’s nothing wrong with the way I look. I’m… I’m just as cute as anyone else in this school. She touched her freckles and sighed happily, feeling like she would be able to keep the promise she’d made to herself – she would be able to have a normal life, it was just a matter of time.

The sound of someone knocking on her door snapped her out of her thoughts. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She’d seen Gekkogahara-san yesterday for her therapy session, and there was no way Sakakura-san or Munakata-san would have any business with her now, right? She rushed out of the bathroom and quickly got out of her pyjamas to put on a plain white t-shirt and her running shorts, mentally cursing just who it was that was ruining her plans.

When she unlocked and opened her door, she was surprised to see one of her classmates standing there. She couldn’t remember Gekkogahara-san telling her that talking to any of them was okay.

“Um… Good morning,  Ikusaba-san,” Naegi-kun greeted her.

Part of her wanted to close the door in his face, but she froze. What was she supposed to do? She didn’t even know if she was allowed to talk to him. He wasn’t part of the people her therapist had told her were off limits, but she still felt unsure. What if he was there to ask her questions? What if he was disgusted with her and everything she’d done with Junko? She wasn’t ready to deal with anything like this. Yet, she didn’t move.

“I… Uh… I know you’ve had a lot happening to you recently and you can’t come to class yet,” he said, scratching the back of his head nervously. “And Gekkogahara-san came to see us and tell us we could visit you if we wanted to, so I thought I’d do it! We can even get something to eat if you want, I’m kinda hungry,” he laughed.

Mukuro felt as though someone had lit her face on fire. She had no idea why she was reacting this way, but she felt quite embarrassed. Naegi-kun was there, kindly inviting her out of her room to get something to eat, and she was just standing there, unable to respond to him. She hadn’t even showered yet.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to, you know? I understand that with everything you’ve had going on you might not be feeling—”

“No, I’ll come with you. Just give me ten minutes,” she hurriedly replied, closing the door and rushing back to the bathroom to freshen up and get ready.

As she quickly showered, threw on her school uniform and brushed her hair, she thought about what Junko would have said if she’d been there. It was almost as if she could hear her, telling her that it didn’t matter how much effort she was putting into fixing herself because she would always be her fat, ugly, smelly big sis; that Naegi-kun was only here out of pity and that no one in their class would be able to forgive her.

She grabbed the door handle and took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. Things would be okay. Junko wasn’t here anymore, so it didn’t matter what she would have thought – because even if she’d been here and witnessed this scene, she would have been wrong. Naegi-kun didn’t pity her. In fact, given all the horrible things she’d done, no one had any reason to pity her.

She opened the door and stepped outside, feeling determined. She could ignore what the nasty, annoying voices that were almost constantly in the back of her head were telling her. She could have lunch with a classmate like any other student at the academy would. She could definitely do all of this, and anything else she may want to do.

“Shall we go?” How enthusiastic she sounded didn’t seem to surprise her classmate, but it sure surprised herself.

-

As she sat down at a table across from Naegi-kun, Mukuro’s discomfort grew bigger. She couldn’t tell if this was actually happening or if she was just paranoid, but something in her was telling her that people were staring at her.

“Do you… I mean, do they know what I’ve done?” She awkwardly asked, nervously playing with her fingers and staring at her food.

Her classmate only nodded in response, and it made her feel sick to her stomach. She could only imagine what all of these people were thinking, how scared they would be to see her roam the academy freely.

“Just what have you all been told?”

“Just that Enoshima-san got you involved in… uh…”

“Murder,” she finished. She could tell he was looking for another way to say it, as if there was a way to make it sound any better than what it actually was. “You can say it, I know what I’ve done.”

“I promise no one’s holding it against you, it’s not like you had a choi—”

“But I did,” she protested, suddenly feeling angry. Did this mean he was actually pitying her? Was that why he’d invited her to have lunch with him? “I could have done so many things to not have to follow her orders. I don’t want to be painted as one of her poor little victims.”

“Ikusaba-san.”

She glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. Doing this was much harder than what she’d imagined, and she hadn’t even really expected it to go smoothly in the first place.

“I know,” he said. “I know what you’ve done. Gekkogahara-san explained it to us earlier. She said you don’t regret anything you’ve done. But still, I… I think you could use a friend, you know? I know we’ve never been close, but I never got the feeling that you were a bad person.”

“Did you get that feeling from Junko?” She spat in an attempt to uncover the truth behind his words. She wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.

“You’re right, you’re right, I didn’t,” Naegi-kun replied, chuckling softly. “Some might say I’m a little naïve. Still, even now, I don’t think you’re as bad as they say.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t,” he smiled at her, which somehow calmed her down. “I don’t approve of what you’ve done, but I’m sure you had your reasons. Even when it comes to not regretting any of it, I’m sure you have good reasons not to.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure.” He shrugged, still smiling at her. “I just try to see the best in people.”

There was something in Naegi-kun’s smile that told Mukuro she had no reason to be wary of him – that she could trust him, regardless of how scared she was to get close to someone. Besides, the way he looked at her made her feel much better about the way everyone else seemed to be staring at them. It was almost as though his bright hazel eyes canceled out everyone else’s. His presence was both uplifting and reassuring – something she’d never experienced around anyone else.

“Okay, I’ll take it,” she replied, smiling at him without needing to force herself. “You seem to know what you’re doing.”

And so, Mukuro let him speak about little things like their classmates and what had been going on in class since she’d stopped attending. And she let herself react to him and what he was telling her, thinking that none of this was bad – that if this was what normal people did on a daily basis, she definitely wanted to be normal.

-

Dear diary

(I really need to find a good way to start these entries, at some point.)

I spent time with Naegi-kun today. It only lasted a couple of hours but it made me feel strange. I had never been able to be honest with someone before. I had never talked about how I had willingly killed someone. I had never felt free to even say it. Now that everyone knows, I guess there are no more limits to what I can and can’t share with others – it doesn’t feel too bad.

Despite that, the way people look at me stresses me out. I can tell that they’re judging me because of what I’ve done. I can feel the fear in their looks and demeanors because I’ve experienced it before. The only difference here is that I am not about to end their lives or cause them any harm whatsoever. I can no longer just go about my day without catching people’s attention and feeling horrible about it because I know exactly what they’re thinking. That felt pretty awful.

Naegi-kun was different though. He didn’t seem to be judging me. Even when I spelled it out for him; when I told him I wasn’t just Junko’s victim, he didn’t look at me as if I was about to jump on him and murder him right there on the spot. There were no negative emotions in his eyes. This… This made me feel good. It was the first time since my mom died that anyone looked at me without a hint of scorn or dread, excluding Gekkogahara-san. But it’s her job to be warm towards me – Naegi-kun didn’t have to.

And yet, he sat and ate with me. The fact he was even able to eat around me shows that he wasn’t feeling uneasy. Many people ended up leaving the dining hall without touching their food upon seeing me. He didn’t. He ate. And I ate, too. I guess it means that we were feeling pretty good around each other, doesn’t it?

This is another piece of evidence that Junko was wrong. I’m not just her fat, ugly, smelly big sis. I’m not nothing without her. There is still someone who seems to genuinely care about me, though I can’t figure out why. But I don’t think this matters. What really matters here is that I don’t mess any of it up. If I’m completely honest, I want to spend time with him again. I want to be able to talk to him the way we saw friends talk to each other on our way back. They all seemed happy. I want to be happy like that.

The funny thing about this is that I don’t think I’m worthy of a second of his time. He’s a genuinely good person who would never hurt anyone. I’m a mass murderer. I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him if Junko had asked me to. And thinking about this just makes me want to tell him to leave me alone, no matter how much I enjoyed my time with him. I think I’m a little bit lost, here. I think it’s because I still don’t know who I am.

So who am I? What defines me, Mukuro Ikusaba? Is it the person I was when I was with Junko? Or is it the person I managed to be when spending time with Naegi-kun? Could it also be the person I am when expressing my thoughts and feelings to Gekkogahara-san, or maybe someone else entirely? I don’t know. Thinking about it is scary. It’s scary because I feel like there’s no answer to that question. I just exist, but I don’t know who I truly am.

I don’t know if the real me deserves to have someone like Naegi-kun care for her. Yet, I know that I want him to care for me. I know that I enjoyed my day today, even if I didn’t do any of the things I had planned.

But it’s getting late now, and I’m pretty tired. Too tired to even attempt to figure it out on my own. I guess it’ll have to way till tomorrow.

I hope I see him again.

[kalluun-patangaroa]

Suede: The Insatiable Ones – the ugly beautiful truth is a must watch

Waiting for this:

you may read this nice review:

The GQ Magazine

Saturday 24 November 2018 

By George Chesterton

A new Sky Arts documentary about Suede uncovers the tangled tale of a band who mixed glamour and excess with the dark poetry of suburbia

Credit: Sky/Dean Chalkley                        

                        By the time of Suede’s fourth album, 1999’s Head Music, it was easy to imagine that Brett Anderson had been replaced by a Brett Anderson Random Lyric Generator. But by 1999 Suede were out of step, just as they had been when they released their first single in 1992. They are a band who admit to never fitting in and even at their commercial peak they were trapped between what they had been rejecting, American grunge and indie dance, and what they inadvertently gave birth to, Britpop. They remained outside whatever cultural moment they happened to be sashaying past in slightly flared trousers. Suede always had delusions of grandeur. But what beautiful delusions they were.

The Sky Arts documentary Suede: The Insatiable Ones, follows the band’s successes and troubles through interviews, archives and a mass of video shot by the drummer Simon Gilbert in the studio and on the road. The film, by Mike Christie, begins with Anderson nodding sagely in a studio listening to some orchestration in Prague. It’s indicative of what Suede always wanted to be: a band not necessarily driven by an ambition to be huge, but rather a band with huge ambitions.

Suede: The Insatiable Ones begins with the journey of Anderson from school in Haywards Heath to University College London, where the singer met Justine Frischmann in 1989 and formed the core of the group with his childhood friend, bassist Mat Osman (brother of Richard Osman, who appears throughout). The generosity of Frischmann’s testimonials provide some of the warmest moments of the film, adding welcome perspective to a band whose entire existence was so cultivated or, to their detractors, contrived.

               Suede admit to never fitting in. They always had delusions of grandeur. But what beautiful delusions they were    

Recounting the cash-strapped early years, we discover the shock when The Smith’s drummer Mike Joyce auditioned – “It was one of the strangest things that ever happened to us” says Osman – and that Gilbert’s arrival was down in part to his friend Ricky Gervais, who, for a short time, was their ineffectual co-manager. “I remember saying, ‘oh I’m rubbish at this,’” says Gervais. “And the band agreed.” Then Bernard Butler answered an ad for a guitarist in the NME. His arrival and Frischmann’s departure – she left Anderson with a broken heart but a stack of his best lyrics to write – hastened the great leap they were looking for. “It enabled me to tap into something primal – loss, frustration, jealousy,” says Anderson. “I was trying to reflect the world around me – squats, roundabouts – but it was also an escape.”

The film captures the sudden emergence of Suede’s particularity, as they signed to Nude Records and played to increasingly hysterical audiences. As Stuart Maconie, the man who put Anderson on the cover of Select magazine in April 1993 with headline “Yanks Go Home” explains. Suede have a very definite constituency. It emerged from and reflected the emotional frigidity and patio-grey deserts of suburbia. And just like any artists looking beyond the horizons of their claustrophobic home, Suede were at once explorers and prisoners. The music, the image, the lyrics were a reaction against their environment that could never escape its own frames of reference.

Credit: Getty Images 

From the first time I heard The Drowners – especially the B-Side To The Birds – it was obvious to me why I liked them so much. The early part of the documentary explores Anderson and Osman’s emergence from Haywards Heath – something Anderson himself eloquently recounts in his autobiography Coal Black Mornings. This was a world I knew rather too well for comfort and he articulated it with unnerving accuracy. He became the poet laureate of pylons, municipal parks and cheap housing stock. If anything, the film does not state the impact of the first singles and their debut album, Suede, enough. It was a moment of exuberance and drama just as British pop seemed to have run out of steam (again). “The sexuality in the lyrics was a really important thing,” says Anderson. “I wanted to talk about sexuality in the same way Lucian Freud paints the human body.”

Butler, a lithe, beautiful figure with a guitar in his hands, is shown only in old clips and his contributions do not go beyond an interview he shared with Anderson after their acrimony had been resolved in 2004. It’s telling that when Osman talks of Butler’s slide into the musical monomania that saw him leave during their second album, Dog Man Star, he admits he wishes they had shown more empathy for this fragility. Butler was still grieving for his father in 1994, and this compounded the collapse of his relationship with Anderson and their producer Ed Buller.

Dog Man Star was recorded in shifts so Butler could work alone and he and Anderson effectively wrote their songs “by post”. Butler’s dark Brian Wilson routine did help create the massive sound and scope of Dog Man Star, which appeared just as the meat and potatoes of Britpop was emerging into the mainstream. “I felt partly responsible for it,” says Anderson of Britpop. “Like giving birth to some awful child.” It’s an album that should be treasured – grandiloquent and brooding but also deeply humane and smart. Butler’s exit fulfils that great trope of pop and rock history: the “what if” question. But this is misleading, as Anderson explains. He knew from the beginning that Butler would leave. It was simply a question of when.

       Suede's first album was a moment of exuberance and drama just as British pop seemed to have run out of steam

This sorry episode is lifted by the bathos of film’s funniest moment: the footage of a dewy-eyed Anderson in his dark glasses at a press conference following Butler’s departure, looking like David St Hubbins after Nigel Tufnell quits Spinal Tap. He admits, “Ninety-nine per cent of the world thought we were over, including part of me.”

Frischmann explains that Suede survived because it was always Anderson and Osman’s band. With bloody mindedness and the 17-year-old guitarist Richard Oakes (the first gig he had ever been to was Suede, who he watched with eyes on stalks at Poole Arts Centre in 1993) they returned with new songs and the wise decision to change the mood. That led to their most commercially successful album, bursting with big hits, Coming Up, helped by keyboard player Neil Codling. “It was such an optimistic record and that was a side of Suede nobody had seen before,” said Buller. The film reunites Anderson with the legendary Factory designer Peter Saville, who seemed to have created the band’s artwork of this period entirely in his dressing gown.

Credit: Getty Images

By the late Nineties the momentum was unsustainable, especially as Anderson, who admits his penchant at the hard stuff, became an free-basing self-parody. “I justified my addiction by seeing it as part of a rock’n’roll mythology.” Needless to say, wanting to make a Prince album hit a few snags. Firstly, he was high on crack and heroin. Secondly, he wasn’t Prince. Osman remembers how the band could tell if Anderson had been smoking crack because he would arrive at the studio with his hair pushed back to avoid setting it alight. Even when the singer got clean, the music had run dry. “We were done – we’d run out of inspiration,” says Osman. The fifth album has been officially disowned. In a group therapy session arranged for the film, Anderson apologises to the rest of the members for his behaviour and for announcing the split on Graham Norton. After a few awkward confessions, the footage cuts to them reforming at the Royal Albert Hall in 2010 and loving every minute of it.

           Osman said he could tell if Anderson had been smoking crack because he would arrive at the studio with his hair pushed back to avoid setting it alight

After side and solo projects, Suede returned and are slotting comfortably into national treasure status with three albums since, including this year’s The Blue Hour. Suede care. They do their homework. They make the effort. Nothing demonstrates this better than their love of the now archaic-sounding B-side, which they produced by the bucketload (collected on the fine Sci-Fi Lullabies in 1997), when other bands couldn’t be bothered.

Accusations of pretentiousness are pointless. If pop can’t be pretentious then there is no hope for humanity. Anyway, such barbs are often made by those for whom imagination itself is an act of class war. Like their contemporaries Pulp, Suede are canonical English pop, mixing the wry fantasies of art school (Bowie, Roxy Music, even Kate Bush), the working-class smarts of The Kinks and the sleaze of new wave. If you don’t understand Suede, you don’t understand English music. This is an understated documentary for a band who tried to be anything but understated. Then again, under the filthy glamour of Suede there has always been something dark and grey. To take a few examples at random: concrete, flyovers, motorways, council houses, skyscrapers, telephone wires, electric lights…

Suede: The Insatiable Ones is on Sky Arts on 24 November at 8pm, followed by Suede: Live At The Royal Albert Hall at 11.15pm    

[gaiatheorist]

‘Daddy Issues.’

Now, I’d always associated ‘Daddy Issues’ with approval-seeking behaviour, and projecting a desire for protection, but, during the recent therapy sessions, I did catch myself muttering ‘Thanks, Dad’ in relation to some of my behaviour patterns and coping mechanisms. Much like many of the screws in flat-pack furniture, my need-to-please is rattling around at the back of a drawer somewhere, that’ll be another reason I’m not particularly stable, my skewed coping mechanisms are the human equivalent of that cupboard door, where there’s a knack to opening and closing it.

I’d sent my Dad a message, about the Autism diagnosis, my family dynamic is odd, and my tangential risk-avoidance mechanism kicked in. I’d already messaged my Mum, then it dawned on me that my brother has contact with both of our parents. It was possible, but not particularly probable that my mother might mention the diagnosis to my brother, who might mention it to my father. Unacceptable risk of Dad turning up unannounced to check I hadn’t put my trousers on my head, or taken to swallowing live goldfish. I sent a very detailed message to Dad, and then a short-and-to-the-point message to my brother. ‘Heads up, Dad might ask you to check on me.’

I’d sort of anticipated a laborious hunt-and-peck reply from Dad, you know the ones, where the electronic ellipsis is on the screen for ages, so you expect War And Peace, but end up with ‘OK’, or that damned ‘thumb’ on Facebook. Nope, at some point between two and three yesterday afternoon, my Dad knocked on my door. He’s only known where I live for two out of the last twenty years. Less than ideal, the house is in that particular ‘Oh, Gods, did they take much?’ state, with my son back from uni. We have two of everything, because I set him up for everything, two sets of cutlery, two sets of crockery, two coffee presses, two pestle and mortars, you get the idea. I probably looked like I’d try to fight off the imaginary burglars, and that I might have been eating my dinner at the time, my top-jumper has dropped food, and all manner of dubious ‘matter’ on it, and I was in leggings and fake Ugg boots. Classy. 

“Right, I saw your message. What’s all this about? I didn’t read all of it.”

Hmm, if he’d read all of it, he’d know what it was about. People function in different ways. I have a tendency to type all salient points into a text-message, quite frequently with ‘Information only, no action required’, hit ‘send’ and it’s done. I’m a cow for ‘as per my previous’.  

“Come in, Dad.” (Mad panic, shifting my son’s disgusting desk, so Dad could sit down.)

“I will, just a minute.” (Dad goes back to his car, which is on the road at the end of my empty drive.) “I brought you these, a sort of early Christmas present.” ‘These’ were gin, my Dad can be the very worst Tommy-top-it,self-aggrandising, delusions of grandeur type, but, hey, free gin.

I explained the process that had led to the diagnosis, how I’d always found some ‘normal’ things incredibly difficult, but thought it was just me being useless, as everyone else seemed to cope, when I just wanted to hide behind the curtains. I elaborated, about how much conscious-cognitive effort that had taken, and that the brain injuries massively diminished my ability to filter/screen/mask. I was a little barbed with him when I mentioned that high-functioning females with ASD are often missed, because we’re conditioned differently, small, polite, quiet, ‘good girl’ material. It gets tricky here, because I remember being shouted at, and clouted for ‘having a long face’, and not ‘joining in’. I explained that I’d always found those things exceptionally difficult, and now, with the brain injuries, I wasn’t able to suppress the sensory overload. (See, I’m not ‘just’ being an arse when I decline invitations to family gatherings and such.)

Last year, or possibly the year before, I had a no-holds-barred conversation with  my Mother. We agreed that, with hindsight, we’d both made some dubious judgements, but that we couldn’t go back and change anything. I don’t physically look like either of my parents, but I AM similar in some behaviour-patterns and psychological aspects. The ‘keep going’ pit-pony element is from my mother, I used to run at everything full-tilt, now, I’m more of the tenacious water-on-a-rock. Princess-wing-it is entirely my father, he’s a chancer, and a grifter, lobbing himself head-first into things, without planning how to get out. Perfect storm, I have my father’s bravado, and my mother’s resilience. Both parents have acknowledged that they married too young, and didn’t have a clue what they were doing. In response to me making the same disclosure first. I ‘played house’ for a decade, then the metaphorical rot set in. Relentless, like my mother, and headstrong, like my father, I ‘kept trying’, to show everyone who said my marriage wouldn’t last that I was right, and they were wrong. There was an amusing incident with dad yesterday, where I word-slipped, the word I couldn’t remember was ‘rehabilitation’, I bumbled around the edged of it, recovery, repair, re-adjustment, dad couldn’t find the word, either. 

“That happens a lot, Dad, my mind knows the word, my brain can’t find it, and my mouth throws out the next-best-fit word, and hopes for the best.”

“Well, yes, I understand what you’re saying, and I know I get it wrong sometimes. Actually, no, I don’t.”

We spoke over each other, he said he was last-wrong in 1968, and I said I was wrong in 1983. Little-Miss-Can’t-Be-Wrong. 

I was their pancake-baby. You know how it goes, you make the batter, heat the pan, take one of the connectors off the battery in the smoke alarm, and make a start. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the first pancake is always shit, it’s the dog-pancake, it either burns because the pan is too hot, or soaks up oil like a disgusting gluten-sponge. Subsequent pancakes improve in quality, and, just as you’ve absolutely cracked it, you run out of batter. I was the dog-pancake, and my half-sister, 6ft tall, with a Masters Degree from Oxford, AND conventionally gorgeous was the last pancake from the batch, the perfect pancake. She’s about 24, world at her feet, considering continuing her studies with a doctorate. I have 10 GCSEs, and 4 A-levels, I am the bad pancake. 

I don’t have Daddy Issues in terms of seeking approval or affirmation from others. I don’t have Daddy Issues in terms of looking for a protector, I can catch my own spiders, and change my own light-bulbs and fuses. My Daddy Issues, like most things about me, are slightly skewed. As much as I was conditioned-female, as much as I spent most of my formative years being ‘nice’ and ‘quiet’, and ‘good’, because I was terrified of what would happen if I stepped out of line, I’m not scared of him any more, and I’d rather be productive than ‘nice.’ He’s 68, and he’s frail. I’m as tall as him, as age has taken its toll, I’m heavier than him by 2st, he’s not a physical threat to me, and I severed all emotional ties decades ago. He can’t intellectually intimidate me, because his ‘specialist subject’ is rabbits and chickens, and I have neither, that knowledge is not relevant to me. (I did have chickens, he rambled through an anecdote of one of the well-to-do-Oxford-parents seeking him out, to pose poultry predicaments. I imagine he was sought out as a novelty, he’s an odd looking object. The ‘very posh’ lady had sought him out, he rambled on a bit, before getting to the point, she’d bought eggs to hatch on eBay. “Really, that would never be my first choice, Dad.” “Precisely my point.” “You’d have no idea of the lineage, even if they did hatch, and survive the first 14 weeks, they’d likely keel over and die as soon as they reached adulthood.” He went a bit quiet, and then started telling me how my half-sister ‘worked the computer’ while my step-mother performed veterinary surgery.)

That man caused me physical, emotional, and psychological damage that I live with to this day. I was never-enough, and when I was-enough, I was a try-hard, doomed to fail when my incompetence was uncovered. He told me I was ugly, stupid, useless, but I don’t believe that any more. I don’t ‘need’ my Dad, I don’t want to ‘be’ my Dad, much less marry him. I spent far too many years trying to ‘beat’ him, but all that did was exacerbate the self-doubt he’d instilled in me.

He came from a different time, for all his personal issues, he tried, he had better results from his younger daughter than he did with me, there’s almost 20 years between the two of us. Not ‘better’ results, different ones. She’s amazing because she was a late, very-much-wanted child, with a stable mother, and a father who was at a different point in his life. I wish them all well, but I’m not part of their lives. Unless they’re bringing me gin.    

[pitifulandselfish-blog]

01.15.2017

I can’t say that I feel tethered to reality because I don’t know what that means.

My first session with a therapist taught a few things. The first being that (even as a total stranger to this person) I am an effective enough communicator to organize my narrative of “why am I seeking therapy” into something that could bring her to the verge of tears. She’s a pro so she didn’t openly cry, but her eyes were swelling with tears, inflamed and wide. A deep fear of mine that stems from my youngest years is finding (or failing to find) the precise words to communicate what I’m thinking or feeling, saying them all out loud and still being misunderstood by whoever is listening - it was nice to have that fear dispelled within 10 minutes of talking.

The less than awesome thing I uncovered was how much of my reality I built around you. We both knew I never felt capable of love, of being love, of any of it - but I tried. For the first time in my whole life I really tried to give both another person and myself an equal level of love and care - for a while it worked. And then you left, which I can’t blame you for. You had a sense of self to find, I can’t stand in the way of that. You found it, it didn’t include me. And then you came back, and nothing felt the same. We weren’t looking at the people we had once fallen for, we were looking at strangers: one with a life worth living and then my life. It was like our entire relationship was like a big ugly scar that you tried to hide from everyone, even yourself, and that nothing positive we had built together could have possibly survived inside of you given your new outlook on life.

The sad part is the familiarity. Most of the women I’ve cared for on some level have felt broken and worthless and unlovable, much like myself. I think what bonds us initially is the idea that we’re so fucked on our own, there’s little damage someone new could put us through. In time, we trust; we get to the heart of what makes the other hurt, and you’re always more open about it then I am. We try to help another grieve and overcome the pain, overcome ourselves, create real reasons for getting out of bed while misery piles up like wet snow in a window frame. We both get better in our own ways, but I don’t get better as quickly because I resist it. I don’t think I’m capable of real spiritual awakening, or maybe deep down I don’t think I need to change, or believe in the idea of redemption - I’m comfortable enough living inside of my own worst fears that I don’t want to face them. Understandably, this beautiful human who undergoes a metamorphosis while dating me eventually sees me for what I am and will be, and they leave. They become this pretty little crystal of positive auras and fairy dust, running to the wilderness clutching their new identity that any version of myself would laugh off as childish - but I know you’re so full of love now to forget the time you spent loving someone so wrong and unworthy of it. You weren’t just the first person that I truly trusted, you were also my best friend (And I’m sorry to any platonic best friends who read that and felt hurt - there’s some shit you can’t share with even your best friends, but I shared with her). And now you’re gone and you’re off the grid and I’m likely never going to see or hear from you again. The time spent since June feeling aimless and stagnant has been little more than an agonizingly prolonged projection of the 5 stages of grief, and I’ve finally hit acceptance. You weren’t going to be the person I spent the rest of my life with. At your worst, you were selfish and manipulative and absolutely took advantage of how much effort I undertook to make you smile which is objectively unsustainable for the earnest exchange of feelings and trust. Maybe neither of us really loved each other at all, maybe we got off on the idea of being in love, and we simply did so with someone willing to placate the fantasy for that long. Ultimately our lives are better lived alone; but now that I’ve accepted that little nugget of truth about 8 months too late, I’m still struggling to find my new sense of “a good life” now that I traded solitude for the chance to share my existence with another person - I’m uncertain if I can go back to living alone. I can’t say that I feel tethered to reality because I don’t know what that means.