ch-ch-ch-changes! aka Avatar TLA break

Oh hello there blog. I always come at this writing thing with a purpose (I'm gonna write about a thing and use these specific sentences!) but when I craft this idea I am usually comically far away from my computer, e.g., in the shower, and when I finally manage to put fingers to keys most of the thing and all of those specific sentences are gone. But I will TRY. Or at least I am going to ramble on anyway.

I have a difficult time relating to normal people. Not normal in an angsty sense, like no one will ever understand me. Normal as in 95% of people have a life experience that is 2 standard deviations from a given mean life experience. And I am somewhere between -5 and -6 on the distribution curve. I'm not trying to whine and it might be slash probably is all in my head but it does not seem to want to go away and is worsening with age.

small examples: when people discuss the music/ballet/sports lessons and camps they went to as children. when people talk about the cartoons and movies they watched as children. in general, over half the time when someone is talking about their childhood, it involves experiences that I never had. I try to chime in when I can but most of the time I am left feeling empty and cheated.

large example: when I meet a charming, lovely boy who ignites little Butterfrees in my belly, who makes me so nervous that I either clam up or say stupid shit and probably sound like a huge jerk but who for some reason likes me anyway. and this boy has probably never even seen a food stamp. this boy's parent's house is ticky tacky and oozing with too much class. I am awkward and don't know how to act. I never relax. I don't want to share the bits of my life because they are shameful. and I either run or scare them off somehow.

These things wouldn't even matter anymore if I didn't spend the first four years of my life after breaking out of whatever just fucking trashing said life.


UPDATE like a million years later (around Sept 2012):
...Oh man. I don't even know what to say here. Embarrassingly, it took me a few minutes to even figure out who the eff I was talking about. Then I remembered M2, who I was momentarily enamored with. He turned out to be asshole. Okay, not an asshole per se, but a lost soul without his shit together. Which leads me to the reason I am revisiting this blog: I do not date people with their shit together. Case in point: my newest paramour, the delightfully hobbitesque C. Seriously, he looks exactly like a 6'3" Pippin, and it's awesome. However, the boy's life is in shambles. Shambles. I am not even using hyperbole; this kid is a mess. So of course I had to have him. Just like M2, and P, and M1, J, T...I have not since my very first love dated a boy who was happy in the direction his life was going. Well, with the exception of T but he was nuts and his boat-apartment didn't even have a bathroom. I wasn't happy with the direction his life was going. aaaaaanyway. What does this say about me? Nice guys, successful guys, guys working on their master's degree or who are enjoying a career seem to be in encased in glass; I can look but I can't touch.

2012/10/16
This is my third try at this particular blog, and I really want to get out whatever I've been trying to say. I should tell you that C ran off with some girl he's batshit crazy for and we don't talk now. Why can't I connect with people who's lives aren't on a downward trajectory? Is it a barrier that I put up? A vibe I give off? I'm kind of concerned with this. It might be different once I graduate and feel less like I'm trying to play catch up with my life. Maybe not. I hope so.

Beverages

Maybe I am an alcoholic. I prefer to think that I am just drowning my sorrows. But I am sitting at the convention center, not doing homework and dicking around on the internet, some fucking horrible harp rendition of Hey Jude is assaulting my ears, and all I can think is how this scene would be soooooo much less dull if I had beer. Like, I really want to drink beer right now. So much so that I might leave and go drink beer, even though I am supposed to be filming some OS meeting. But P will be at the meeting and it will probably suck and maybe no one will show up or they will talk about incredibly dull things and see how many excuses I can come up with to not film this meeting and instead go drink beer?

I need to stop this. I'm annoying everyone. Plus, I am so angry all of the time, at everything. Well, except...

I don't know what I was going to say there. I just trailed off and left this post dangling here for months. So I am going to post it now even though its relevance is lost completely (OS is mostly gone, P's fences have been mended although dontevengetmestarted)...well maybe not completely. I'd still like a beer.

My (somewhat coherent) thoughts on violent revolution

I have been thinking about this for some time now, and I can kind of see both sides. I hate the knot tightening in my chest every four years as I watch aspiring leaders of this country spout seemingly insane talk about putting poor children to work doing menial labor as young as age nine because otherwise they will never learn to have a work ethic (because of their obviously drug-addled parents), or that they do not worry about poor people because of the government safety net, and then I watch the same guys just get even more popular.  Newt Gingrich is MEAN. Mitt Romney is nuts. And Obama is, well…ineffectual. Our system is broken if these are our only choices.

But like it or not, we are a nation of first world problems. We are not Egypt. We are not Moscow. We are not violently oppressed. There are many things wrong with this country: Our healthcare system allows people to die if they do not have the (often incredibly large sums of) money required for uninsured medical treatment. We have a flawed “two party” political system where we are forced to choose between a rich dick and an even richer asshole, neither of which embody a fitting representation of the American populace.  Our judiciary allows corporations-as-people the right to funnel unlimited sums of cash into political campaigns and fails to see how this compromises the integrity of our already precarious party system. The one percent is allowed to bend rules and regulations, using the power of money, to keep themselves on the richer side of the fence.

But we have freedom. We have the freedom to peaceably assemble. We have the freedom to write our legislators. We have the freedom to info bomb. We have the freedom to Occupy. We have the freedom to MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD.

Money talks in this country. And power corrupts.  But do we require a violent overthrowing of our social and political system in order to enact the kind of change we NEED to see?

I don’t think so. But I am not sure. Because those aforementioned dicks and assholes are advancing politically.  The republican party is ping-ponging between the two richest and most insane of the candidates. Is this just, in effect, rich people voting for whomever they believe will keep them richest? Or is this a byproduct of ignorance voting for whomever has the most television ads?

I am not an anarchist. I believe that people require governance, especially in the modern world.  But the middle class is disappearing and this country is dividing into two sides: rich and not rich. I like to think that Marx’s proletariat is forming.  Can we change this country through our voices?

slap out of it

It's the middle of the night and once again I am not even close to sleep. I have a wicked hangover that is still lingering from vodka I drank twenty four hours ago and I am depressed and feeling foolish. Let me take a few steps back: I have recently made some bad decisions. And I recently learned some information that makes my previous decisions, the ones that I was complaining about last blog post, also seem pretty bad. Decisions involving P, and my ridiculous affection for him. Decisions regarding most men that I have met on this planet and my interactions with them, really. But let's try to take it one step at a time.

Let's recap this so far: I can't sleep. I am sad. I make bad decisions.

Bad decision number 1) meeting a cute boy with great ideas. no wait, that was a good decision. where does this decision go awry? going out with aforementioned boy for drinks: still all right there. going back to boy's house: eh, that's fine. almost crying at boy's house when he inadvertently delivers some upsetting news about your previous paramour: we-ell that probably makes the list but it wasn't so much a decision as an emotional reaction (a stupid emotional reaction). sleeping with boy an hour or so later even though the pit of your belly was twisted with nagging melancholy: oh look there it is. probably shouldn't have done that.

The upsetting news was genuinely upsetting. I think. I might just be creating dramatic mountains out of molehills. I do that. Anyway, the upsetting news was that essentially P was having the same sort of adventure that he had with me, an adventure that I thought was unique to us, and he was acting in much the same way he had in our adventure. So it was upsetting, right? I can be upset? I mean, it kind of shows me that the specialness that I attributed to our relationship was false. in my head only. He may have been a rare person for me to encounter, but I am one of a plethora. And I don't even think he was genuinely that person. I think I was played. I think it was all his game.

So now what? I don't like this new boy, because my brain is mush. I would really enjoy my brain getting back to normal. Is it possible to just decide to be happy again? Make an executive decision to stop caring about P? Just man up and slap out of it? I'm going to try.

Melissa Etheridge Radio

I can't sleep. And I think I'm sad? Although it is the vague, maybe-kinda sad, to which I can't exactly assign a specific blame, but can identify four or five things that *should* make me feel pretty crappy. The thing is, I'm pretty sure I'm sad about a boy, a boy I should have been over oh so long ago. And I have REAL problems! I have a mother who is getting divorced in two days, divorced from The Monster (yes, that Monster), and I have been playing at being her lawyer without knowing what the hell I'm doing, and in two days I have to be in court facing off against The Monster, unable to help my mom as she inevitably crumbles under his madness. But I want nothing more than for this magical tea to quell the awkward pounding of my heart so that I may slip off into the sleep that I keep chasing, night after night, because I can't stop thinking about that silly, stupid miniature romance.

I am getting ahead of myself. Sorry, fake internet followers. Let me explain. This boy and I dated for like a minute. No, really. Basically zero time at all in the grand scheme of things. Ten days. Ten days. Not even two weeks! But in those ten days (and the preceding month of getting to know him), he seeped into my bones like something out of a bad John Cusack movie. I didn't want to like him. I really, really didn't. Because he wore awful clothes (elastic jogging pants with hiking boots!), listened to terrible music (favorite band: Third Eye Blind!), and legitimately wasn't that physically attractive to me (sorry P, if you ever read this). Yet, I fell. I fell insanely. I fell like a teenaged girl falls, throwing all of those emotions right up in there, right at the beginning, despite all the warning signs. And then, almost immediately but not before I had fallen hard like an idiot (still with me?), I decided that those warning signs were too much, ended it, wanted it back, grovelled, was rejected. All in a fortnight.

Now, the time that has passed since we dated equals about 150 percent of the actual time we dated. And yet I'm still all stupid. I lay in this bed and remember how much better it was when he was laying in it with me, even though that only happened like six times. How did this happen? Why am I listening to weepy nineties woman ballads (The First Cut is The Deepest? Come to My Window?? I Can't Make You Love Me???), sipping my heartbreak tea (I love you, Kava), and sleeping until noon (er, one pm). His number in my phone is listed as "Face of Dicks" and I have deleted it and all attached messages several times so that I don't drunk text him something retrospectively embarrassing.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME.

Is it because I came crawling back and was cruelly rejected? Or because I agreed to be friends after a period of away-time and, now that said away-time has long since ended, he has yet to even try to make any friend-plans (even though those friend-plans probably would be merely a cover so that I could charm my way back into his heart/pants)?

Is it because I am clinging to this temporary heartache drama so that I don't have to focus on the aforementioned Real Problems?

Or because I lowered my (admittedly too high) standards for physical appearance in order to take a chance on someone with whom I connected deeply on an intellectual level, and yet I STILL ended up alone?

I think it is because he is actually a rare and wonderful person, someone who I felt an instant and inconceivably amazing connection with, who I was comfortable around almost immediately, a person who I sorely miss. And I kinda thought I was the same to him, but I'm beginning to believe otherwise.

(Foolish Games is on my Melissa Etheridge Pandora station right now, and I am thumbing it up. If that gives you any indication of my ridiculous mental state.)

long time apology slash occupier guilt

Sorry imaginary readers. I've been busy. Busy as hell, as a matter of fact. You see dears, not only have a gotten two (two!!) college-y job-ish things loosely related to those trees I love so much, I have also taken up with Occupy Seattle. For those of you who have been living under a rock, or (like most of you) don't exist, Occupy Seattle is a social movement standing in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and standing up for the long-ignored basic human rights of the people of this country. The people of this country are finally, FINALLY, fed up with the way they are being treated. Minimum wage stagnation in the face of steep rises in the cost of living. Skyrocketing profit margins for corporate executives. Corporate cash funneled directly into the campaign purses of the richest and whitest, pricing out worthy candidates. In Washington, a state budget proposal that slashes programs for food assistance, Medicaid, fucking elementary SCHOOL BUSES yet refuses to look at eliminating corporate tax breaks. People have finally tired of living in a system where human beings pay four times the taxes, dollar for dollar, than corporations. Where the CEOs of financial powerhouses make risky investment decisions that should, in a true capitalist economy, bankrupt them, and our government bails them out. And then those CEOs use this money to further their own extravagant lifestyles. Etc.

I sort of accidentally joined this movement. I was watching it in a mildly dispassionate fashion from my couch because I had pretty much given up on this country. My plan was to learn about forest ecosystems and how to develop economically without destroying them and then peace out to some country that still had forests to save. This country, my country, was beyond my help, I thought. But as I watched I saw something extraordinary: Passion. The opposite of the traditional American apathy. People standing up to their government and saying: This is wrong, the way you are treating your citizens is wrong. And we will not take it any more. It was beautiful. It gave me hope. And I wanted to be a part of it.

...

I feel I should confess something here, dear imaginary friends. I started this post a few days ago and then got distracted by some shiny internet thing and never finished it. That is not all. Today, I bought two denim jackets.

Yes, two. denim jackets. two of basically the same jacket.


And as I sat down to finish this post, I couldn't help but feel like an asshole. Because here I was a few days prior being all "oh I love Occupy and everything it stands for" and what was I doing today, while my protesting brethren were out marching and climbing bridges and (possibly) getting pepper sprayed? I was buying two of the same jacket. To be fair, I am sick and shouldn't be out in the cold, I was on my way home from school, it was Goodwill, they are different washes and one has pockets while the other has more room for layers...blah blah blah excuses excuses. All I can see right now when I look at the reflection in my wine glass (oh I am also drinking wine, in my nice warm apartment) is a fraud. Why am I here, instead of there? How can I love them so very much and yet stay so separate from them?

I think part of the reason is because I originally jumped on this trolley as a livestream reporter. I was objective, I did not have a voice in the movement. But I cannot claim that anymore. I have a voice in this movement. This past weekend I traveled to Portland to stand with their occupation as it faced eviction. I stared into the eyes of a police officer in full riot gear, tear gas launcher in hand...and I only wavered a little bit. I was scared. I thought of my laptop, held high over my head so that the viewers at home could get a better view, and I thought: if it falls, so be it. I will get another one. Of course I haven't the spare thousand dollars to actually purchase another one but that is neither here nor there. My point is: where is that girl today?

Out buying two of basically the same denim jacket, that's where. Why? Why is it so difficult to throw my entire heart and soul into this movement?

Portland took a hell of a lot out of me. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. I was sore and covered in mud. I slept for an entire day after and came down with a vicious cold. And on Monday I had to go to school and then work and then to a meeting with lawyers for my mother's divorce and then to work some more. And then the week of work/school/homework/family started up again, and I have kept away from Occupy because if I went back then I would get exactly zero of those things done.

I don't know exactly where I am going with this. I started off trying to explain how this movement has given me hope for what I thought were a hopeless people, and ended up trying to rationalize my guilt for not being there enough. Or something. aaaaaaaaanyway, I suppose I will conclude with this: I love this movement and everyone in it. But I also love denim jackets.

just gonna preface this with: I'm crying like a foolish child

aaaand I'm watching cartoons. Yes, cartoons are making me cry. Avatar: The Last Airbender is making me cry, to be specific. I probably should not be telling you this, imaginary readers, but by now I kinda feel like this blog should be titled "embarrassing things Marcia does and says that for some reason she feels the need to share with the internet." Anyway, I feel embroiled in conflict and turmoil about my life at the moment, and actually have been for quite some time. And cartoons are currently making me cry because one of the characters has just had a heartwarming reunion with his dad and I'm feeling sorry for myself because I want a different childhood. Yeah. Welcome to my pity party.

I feel like I should apologize to every person I meet for being older than they think I am, or for not being at the correct point on the General Map of Life that I apparently should be for my age. I should preface every meeting with: Hi nice to meet you, by the way since you will inevitably ask and then be shocked, I am twenty-seven, yes I know I am an undergraduate no I don't have a credit card oh yes I'm still a barista no I'm not married yet and I have roommates no I haven't been out of the country and no you cannot meet my parents because one lives in a tent in the woods and the other one is well I am just not going there.

I thought I was processing things pretty well up until now. I knew where I came from (abject American poverty slash other shitty things), I knew I handled my situation poorly (fucked around for far too long and spend every penny I earned on shoes), and I knew I was doing everything I could to fix things for myself (it's kind of a slow process) and I thought I was okay with that. But I am not so sure anymore. I wish I could join in conversations when people talk about the instruments they played and the camps they went to as kids. Even the television shows they watched. I KNOW I am being fucking ridiculous and millions out there had and have it far worse than I did but you know what millions had it better also. And I deal with those millions every day. They are my friends. My classmates. They are the boys and girls I attempt to date. And I will never relate to them. I can tell them my hopes and ambitions but unless I pretend my life began at nineteen years old they will never fully understand me. And I will squirm around and away from them. I hate this. How did my brothers and sister manage to form solid connections with other human beings? Is it because they managed to get real jobs, keep the wind at their backs and the sun on their faces? I don't want that but at the same time I very much do. Because it would be easier. To have a faceless, normal career. a mortgage. decent car. health insurance. ticky fucking tacky. They can toss aside their nightmares of poverty because they have pulled themselves up and out of it. It only cost them their dreams, right?

Do I even have dreams anymore? I was going to be a writer. I was going to put down on paper those nineteen years, ride those volumes to fortune, vindication and victory. and break free from my madness. Then I realized I was a fool, standing on the shoulders of those who dealt with real suffering and trying to call myself tall. Now I'm trying to change the world (ha ha) but it's been so long I am exhausted and so very tired of pretending I fit in society. And I don't even think I am making sense anymore, am I?

 I'm sorry. It's just, when I close my eyes I want to see darkness instead of these memories.