I'm fairly sure something similar, though not nearly at the same time, has happened to other people, so I figured I'd post this here to see if anyone understands..
I've been a writer all my life, I never realized it til now as profoundly as I now do... (I'm tired, give me a break :P)
Writers are supposed to be a little eccentric, a little crazy, in order to be able to write. Everyone has their own way of doing things.. And mine led to me destroying myself in hopes of finding sanity.
I started creating my inner world back in 9th grade.. I read a lot when I was younger and so I had an intensely rich imagination. I KNEW that that was what I wanted to do with my life.. I wanted to write stories people could lose themselves in, about characters that had real personalities.. And it led to a very interesting path indeed. Through the acceptance and destruction of a whole belief system, the creation of my own and the systematic attempt to destroy THAT, through feeling like I was crazy because I had multiple personalities to doing my best to turn them off and find "me"... Through all of it, I was strangely happy. I finally had an interesting life. And then I had a friend who was very into science and psychology and I started feeling like I was crazy because of her. Because SHE believed she was, I believed I was. I mean, we both had multiples right? Except for one thing I realized yesterday.. Hers were self destructive. Mine were creative and helpful and loving for the most part.
I created mine. Hers created themselves. Mine came out of characters in stories I had come up with, and the world in my mind was lush and rich and expansive. Hers was dark, cold, hateful and cruel even to herself.. But I didn't see that then. I was afraid that I was crazy, that I was hiding from my real self, that I was going to lose myself soon. I did, but for the wrong reasons..
For the last few years I've been withdrawing into myself because all my life I've had difficulty connecting. When I try, friends stabbed me in the back, blaming the friendship problems solely on me, and me being selfcentered. I didn't mean to be, even if I was.. I was trying to fix myself and my problems to be a better person, a better friend, a more stable person. However, in doing so I lost myself and all my friends because I was losing myself. I can't explain it to those who haven't felt it before.. You do things you feel slightly sorry for and everything seems to go out of control, your friends tell you you're more angry, you've changed, you're not the same person, you're a bad friend, and you cry out that you're trying, you're working on it, but you're lost.. confused, scared. Alone.
You withdraw into yourself because you find yourself so fascinating and terrifying, amazing and exhilirating, and you can sense a danger coming on the horizon that you have to try to fix before it shatters. You pull deeper and deeper in, and you call out to your friends because to your logic you were there for them and they haven't really been there for you, all you want is someone to listen, someone to care, someone to understand that you arent yourself and you don't want to lose them. Instead they turn their back on you, believing you to be like the boy who cried wolf. You get steadily more depressed and lonely and your heart aches and you feel betrayed by everyone. You yearn for that one person to understand you, to care, to listen, and want to help. Instead because of your actions, which you don't even understand, you push them away without intending to, thinking of the things you do as tests and trials to see if they're worthy.
Then, when the hour is darkest, you realize why. Why you created the characters, why they became you, that you are not the most fucked up person on the planet.. That it actually makes sense because your characters are part of you and you are part of them, and to kill them is to kill yourself.
Now to start rebuilding...
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Individuality
Individuality and uniqueness is something I've praised and cherished for a long time. Again for as long as I can remember.. (Approximately age 12. Before that everything's blurry..)
When I was younger, and mostly to date I've always had one key thing about my appearance that stayed the same for a period of time. While growing up I didn't have the funds to dress like I wanted, but I observed enough people's styles to pick and choose what I liked. Thanks to a conversation with my boyfriend yesterday, we pinned down approximately my style range. I tend to range, depending immensely on my mood and purpose, to like things of the following categories- Steampunk, punk(ish), extremely bright clashing hippie, and I think that may have been it. I love the variety of styles I see every day, it makes me happy to realize that there are so many people out there, with their own unique likes and dislikes.
We show more than we realize by what we wear. When we feel frumpy we tend to not really care what we look like and look laidback and careless. When we want to dress nice, we also tend to alter our posture. Everything we do resonates all throughout our self in ways that we don't necessarily even notice. Clothes are a form of psychological armor. When we feel comfortable, we feel safe and confident. When we feel uncomfortable, we usually can't hide it.
Individual uniqueness is something we all share. We're all the same in our craving to be seen as special, in our small yearning to be acknowledged by others in society. Because the universe is vast, and there are so many of us, a small, understandable fear reigns beneath our subconscious, a fear that we are meaningless, invisible, unnoticeable. I cherish all life for its potential, for the fact that it exists. I cherish individuality, even though it's in everyone. You know the phrase, I'm sure. You're a unique snowflake, just like everyone else. It's true, but it doesn't have to be a negative way of looking at it.
As I've stated, I'm a universal thinker. I find all life, all of existence to be amazing, fascinating, wonderful and beautiful even though it's terrifying. The fact that I am so small and universally meaningless also makes me feel amazed to be alive, to feel, to see, to breathe, to walk, to laugh, to live and to love.
Everything we perceive, everything we see, all communication we have, everything we do or think about doing or possibly could do is due to a wrinkly, lumpy 3 lb of flesh in your skull. Neurons you can't even see are firing and sending electrical pulses telling your body if it's hot or cold, making you aware of your surroundings. Though you are not looking at the ground, your body is able to keep walking forward in a roughly straight line at an incline, walking up and down hills and maintaining the balance of your very strangely balanced body. You are breathing, digesting food, your heart is pounding and your bones are moving due to muscle being told to move by the brain..
And this is all happening so fast and so casually you don't even notice. Feelings you have of sorrow and happiness, missing someone and being glad to see them again, all of that occurs in your brain. Everything you see is what your brain interprets so quickly you don't realize it's happening, it just is.
Life is an amazing, beautiful experience.. Don't regret it, even for a moment. Though this world is not always the most pleasant to put up with, the people are not always the nicest or most caring, think of all the amazing systems going on around you, and simply be amazed. Amazed that the trees are growing and emitting oxygen, eating carbon dioxide and continuing to live even through winter.
Be amazed that we have such a vast array of things we can want just because someone wondered what would happen if you mixed various things together. Be happy.
When I was younger, and mostly to date I've always had one key thing about my appearance that stayed the same for a period of time. While growing up I didn't have the funds to dress like I wanted, but I observed enough people's styles to pick and choose what I liked. Thanks to a conversation with my boyfriend yesterday, we pinned down approximately my style range. I tend to range, depending immensely on my mood and purpose, to like things of the following categories- Steampunk, punk(ish), extremely bright clashing hippie, and I think that may have been it. I love the variety of styles I see every day, it makes me happy to realize that there are so many people out there, with their own unique likes and dislikes.
We show more than we realize by what we wear. When we feel frumpy we tend to not really care what we look like and look laidback and careless. When we want to dress nice, we also tend to alter our posture. Everything we do resonates all throughout our self in ways that we don't necessarily even notice. Clothes are a form of psychological armor. When we feel comfortable, we feel safe and confident. When we feel uncomfortable, we usually can't hide it.
Individual uniqueness is something we all share. We're all the same in our craving to be seen as special, in our small yearning to be acknowledged by others in society. Because the universe is vast, and there are so many of us, a small, understandable fear reigns beneath our subconscious, a fear that we are meaningless, invisible, unnoticeable. I cherish all life for its potential, for the fact that it exists. I cherish individuality, even though it's in everyone. You know the phrase, I'm sure. You're a unique snowflake, just like everyone else. It's true, but it doesn't have to be a negative way of looking at it.
As I've stated, I'm a universal thinker. I find all life, all of existence to be amazing, fascinating, wonderful and beautiful even though it's terrifying. The fact that I am so small and universally meaningless also makes me feel amazed to be alive, to feel, to see, to breathe, to walk, to laugh, to live and to love.
Everything we perceive, everything we see, all communication we have, everything we do or think about doing or possibly could do is due to a wrinkly, lumpy 3 lb of flesh in your skull. Neurons you can't even see are firing and sending electrical pulses telling your body if it's hot or cold, making you aware of your surroundings. Though you are not looking at the ground, your body is able to keep walking forward in a roughly straight line at an incline, walking up and down hills and maintaining the balance of your very strangely balanced body. You are breathing, digesting food, your heart is pounding and your bones are moving due to muscle being told to move by the brain..
And this is all happening so fast and so casually you don't even notice. Feelings you have of sorrow and happiness, missing someone and being glad to see them again, all of that occurs in your brain. Everything you see is what your brain interprets so quickly you don't realize it's happening, it just is.
Life is an amazing, beautiful experience.. Don't regret it, even for a moment. Though this world is not always the most pleasant to put up with, the people are not always the nicest or most caring, think of all the amazing systems going on around you, and simply be amazed. Amazed that the trees are growing and emitting oxygen, eating carbon dioxide and continuing to live even through winter.
Be amazed that we have such a vast array of things we can want just because someone wondered what would happen if you mixed various things together. Be happy.
Gender Roles, Rules, and Gender Identity
There's a lot of things that have bothered me most of my life. Because of it I've kept quiet until recently... One of the major things that has always bothered me is this nice tangled, explosive bundle of chaotic crap. When you are growing up*, people are essentially brainwashed and trained to believe certain things. Most of the time because of all the mixed signals, it fails horribly. I started realizing this when I was about 13 years old. Gender rules of behavior are a major catch 22. It's quite ridiculous, and downright medieval. For the record, this subject bothers me to a fundamental level, but I *WILL* be doing my best to curb my cursing, though on this subject it pains me.
I'll begin with women, which is where I started to realize how grossly unfair it all is. I remember distinctly in freshman year of high school hearing almost everyone in the locker room bitching about how unfair it is that women are called whores if they have sex with more than one person, but men are commended for it. (Note, they said girls and guys.. same general rules apply.) But even then I also noticed the other, darkly twisted side of the entire thing. I'm honestly not even sure I can post this without twisting it to untwist it to explain it because it's that jumbled.
Wow I honestly have no idea where to start.. Okay. Basically, women and men have been lumped into very peculiar, rigid, twisted and confused archetypes of the masculine and feminine. Women are, as my father said, supposed to be a lady on the street and a whore in bed. That's kinda true.. And kinda not. Females and males are expected to be such an extremely varied array of traits and are supposed to do so many actions to conform to it that all that happens is people get more upset and confused as time goes on. This is things I have observed in large quantities, and I'm not saying that everyone believes it, but growing up we are given so many mixed signals that they grow into contorted forests, festering within.
Women are expected to be sexually deviant to please men, and yet if they are they're considered whores. I've heard women called bitches, whores, by people being dead serious that all women are sluts, that they're weaker than men, that they belong in the kitchen... Essentially, think of every stereotype you've heard of women. None of them are true completely because people aren't like that. I don't claim to know why it all got so twisted, but looking around it all disturbs me. I'm also not saying that everyone believes it, or that it's true.. But as kids we were given fairly restrictive gender roles, which often contradicted each other and themselves. People aren't just positive or negative, masculine or feminine, because the traits themselves are not gender specific.
It's almost like a lot of people are acting like they THINK people want them to act, which continues the cycle. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to help. All of my life that I can remember I have felt detached, an observer in the game of life. I see what's wrong, but for some reason I'm just too detached to be able to find the piece to FIX the problems that I can see. It's like.. I can see what it SHOULD be, but I have no idea how to rearrange the pieces of the twisted puzzle.
People's actions and personalities can't be confined to female or male because female and male are archetypes created by the physical body parts of each. Sure, it makes sense in SOME WAYS.. but not all. Logically I can understand it to a small degree but it just grew twisted and contorted and... it really bugs me. I don't like feeling like anything I do is going to conform to someone's twisted archetype of how they think I do or should act. Nothing is that simple... The beauty of life is the systems in it. So why are the ones that matter the most twisted by people? I don't understand how it happened... I really don't. How did we come to this confusing point in society? How? How did this happen to us? How can we fix it?
I'll begin with women, which is where I started to realize how grossly unfair it all is. I remember distinctly in freshman year of high school hearing almost everyone in the locker room bitching about how unfair it is that women are called whores if they have sex with more than one person, but men are commended for it. (Note, they said girls and guys.. same general rules apply.) But even then I also noticed the other, darkly twisted side of the entire thing. I'm honestly not even sure I can post this without twisting it to untwist it to explain it because it's that jumbled.
Wow I honestly have no idea where to start.. Okay. Basically, women and men have been lumped into very peculiar, rigid, twisted and confused archetypes of the masculine and feminine. Women are, as my father said, supposed to be a lady on the street and a whore in bed. That's kinda true.. And kinda not. Females and males are expected to be such an extremely varied array of traits and are supposed to do so many actions to conform to it that all that happens is people get more upset and confused as time goes on. This is things I have observed in large quantities, and I'm not saying that everyone believes it, but growing up we are given so many mixed signals that they grow into contorted forests, festering within.
Women are expected to be sexually deviant to please men, and yet if they are they're considered whores. I've heard women called bitches, whores, by people being dead serious that all women are sluts, that they're weaker than men, that they belong in the kitchen... Essentially, think of every stereotype you've heard of women. None of them are true completely because people aren't like that. I don't claim to know why it all got so twisted, but looking around it all disturbs me. I'm also not saying that everyone believes it, or that it's true.. But as kids we were given fairly restrictive gender roles, which often contradicted each other and themselves. People aren't just positive or negative, masculine or feminine, because the traits themselves are not gender specific.
It's almost like a lot of people are acting like they THINK people want them to act, which continues the cycle. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to help. All of my life that I can remember I have felt detached, an observer in the game of life. I see what's wrong, but for some reason I'm just too detached to be able to find the piece to FIX the problems that I can see. It's like.. I can see what it SHOULD be, but I have no idea how to rearrange the pieces of the twisted puzzle.
People's actions and personalities can't be confined to female or male because female and male are archetypes created by the physical body parts of each. Sure, it makes sense in SOME WAYS.. but not all. Logically I can understand it to a small degree but it just grew twisted and contorted and... it really bugs me. I don't like feeling like anything I do is going to conform to someone's twisted archetype of how they think I do or should act. Nothing is that simple... The beauty of life is the systems in it. So why are the ones that matter the most twisted by people? I don't understand how it happened... I really don't. How did we come to this confusing point in society? How? How did this happen to us? How can we fix it?
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