Haunted

I stumbled upon the realization while ghost hunting, wandering around abandoned hospitals--I feel haunted.  Not in that moment, but in my daily life.

I feel like so much of my most basic personality, the bits of me that make me feel most like myself, hinge on confidence.  The confidence that I am being myself as hard as a I can and that no matter what happens I will manage. 

I mean, I still feel like myself, but I also feel like I'm always watching myself too--always peeking around the next corner trying to see the blurry faces of strangers just before they're in my line of sight.  It's a weird feeling.  It's not the feeling of loneliness which is this weird gnawing grey thing, vague and insubstantial thing that could be easily distracted and mitigated.  This is something very specific, a noticeable lack.  Like there's this hole in the world and like a hole everything rushes to fill it, but it still drains away.  

I have always been very fortunate.  It's cliche to say this, but it's probably the most accurate word, but I've been blessed.  I've always managed somehow and I've managed to become kind.  I've met wonderful people and continue to go on wonderful adventures.  I have learned to appreciate kindness and the difficulty of being kind.  I have seen my goals and taken steps towards them--for me there are no more "what-ifs."  It hasn't been easy and I won't lie, there have been very dark moments.  But that's what they were--moments.  There was no disconnect with myself; the person I was awake was the person I was asleep.

But now, my dreams are so angry.  And I have differently dark moments.  They're dark the way lava is dark.  But also bright and violent and burning.

What do I do with this?  Is this something I can bring to a priest or witch or whatever?  I feel like I can't talk to my friends, how do you explain that you're being haunted by yourself?  I feel whole, I mean if I'm not myself, who else can I be?  But now it feels like there's someone else here with me too.  

Whoa, I wrote this in June 2014.

Panic attacks are bad business.  I definitely wouldn’t invest them.  What’s the opposite of invest?   Making friends with the competition?  Well, in this case, the competition definitely doesn’t want to be friends, but I’m still gonna try and fake it. 

Knowing that you’re just having a panic attack is supposed to help.  But for me, it is just a different type of bad.  Jumping from moment to moment of blind terror and crippling self-doubt, I think “Is this going to be the rest of life?”

It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even enjoy the good moments.  Each good moment is a potentially bad moment.  Each nice thing someone does for me is just a build up for some frenzied betrayal.  And that makes me feel guilty, which just fuels my anxiety even more.  It’s like I’m vomiting into my own mouth, swallowing it, then vomiting it up again.  Like a disgusting, self-contained baby bird, that can’t bring herself to jump out of the nest, because what she actually wants to do is hurtle to the ground.

I should be having an adventure right now, but all I see is failure and abandonment. 

It’s like Thorin and company invite Bilbo onto an adventure, except Bilbo just vomits out spiders and demands the company love him.

On Blood And Guts And The Ultimate Fragility And Vanity Of Man.

The title has nothing to do with this entry.  Or maybe it does. 

I think the point of sibling teasing is to get ready for other people.  I think in order to realistically deal with people, we need to have cracks, to already be a little bit damaged.   Like, “These are the people who are supposed to love me.  And they keep harassing me.  If I can put up with this, I can definitely put up with strangers making fun of me.”  I don’t mean bullying, which is conscious maliciousness, but just the every day grim, slow soul staining meanness that some people don’t even know they’re being a part of.

Anyway, the sibling teasing shouldn’t be wholly malicious, something a few minutes of alone time and the promise of pizza, can shake off.  Anything more than that isn't teasing, and falls more in the painful realm of bullying.

Daniel graduated from sixth grade today, the end of grade school.  It’s a metaphorical change, and a physical change.  To help him get ready, I’ve been incorporating the words penis, testicles and vagina into my daily speak, so often he doesn’t even blush anymore.  We’ve been trying to get him to swear, but so far he’s resisted.  Pubic hair is mentioned to him with curiosity and regularity.  (So, buddy.  Any of those pubes coming in yet?)  And on a more fatalistic note, Daniel is our last chance at getting a childhood right.

But sometimes I worry.  Have I taken it too far?  Has threatening to steal his eyebrows while he sleeps and fashion fashionable eyebrow wigs out of them, too much?  Will he have a fear of small furry caterpillars, as he ages?  Will he look back at his childhood and only see torment and misery?  Does he know that we never did anything out of pure meanness, and that it was just light-hearted, and if we were ever too mean, that it was careless and we regret it?

Children are pliable and resilient.  But, weird things set people off.  Example, I can speak Ilocano fairly well, but I rarely ever do, since I was told by Brother 1 and 2 (Daniel being brother 3), that when I spoke Ilocano, I sounded funny.   Of course I sound funny.  It’s a different language and I barely have anyone to speak with.  It wasn't spiteful, just a casual observation, but it was big enough to make me stop speaking it, all together. 

I’d like to hope that Daniel will fondly remember the shrill shouts and whistles every time he went on stage.  I hope he doesn’t resent all the frantic waving and gesturing every time he performed, or the orgy of cameras flashing for his attention.  That he never has to tell a therapist of the burning shame of being the only sixth grader with a giant portrait of himself, grinning to greet him as he received his certificate, or that instead of leis he was adorned with Mardi Gras beads, a pool floatie and an inflatable crown.  I hope he was a little bit proud that he was the only one whose family wore shirts and stickers proclaiming themselves to be #TeamDaniel.

That when the sea of mad hormones comes rushing into the city of his brain, the deluge of teenage-hood rears its ugly head, that he doesn’t hate us too much.  That my overenthusiastic affection didn’t hurt him.  That it didn’t make his scared of life.  And that maybe he had a little bit of fun.  

Let Me Culturally Appropriate Your Penis

Lately, I've taken to thinking the treadmills are like a two/four player fighting game.  And the only way to win at it, is to run faster and longer than everyone else.

So, when someone hops onto the treadmill next to me, it's like, "A CHALLENGER HAS APPEARED!" cheesy music and all.

And it's not even that I can run particularly fast or particularly long.  It's just running on a treadmill is pretty boring and I feel like this wears some people out, so lots of them tend to hop off sooner than they wanted to.  I'm winning at the treadmill only because I have a high tolerance for monotony and am button-mashing in my brain.  

In other news, I wrote an email to the developers of an app, Hula, regarding their cultural appropriation and cultural insensitivity, and how they were only further marginalizing a group that they actually meant to help, and they wrote me back a non-apology and pat on the head, saying they didn't mean to be offensive and are talking to community leaders.  The app is supposed to help people find free/affordable STD/STI testing and also help them share their status to, I guess, viable bang buddies.  

Huh.  

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while educating yourself is good and building understanding and compassion is better, but I wrote that letter so you would rename your fucking app.  Like, literally.

Not only is it offensive (hula being an art form and form of non-written history; also see the banning of hula by colonizing missionaries), but you could have SO MUCH FUN with the name of an app that is meant to help find people find free/affordable STD/STI and HIV/AIDS testing.  Just flipping through Urban Dictionary for five minutes will give you at least 25 viable names.  This is just uncreative laziness.  It's named Hula because it helps you get "lei-d."  Huh.  

And I could see someone arguing that for the sake of sexual health becoming a more acceptable topic, it'd be okay to just go with the flow, but no.  Continuing to marginalize and appropriate culture isn't going to help foster an environment that encourages open communication.  

Furthermore, this only underlines the tired trope of native people being uncivilized and lazy.  "Oh, hey. Instead of talking about our sexual status and discussing our sexuality, barriers to sexual expression and sexual health, let's just fiddle with our phones before we bump uglies." 

I'm conflicted because I deeply want sexuality and sexual health to be discussed, but I don't want it to be at the expense of an ethnic/cultural group.  It shouldn't be.  

Whoa.  I didn't mean to get serious.