14
January

It Goes All Around My Throat

Even though people on “the interwebz” know some of the most personal things about me, most folks don’t know very much else about me. In fact, there are a lot of things that I do NOT talk about on here that people might like to know. So, I’m going to try to post more often and post about the different things that people probably don’t know about me.

Let’s see…where to begin?

I don’t know that my family remembers my first words. I know I don’t remember ever liking to talk. Talking for me was always something that was extremely difficult. I’m extremely quiet. If you don’t believe me, I recommend checking my youtube videos. That voice you can barely hear is the voice that people in life have gotten extremely frustrated over. People have accused me, at times, of trying to be inaudible, but it generally isn’t something that I am trying to do. With the exception of whispering, I don’t generally try to go unheard–it just happens. Speaking is something that I don’t ever remember being good at. Singing, on the other hand, was always something that I felt more secure in.

My mom taught me the first song that I ever sang, “Tomorrow” from Annie. I would eventually learn every song from the musical, which I obsessively watched a video of as a child because of my love for the music and my fascination with one of the few redheads I ever really saw on television or in movies. (When you grow up in a group that only makes up 1-2% of the entire global population, you search for someone who looks like you that you can truly respect or admire.) I would move on from just singing along to Annie to learning all of the songs of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Tracy Chapman, Janet Jackson, and Paula Abdul. I accidentally stumbled upon the “Like a Prayer” video on MTV, a channel which I wasn’t allowed to watch by myself until I was a teenager, and became fascinated by the song and the video. I remember watching that video before quickly flipping my television onto BET, which I was allowed to watch anytime and go to sleep to when I was small.

I absorbed music like sponges absorb water. It was something I needed to survive. It was something that was necessary for me to understand humanity. It was never a thing where I just randomly listened to music that was popular or had a good beat or anything. It was something where I needed to find music that was interesting or inspiring or just left me feeling like I needed more of it. I listened to lyrics and tried to understand them, even if I didn’t completely understand some of the lyrics until I was much older. Music was communication for me.

Even though it was communication, it wasn’t a very open form of communication for me. There were the occasional times when I would perform “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” for one of my preschool teachers, but usually the only people who heard me sing were my parents. I didn’t sing around most of my relatives. I didn’t usually sing at school in elementary school. Part of it was that I was extremely shy. The other part was my ever-present self-esteem issues crap. It didn’t help that when I sang for one of my friends in third grade that she told me that I had a “weak voice” and that I shouldn’t sing. It also didn’t help when I would volunteer to sing for assemblies and would get skipped in favor of some of my other friends. The answer was generally, “That’s okay, we already have [insert the name of one or two of my friends during that time] so you don’t have to.” It felt like a confirmation of that inner voice that said I was awful at everything. It made me feel like I was somehow “less than” other folks. Actually, it just reinforced that already-present feeling.

When I was in middle school and high school, I was in choir. It surprised everyone but me. My parents figured I would pick band, since I’d done well on the band’s music aptitude test. I wasn’t interested in band as much I was interested in singing. I needed to sing. I needed to learn to feel good about singing.

In sixth grade, the middle school choir had about 79 people total. Our director was on her first year at the school, and she just wasn’t going to have a choir that was so itty bitty. After the ensemble I was in got a Superior (a “1″) at State Competition and earned a medal, she used us a lot to recruit new members for the choir. We performed at the orientation for incoming sixth graders. We were also the group she used at a concert at a local health food store. When the 30 or so eighth graders moved on to high school, the choir didn’t lose any memebers. It didn’t stay at around the same number. It more than doubled. By eighth grade, around half of the school’s 650 students were in choir. (The other half were in band, with a few seventh and eighth graders participating in both.) Partly because of our excellence in recruiting, our teacher decided we needed to have special choir trip for the eighth grade (plus a few select seventh graders), so we ended up going to Chicago, instead of the normal trip to Atlanta. Actually, I ended up going on both trips that year. (My mom was the treasurer during the last 2 years, and had to do the trip planning, checking in of the choirs, and prep work, so I got to do all the activities.) So, choir in middle school was, for the most part, something I enjoyed.

If I hadn’t been so competitive and wanted to earn every single medal possible, it would have probably been a lot more fun. I always wanted a medal. I think earning medals was a way for me to prove to myself (and other people) that I was more than just the girl who you could depend on for the answers in class. I felt validated when I would get medals. I felt validated when I got into choirs like All-City choir. It felt like all those bad things that I had always heard from people or that I had thought about myself weren’t true. The only time that I ever really craved attention and real approval was when I was performing. I wanted to have something that people respected me for, because I always believed (and still do) that there was something fundamentally wrong or broken about me.

The competitiveness continued into high school, but it wasn’t as easy to get medals or go on trips or do the stuff that was so überfun because the directors in high school weren’t apt to take hundreds of kids to competitions or trips. The only trip I remember was a trip to Decatur, where we (oddly) stayed the night between Alabama Honor Choir rehearsals. (It was odd because Decatur is literally 40-50 minutes from my house. It was also odd because the trip was one I’d done in middle school and not had to stay the night.) The only competition I remember participating in during high school was District/State Solo/Ensemble Festival in tenth grade. It was memorable because I broke down after receiving news that I had gotten a 3 on my solo, while every other soloist from my school had gotten a 1. Even people (from other schools) who were utterly tone deaf were given at least a 2. I was given a 3 and one of the reasons listed was that I mispronounced 1 word (virgine) in the song “Ave Verum Corpus” and that mispronunciation was so horrible (a jih [like jib] instead of gee) that it knocked me down quite a bit. The two other people in the room with me, my voice teacher and my choir director, were floored by the other flaw he found in my performance: he said I was repeatedly off-key. According to them, I missed 1 note in the two songs I did. (The other song was “Art is Calling for Me” and he’d heard it the week before by a college student, who’d apparently done a magnificent job.) I was crying when I got the results, and was comforted by many of the choir students from my school, including one who I didn’t even think liked me. She said that she had been standing outside (they all had) and had heard me sing and that the judge was an idiot. This was something that people told me repeatedly that day, which (if I remember correctly) was the same day as my 16th birthday party. The next week other people, including ones who had never heard me sing, told me that the judge was an idiot. So, though I was utterly devastated by the result of that one competition, I did receive a little bit of a confidence boost from my friends. That made it easier on me when my tape failed to play Mariah Carey’s “Can’t Take That Away” in my eleventh grade English class and I ended up having to sing it a capella with no rehearsal. It is one of the only times I ever remember performing for an audience with my glasses on (I would always taken them off so that I didn’t get nervous) and being able to see the entire room. It was also one of the only times I ever felt completely safe performing.

When I quit high school and started going into my deeply depressive spells on a more frequent basis, I pretty much quit singing. I didn’t have the spark that singing needed in me anymore. So, I quit. And when I tried to sing along to a song on the radio a few years later, it felt like my voice had shrivled up on me. It felt like a voice that I had been using for years decided to quit working after I quit using it. I started giving myself voice lessons again and trying to strengthen my voice. It isn’t as strong as it once was, but it is a lot stronger than it was between 2004 and 2007. I now know that I don’t ever want to lose it, so I always try to remember to sing when I can. Just a little singing seems to keep it strong enough to stick around.

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7
November

A Face That Laughs Every Time I Fall

I had therapy this afternoon. As usual, I forgot that I had therapy today until I saw the appointment on the family appointment schedule/calendar. The appointment was going to be one where I discussed something that has been pestering me since I was a little kid. It was going to be one where I discussed something I’ve only mentioned to two or three people total in my life. Of course, therapy never seems to work out the way I plan on it working.

One main reason that I didn’t discuss that pestering issue is that Nana had called at about noon today. She’d told me that a certain relative had been talking to her about Thanksgiving. The relative asked if my parents and I were going to be at Thanksgiving dinner (lunch) on Thanksgiving Day. Nana said that of course we were going to be there. The relative then said that that meant she (and her family) would not be at that dinner and that they would have Thanksgiving some other time. I wasn’t too surprised by this, given the amount of drama that has been brewing related to it. I was okay with it, or so I thought.

Having them there in a “normal” year is a rather stressful thing for me anyway. I have internal fights and arguments in preparation for the day. I have panic attacks about what might happen if I mention certain things during dinner and cause an actual brawl. I stress out over how I might end up being belittled for my education (or “lack” thereof) or how I might see or hear them give someone (Nana, mom, or me) a difficult time about their use of pain medicine or some other relatively minor thing that ends up causing major family drama. So not having them there means that I won’t be feeling quite the same level of pre-Thanksgiving anxiety and stress. That should be a good thing.

It isn’t, though. I feel guilty. I feel like this drama is my fault, even though it wouldn’t have started if there weren’t issues with how the family functions to begin with. The drama has been there for a long time, even if it hadn’t been exposed. So I shouldn’t feel so horribly guilty about it, but I do. And I think that was the purpose of the boycott. Maybe that’s just my inherent paranoia, but it seems like this is a way to make me feel bad about the whole situation and to feel even less comfortable about my blog and my way of handling stress related to this kind of stuff.

It doesn’t really impact my decision about what I’ll talk about online, though. I will continue to talk about how I feel openly. I’ll do it even though it might be part of what drives a wedge between the two sides of my family. I’ll even do it knowing that there are still regular visitors from Oneonta and Guntersville/Arab/Boaz/Albertville, which I know must be them coming to check on me to see what I might be saying about them. (Yes, Analytics is still catching them checking out fuzzypinkslippers.com, my personal tumblr, my LJ, Hyperaware, and Blah Blah Biddy Blah. They may be visiting other sites of mine, which amps up my paranoia.)

Instead, it just makes me feel like it doesn’t matter that the problems with the family wouldn’t be discussed if I didn’t blog about it.  It makes me feel like my feelings about everything are insignificant.  And that is what I mainly talked about with my therapist.  Anytime I’m told not to talk about something or told, in general, to shut up or that someone doesn’t care, it triggers the internal belief that I am insignificant, which triggers the brutal depression and the worsening of social isolation.

It also makes me feel like I’m supposed to feel guilty about how I am tearing apart the family, even though I am not the one making the decision not to show up for Thanksgiving (for the third time in a decade) and I am not the one who is trying to make this about one part of the family being more important than another part. Knowing that family is extremely important to me and then trying to use it against me to make me feel guilty is about like handing a razor blade to a suicidal individual and challenging them to end their life.  It is using a known weapon and a known psychological stressor to manipulate one person into doing what you want, and that isn’t fair.

Between this ongoing drama with those family members and the repeating pattern of destructive interpersonal relationships, I broke down about how “people suck” and how I felt like I keep entering and perpetrating dysfunctional relationships because I get something out of being in those relationships.  (Almost twenty years of therapy and I just figured this out.)  She told me to look up the Karpman drama triangle, which I’ve added to examples of below:

Karpman drama triangle - ex 1
Karpman drama triangle - ex 2

So, I guess that internet theory about online drama perpetrators/victims being equally responsible for online drama also applies to real life.  I think, in many of the relationships, I am definitely continuing patterns of victim-like behavior and perpetrator-like behavior.  (Sometimes I trigger/accuse someone of doing something, which starts the whole cycle over again.)  My therapist compared the drama issue with something that foster kids do.  (She was a social worker with the agency we did foster care out of, and handled Stephanie’s case during part of Stephanie’s stay with us.)  Apparently, what I do is like what those kids do when they are so used to placements failing that they become convinced that a placement will fail and decide that they will make it fail so that they have some level of control over their lives.  I guess that makes sense.  I’ve always felt out of control when it comes to a lot of my life, so it would make sense that I would do something that causes me to not only be miserable, but also allows me to control when I am getting miserable.

I need to get out of that cycle.  I also need to form healthier attachments.  And more than all of that, I need to figure out a way to be happy.  I’m not talking about the little bursts of joy that any person might have during their life.  I need to find a way to have some kind of sustainable joy in life. I didn’t want to work on my mental health for years and I actually enjoyed periods of crippling depression because it was more predictable than happiness. I really need to change that mindset.  I need to learn how to deal with life and how to be happier.

So, I didn’t get to talk about one thing that may have been to blame for some (or many of my emotional issues), but I did get to talk about another.  It actually makes me feel grateful to the family member for reacting in a way that some close to me have referred to as being “immature” or “bitchy” because without that reaction, I might not have started working on one of my major psychological issues.  So, yay for that.  Maybe I should have more thoroughly pissed that person off much sooner.  I might have graduated from college.  I might have gotten married by now.  I might have felt happy.  Okay, maybe none of that would have happened, but it does make me wonder.

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20
July

Heal This Hurt

At about this time last night, my dad told me that I needed to look on the Facebook profile of one of my childhood friends.  I did and saw that she had just experienced the loss of her father.  I wasn’t quite sure what to say.

Condolences are difficult no matter who has died, but when it is something that you’ve yet to go through it seems especially hard.  I don’t know exactly what is okay to say.  I don’t know if I’m supposed to offer some words that express sadness and grief over her loss, or if I’m supposed to try to offer some kind of joke or happy memory to lighten her sorrow.  I know that no matter what I say, it won’t bring back her father.  I know it won’t make her happy.  I know these things, yet I want to say something to make it better.

Do I remind her of 8th grade after the “Winter Holiday” dance when she had a sleepover for her birthday?  That was one of the last times that I remember seeing her dad.  I remember him laughing a bit about us (Josie and her party guests) messing up the pancakes that we had decided to cook for breakfast.  We put chocolate syrup in the batter, which was also composed of Bisquick and either baking soda or baking powder.  This led to the most bitter pancakes a person might ever taste.  It was one of those really embarrassing childhood moments that you wouldn’t want to remember except that you know it is also one of the greatest/funniest moments of your life.   I remember him seeming so young and so nice.  It’s difficult to think of him not being alive anymore.

His daughter is one of the nicest people you could ever meet.  She is sweet and funny and an incredible person.  So knowing that this wonderful and sweet person is in such pain is hard.  And knowing that I can’t figure out what to do to ease that pain makes me feel like I’m failing her as her friend.  Aren’t friends supposed to be able to help you through the most difficult times in your life?  I would guess that this is one of those, but I don’t know what I could possibly say or do to help her.

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8
July

The Last Liftoff

Today was the last STS Shuttle mission, which might seem like a big story where many people are.  Unless you’re from a “space” town, though, I bet my town can beat the massive amounts of coverage of the mission.  Huntsville, known by many as “Rocket City”, is one of the most important towns for the aerospace business.  All of my life, I have had to hear about the importance of NASA and going to space.  One of the schools that I went to was known as the Ridgecrest Rockets.  Another two were named for losses within the program, one being Challenger Middle and the other being Virgil I. Grissom High.  And the final university that I attended works very closely with NASA for its engineering program.  I have family members who work as engineers at companies that work with NASA.

That being said, I didn’t really care that today was the last mission.  Yes, it is a historical event.  Yes, it’s a sentimental event.  To me, a shuttle mission is a shuttle mission is a shuttle mission.  Generally, the missions are boring.  Generally, they are uneventful.  I don’t understand why people like watching the liftoff.  These are events that are only interesting when things go wrong, and then you really shouldn’t want to see what happens.  I’m not talking about the minor wrong things when no damage occurs.  I’m talking about watching the shuttle explode, like the Challenger did.  Watching something and knowing that that can happen is very odd to me.  Watching something and hoping that it stays boring seems so odd, but I would never want anyone to hope that some tragedy happen.

Unlike many people, including my family members, I’m not disappointed that the program is over.  We knew this day was coming for a long time.  I remember when I went to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, in town, I got a book that basically explained that as soon as the International Space Station was completed or nearing completion and that that date would be sometime in this decade.  I remember thinking then that it wasn’t that long until it would be over.  That was back around 1994 or 1995 or so.  The end of the program was not a new concept.  It was something that people knew was coming.

With that in mind, it seems odd that there was no viable plan for its replacement.  Some people may bring up the Constellation project, which was started by George W. Bush and ended by Barack Obama.  Now, the Constellation program might have seemed like an awesome idea to some.  It wasn’t.  I rode with some friends to Mississippi and heard them talking about how there were issues with the software.  Somehow no matter what they did, they encountered some kind of fatal error.  These were well-trained software engineers.  They were the geekiest geeks that you might meet in real life.  They were flummoxed.  There were also issues with the design and the expectations of what it should do.  Obama cancelled the program, after consulting with officials from the agency, because it was so over-budget and under-developed.  He has not caused any issue for the program that it did not already have.  Obama is encouraging engineers and scientists to come up with a better and more effective plan.  Doesn’t that seem to be a good idea?  And if folks are pissed that there will be no launches in the meantime, then I recommend that you blame past Presidents for adequately preparing for this time period.  Even if Constellation had not been cancelled, it would be years before it could launch, so the jobs that are in jeopardy down in Florida related to no planned launches would still be gone.

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5
July

If It Were You, Even If It Never Will Be Or Already Was

I have a tendency to have a differing opinion than people.  This is pretty much the norm for me.  Part of the time, I think it may have to do with an inner desire to not be like everyone else.  Other times, I think it is because I literally think differently than others.  My brain has a way of interpreting things that is probably different than others, whether it is from mental illness, from abuse and bullying, from the way I was raised, or from something differently.

When it comes to the criminal justice system, I tend to get asked about what I would do if it was a family member or friend of mine that got killed or had any sort of violence committed against them?  How would I feel?  Maybe I would say someone was guilty, regardless of evidence.  Maybe I would want someone to be executed, regardless of crime.  I get that some people see the world as being a place where if it happens to you, then you will want some sort of vengeance.  Maybe I would, but I don’t think so.

When I was 14, I had a friend who was almost killed by her oldest brother.  He also injured 2 of her 3 siblings and killed their mother and father.  He almost attacked another one of my friends that day.  I had been at the house the day before.  I had seen her mother.  I had heard her voice.  For me, that was very difficult to deal with.

When I was 15, a guy from my grade and his sister who was a year younger than me went missing.  I think that the father was either missing or his body was found in his home.  I do know that the kids were found a while later in the woods nearby.  They had been killed by their father.  Though these deaths were tragic, I never really felt sorry for either child.  I know that sounds awful, but they were always so mean and hateful, that empathy was something I couldn’t imagine having towards them.

Long before I was born, my mom’s mom’s mom’s sister was killed by her ex-husband.  This death led to most of her kids going to one relative.  One of her older kids was not sent to that relative because they didn’t like her.  No one really thought they could handle her, except Mama and Papa, my great-grandparents.  They raised her, and though she wasn’t legally their child, I think of her as a great-aunt and Nana always calls her her sister.  But the grief over the murder of a relative that I have never known is something that has always been a part of my family’s interaction.  My mom tries to keep it light-hearted by telling me that my great-grandmother wanted to light the murderer’s grave on fire.  I know that the way that the members who were alive back when it happened, during my mother’s childhood, carry the angst with them.  In a family that never forgets and rarely forgives, this kind of thing can’t help but cloud your life.

In April 0f 2008, I had a friend that got killed in an accidental shooting.  He was headed home late at night and lived in an apartment complex.  The apartments all looked the same and he was apparently a little out of it.  He didn’t understand why his key wasn’t working on the front door, so he headed through the sliding glass door.  It was the wrong apartment, though.  The person who lived there shot him.  The shot was fatal.  He went from being a law student to being a statistic.  Many of my high school friends still have pictures of him as their profile picture on Facebook, even with it being something that happened over 3 years ago.

The next April, a guy who was in my stake’s YSA died in a horrible car accident. It was a supposedly a DUI. The car that hit his car was driven by an illegal immigrant.  The death of this guy that I knew and his girlfriend has been used by people who didn’t know them as a rallying cry to get rid of illegal immigrants.  It was even cited at one point by Mo Brooks, who was recently in the news for saying he’d do anything short of shooting immigrants to get rid of them, as a reason why we should get rid of immigrants.  He ended up being elected to Congress and part of his election was based on his rhetoric about this death.

Though I hadn’t been to the school in almost a year, I was technically still listed as a student when the UAH shooting by Amy Bishop took place in February of 2010.  I would have just had to reapplied (as a technicality) and signed up for classes to be considered a current student.  Even though I wasn’t going that semester, I had friends that were still students there.  I had friends who were in that general area earlier in the day on the day of the shooting.

Because of these deaths and others, I can fairly easily answer the questions of if I would feel differently if someone was killed in a certain way.  If I’m asked how I would feel about the death penalty if it were someone that I knew, then I can easily say how I would feel because I’ve been thinking about this kind of thing for a long time.  If I were asked how I would feel if someone I knew was harmed by an immigrant, I can say with a clear conscious how I would feel.  If I am told that people are never accidentally shot by someone in legal possession of a gun, I can tell them that that is bullshit.  If I’m asked about how I’d feel if someone I knew were harmed in a shooting at school or work, then I can think back to the fear and sadness of the shooting at UAH.

Between growing up in a liberal/politically-oriented family, losing these people, and studying social policy in and for school, I haven’t come to my opinions about things just by chance.  I’ve had to live some of it.  Other parts I’ve had to look up.  I can tell people that I never express an opinion that I haven’t tried to learn as much as I can about.  My parents always encouraged me to learn.  They always encouraged me to feel.  They also taught me that I had to think for myself.  I didn’t have to agree with anyone as long as I held an opinion that I understood completely.  I know that people think I am uninformed.  I know some think that I’m un-American or a bigot.  Hell, yesterday I got the following response to something I had said on immigration:

Mexico just DEPORTED over 2,000 ILLEGALS from their country, in the past month. Why is it, you do not want to give Americans the same Equal right? I will tell you why. You are an Anti-American bigot, wanting to deny the American people, the same EQUAL RIGHTS as the rest of the world. The right to a sovereign nation.

Just as I think of people who disagree with me as being unaware of all facts on issues, I get the same comments thrown at me by people with differing opinions.  And I have been called a bigot and a racist many times before, which is odd to me.  I’m not a racist.  If anything, I’m more on the egalitarian way of thinking.  (I’ve apparently been anti-bigotry/anti-racism and pro-equality since my mom and I passed a cross being burnt somewhere nearby when I was a toddler.  She said I asked what it was and she told me that it was some very bad people doing something very wrong.  Later in my childhood, when it happened and made the news, I found out what it meant.)  I know that it is easy to call someone a bigot or anti-whatever, though.  It’s easy to assume that no one knows what they’re talking about, and maybe I don’t know the same things that others know.  That doesn’t mean that my knowledge/experience is anything less important, though.

Anyway, I don’t know if this post makes any sense at all.  And now I’m annoyed ’cause I read about the David Duke potential campaign for President in 2012, which I think is one of the worst pieces of news I’ve heard in a while.

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14
June

If You Want to Scam Me, Get My Name Right

This morning there were at least 3 calls that seemed fishy, in nature.  The first was from “Cardholder Services”.  It didn’t seem legit, so it was quickly dismissed.  The second was from someone from “Mega Millions Sweepstakes”.  The third was another “Cardholder Services” call, but this time instead of having a Sacramento area code, it was from New York City–and it came up as a Wireless number.

The first and third were recordings.  These recordings call a few times a day.  If you want to talk to a real person, you can.  Of course, if you talk to a real person, they begin to ask a lot of personal questions.  That is where it should become obvious that these are NOT legit calls.

The second phone call that was made was not just a recording for anyone in the house.  It was specifically for me.  It was a guy with what sounded like a Jamaican accent, even though the number was from Washington.  I’m sure there may be Jamaicans that live in Washington, and I’m sure that most of these people are upstanding citizens.  This one, though, didn’t come across as an upstanding Washingtonian or an upstanding Jamaican guy.  This was a guy that kept calling me, “Juh-net-ee”.  I corrected him.  He still was calling me, “Juh-net”. I was going to let it slide, since I’ve known a lot of people who have called me “Juh-net”.  One of my Social Work professors always called me “Jah-net More-ees”.  So, I’m used to odd pronunciations of my name.  The only ones that really piss me off are when people call me “Janice”.  I have no c in any part of my name, but I digress.

This caller then began to ask me lots of personal questions.  At this time, I told him that I really didn’t think he was calling the right person.  He reverted back to calling me “Juh-net-ee”.  As he continued to try to get me to answer the personal questions, I managed to wake up enough to hang up on him.  (I had taken 4 Flexerils, 1 Zanaflex, and 2 Tramadol about an hour and half before the calls started, which made me extremely drowsy.)  I figure that he’ll probably call back again sometime later this week.  Knowing my luck, this will be a daily thing for a while.  I bet the next time, the area code will be some other place.

For the record, I suspect that the guy was Jamaican, not only because of the accent, but because yesterday a similar call came for me.  That time, the phone call was from the 876 area code.  (876 is an area code for Jamaica.)

I really hate spammy-scammy calls.  I’m not a big fan of talking on the phone, but when I do, I at least want to know that it’s not some ass that’s trying to commit some kind of criminal behavior.

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14
June

Top Secret

When I was little, I had quite the imagination.  I was always doing things and thinking of doing things.  I was also always being asked about what I was doing.  If I was cutting up some piece of junk mail, I would have to explain what I was doing.  If I was reading something, I would have to explain what I was reading.  If I rented a movie or (worse) bought one, I would have to explain exactly what it was about.  Of course, on that last thing, I couldn’t explain in precise detail or then I wouldn’t be allowed to watch the movie because someone would think that I had spoiled the outcome.  Everything I did was supposed to be explained.  And when I wasn’t being asked what I was doing, I was being watched.  There would be those moments where someone would be reading over my shoulder, and I would feel like I wasn’t trusted.

I know it was probably just pure curiosity or (when I was young and on the internet) fear on the parts of the members of my family who were watching or asking, but it was always frustrating.  It made me feel like I wasn’t trusted or like I had to explain my whole life to them.  I didn’t like telling them everything that I did because it made me feel like I was losing a piece of myself.  I know that doesn’t make sense, and I’m sorry that I can’t explain it any better.

By the time I was about eight or nine, I had come up with a way to evade answering.  Instead of explaining what I was doing, I would say that I was working on a secret government project.  Everything became a secret.  I had to keep it a secret, or risk losing what very little sanity I happened to have.  I had to be able to keep my childhood thoughts and actions under wraps because I felt like to allow them to know everything would risk me being seen as a nut or me actually becoming a full-fledged nut.

Whether it was writing a story, making up family histories of people I didn’t even know, cutting and pasting things, stringing buttons, writing in gibberish, etc., I couldn’t tell them what I was doing because I wanted to have an existence where I didn’t have to explain my life away.  I wanted to be trusted.  I wanted to be respected.  I wanted to feel like I wasn’t being judged.

I still get questioned about what I’m doing.  If I type slightly faster than normal, I have to explain to my family who I am fighting with on the internet.  (Most people speak more quickly when they argue; I type more quickly when I argue online.)  If I’m reading something, I have to explain what it is that I’m reading.  If I want to watch some stupid documentary, I have to explain why I want to watch it.  Instead of being some little kid that is being protected, I’m a twenty-seven-year old who feels like she’s being guarded or critiqued or something that seems to take away my right to be treated like a normal person.

It seems crazy that I still struggle against these feelings, even though I share (sometimes over-share) freely via social media.  You would think that if I were so okay with telling some website that I’m watching some television show or movie that I would be okay explaining my reasons for wanting to watch said program to my family.  I’m not, though.  It’s one thing to talk about it on the internet.  It’s another to justify what you’re doing to people that you spend every waking minute of your life with.  On the internet, it’s fun. It can be a way to make friends.  In real life, it feels like a way to destroy whatever sense of self that I happen to have.

What makes it worse is that if I don’t explain what I’m doing or thinking or feeling or wanting, I somehow end up offending whoever is asking.  If I am reading and I’m asked what I’m doing, I had better be prepared to explain it completely because saying,”I’m reading,” becomes a way for me to be accused of being rude or trying to be a smart alec.  I end up having to spend a whole hour or two apologizing for offending the person because I’ve wanted to keep that little bit of my life to myself.

There are so few things in my life that I actually get to keep to myself.  It’s frustrating.  I feel like everyone gets to have their own private thoughts except me.  It makes me feel like I’m on exhibition or like I’m being given attention.  I would be happy around other people, instead of shying way.  I don’t like attention.  I want to exist without having to give a reason for what I’m doing or what I’m thinking.  I want to feel like I’m a person, instead of someone who must give reasons for all of their actions.  I really don’t think anyone could understand how frustrating it is to feel like you’re disappearing every time you have to explain your life to someone else.

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