#but of how people would perceive me if i wasnt the smart kid anymore

[sleepless-crows]

as someone who actively tries to show that i don't care what people think of me, i actually do care way too much and it is controlling my life whoops

[vitos-ordination-song]

i look back on horror at who i was as a child a lot bc it was bad and i did bad things. but just now i felt kind of fond of little me and proud. bc i did survive and i was smart. 

i got sparked thinking about this bc i was thinking back to being really little. really little, potty training and earliest memories. i was so motivated to be perfect and actually i was good at getting approval. it’s sad bc thats what shaped the bad part of me. at this deep level i learned i did not want to be punished or disapproved of and so i tried to distance myself from my brothers who were punished and compared negatively to me. 

it’s weird bc for so long i felt shame about this. when i was in high school i apologized to my brothers in tears bc theyd often been resentful of me when we were young and i felt guilty for being the baby who got away with things while they were punished. from like age 2 to age maybe 10 i had a p bad superiority complex borne out of this and i just felt like a bad person for it for a long time. plus i didnt fully break out of the mindset til i let go of inferiority/superiority. 

i do see that i was just a child but thats kinda the part that feels like a horror movie. if i think of it being a child who was in situations i was and doing things i did, it feels horrifying. so most of my thinking back on being a kid are kinda disturbing. 

but im kinda getting back in touch w the part of myself i love for the past few years. and you know i survived for a reason. bc i love life and there are parts of me that are strong. what i was thinking about that started all of this was the kind of two-sided split nature of my childhood. what actual form did it take. 

i was absolutely obsessive about adult approval. to a degree that was v annoying to other kids but worked. i didnt necessarily SHOW that i was obsessed w it and i dont think i was even thinking consciously about it. a lot of my memories go in this vein. like i was good at memorizing bc that was asked of me. i could intense laser focus on things and memorize them. i remember frantically memorizing Bible verses at age 5 to win the Bible verse memorizing competition which the adults put on.

all of my strengths i had to be best in and all of my weaknesses were sources of shame i tried to improve on. i took very seriously morality as it was taught to me and made a great show of following it. i was often what you could consider teachers pet and basked in any positive reinforcement thrown my way. 

i was addicted to avoiding punishment and seeking reward. it was a response to my highly behaviorist, authoritarian upbringing. my emotional state in relationship with adults could vary wildly depending on how they treated me. i had a teacher in fourth grade who seemed to dislike and undermine me, like she wanted to break me, and i internalized my idea of her to help shape myself into someone who she would like. and it mostly worked. 

the intensity of my ability to do stuff like this cannot be understated. i learned to totally supress my sensory problems because they made adults annoyed with me and might lead to punishment (also i had to learn to deal with them alone because i had no help). i learned how to present a certain type of acceptable personality. 

i should note that i learned to do this first because of my parents. i learned later, but very young, that i had been easy to potty train. i was often praised both for being intelligent but especially for being “easy” and obidient. the perfect child. as compared to my brothers who wet the bed and had to be punished for it. ive thought for a while that the reason i was so obsessed with being perfect in school is that my mother homeschooled me and my brother for kintergarden. she screamed at him for being stupid. never me. 

being better was being safe. so i became this person who had to follow all the rules and be best at everything and i always wanted to be assured that i had earned love by my behavior. 

but the oddest thing about this is that i was a totally anti-authority, rebellious, and single-minded child. this is how the split in my personality manifested when i was little. any time i sensed any kind of unfairness i was livid. i undermined authority figures behind their backs with other kids. i got around rules however i could. 

the thing was, i think, even when i was very little, was that i knew it was arbitrary. the authority my parents wielded over me and my siblings was incomprehensible. i couldnt follow it. i just knew that they were in charge so they could do what they wanted. they were inconsistent in their punishments and rewards. sometimes they punished you for nothing and sometimes you got away with doing something actually bad. they weren’t fair. they just made it up as they went along. 

i wanted to do what i wanted to do and really i felt no attachment to their judgment on it--at least this side of me didnt. and it goes back just as far, maybe farther, than the feeling of superiority or desire for approval. i think that came more as i became afraid of punishment. 

i have very young memories of defying my parents authority. i just wanted to get away with it. and i almost always did. 

it’s funny because my entire family has always judged me for that but now i look back with some admiration. i mean i was obsessing with how to get away with things in my youngest memories, like age 3. all throughout my childhood i broke the rules to do what i wanted. 

when i was thinking earlier, what came to me was that i always acted to get approval so that i could get away with things and do what i really wanted to do. my main occupation as a child was reading. i was approved of for it. i read so much! i was such a smart little girl! and i could get away with spending all my time away from people in another world, the world of my books. i was quiet and out of the way so i was a good child. and that was one of the main sources of happiness in my childhood, reading, escaping, learning, being somewhere else. 

i waged a warfare against authority quietly. i learned to give them what they want and then do whatever i wanted when they looked away. i did it all the time. the side of me that wanted approval and the one that wanted freedom were somewhat dissociated so i didnt even fully realize i was doing it. 

i think what caused a lot of the change was falling from grace. in my own eyes, in my projected, perceived vision of God, and in the eyes of adults. it happened around age 10 and 11. i went from a very high to very low opinion of myself quickly. i think some of it was having a teacher who simply did not and would not like me, who wanted me to be smaller. she didnt like that i was disorganized and said i had terrible handwriting. she wasnt cruel but she wanted to destroy me for my own good. she constantly put me down and made me a subject of ridicule in class. 

i was also thinking more about Christian morality. the more i learned about God and heard about sin the more i felt i was a sinner. i felt bare and stripped naked, disgusting before God. 

i had humbling experience after humbling experience--internally as i reflected on my behavior and externally though rejection by peers, failure in school, and adult disapproval. it wasnt possible for me to feel approved of, perfect anymore. i could only be bad. 

i kept going further and further with this until i was reborn and rejected all of it. i stopped being Christian and rejected God’s authority. Christianity was the only worldview i had ever been allowed to imagine. once i stopped believing in it i was separate from every person around me. i could not, as a human being, have anyone’s approval. 

i wasnt the golden child at school or at home any more. i started getting in trouble in ways i never would have before because i was more defiant openly. a teacher took my kindle from me in 8th grade and i was punished for stealing it back. i had used to never talk back to my parents but i started to. i was angry. the dynamics in my family shifted and sometimes i was the scapegoat, sometimes i was the one being screamed at, punished, hit the most. me and my siblings played hot potato for it. golden child shifted around too. but i would never be the favorite again. by the time my parents went back to fawning on me, when i was a successful college student, i had no taste for it. 

starting around age 13. i had to become my own internal source of approval, authority, and being. i started to parent myself. i developed an internal parent who nurtured me and i sought out a lot of media about good and loving parents. i cried alone all the time but when i was calming down, i would stroke my own hair and talk to myself. i thought for myself and made up my mind about things. i had my own internal sense of morality that wasnt based on punishment and rewards. that made me a better person. before i had broken any rule with no guilt. i did not consider right and wrong of the action, only likelihood of punishment or reward. when i was giving myself approval, /i/ had to approve of my actions. 

idk ive just rambled a lot but i guess ive been thinking tonight about how ive reacted to environments and how ive changed myself as a person. i have these moments, shorter periods in my life, where something totally shifts in me. but that doesnt make long term effects just go away. i still worry about approval and punishment. i still punish and reward myself. these things are ground into me. inferiority/superiority too. but i saw through them and i have changed. 

[somedaypast-thesunset]

i had a nice weekend, amazingly enough. in some ways i feel we both made an effort but at the same time we didn’t. like we just chilled - didnt try to make plans or rush through, just accepted that this was the activity.

it helped to change the routine up a bit. since my roommate left, we decided to stay at my place. i had a friend over for tea before being dropped off at his place where we packed up some things and came back. we got weed and alcohol and watched the unabomber documentary on netflix. it was nice - no one was yelling, no one was bothered. i brought my bed out to the living room so we could watch the big screen and relax.

in the morning we went to the bakery and bought good stuff for breakfast. smoked some weed, finished the unabomber series and took a nap. then we went skating at the park downtown before buying ingredients to make a fancy pasta dinner at his house.

it was very nice. i felt that this was ~my christmas. we definitely needed time / space to enjoy each other as is instead of constantly rushing and or making plans for other things. the success of it and the lure of downtown began helping him change his min (as well as the fact he wants to live the life the unabomber lived and now he realizes its kind of crazy)tm

this week i have a doctors appointment and im supposed to get a tattoo. he leaves on friday basically but he should be back before the next friday which oesnt seem that bad at all? he’ll still be here for new years. and my birthday. considering i dont care about christmas anyways, seems like an okay deal and i’ll probably get free random shit from people anyways. 

things are 20% less bad than they were on thursday/friday last week. it’s not great but i dont want to die. which is like .... the most normal level of being for me possible rght now. i am not “excited” to see my doctor because it means ive gone off the deep end but i am excited for the relief that i will feel upon talking to a professional who advocates for me. i am considering asking if he would want to talk to one of my friends who has been dealing with me to see if it would help because i think it would help to see that i have smart friends who are active in my life in positive ways - like i still want to provide proof that i’m not just some drug addict.

on the weekend i told him the story of my cat frank. frank died in really traumatic circumstances which was totally unusual for most people. frank was very very very sick and i took him to the vet by bus because my father was very sick. the vet took my cat, performed emergency procedures on him, then asked me to pay for it. when i couldnt pay for it they gave me the option of releasing it to the humane society, which the humane society woulnt take it and i would have to rive it there myself or put the now healthy cat down. so basically i had to put it down. they wanted me to pay to put it down as well. i had a friends father come in and he yelled at them and made a ig eal and they put it down for me for free.

in my life, i figured this was just ~ another thing. he asked me why this happened, how it couldve happened, that it was like a really terrible story if not one of the worst he’s ever heard and pressed for details. i did not fully realize at the time how unique my exprience was. i thought this went with my old line of belief - i was crazy. i was the crazy one just experiencing the world aroun me and reacting to it in a crazy way. i just “didnt understand” what was happening. i was 16 and alone and just dealing with this. 

but i was not crazy. i had taken my family pet to the vet like anyone would in modern society on the expectation that they cared about animals. but they did not care at all and i dont think that people fully understand that the pet industry is about money - it is not about the animal at all. but most people will drain their bank accounts for a beloved animal. i know people who have spent thousands of dollars and acted like it was completely normal and okay. 

is it though? i dont know. it seems fucked that we domesticated animals to an overabunance and then put a huge price tag on caring for one that they would otherwise kill. when this animal once survived in the wild without any care at all. 

but i tried to explain the nuances of this story to him which he would have zero understanding of at all. it is a bit like racism. you would never understand what a black person felt if you are not black. you do not get the nuanced glances and little shuffles away from you on a daily basis that makes you feel inhuman. and you cant explain the depth of that to someone - it sounds like you’re overreacting and nitpicking when this bothers your soul because you were merely born into the world and others are reacting to you for no reason at all.

so i tried to explain the nuances of being in poverty, having an alternative style and possibly being perceived as not white. which is a weird and unknown factor to my life - i am perceived as not white. i cannot say for certain what i am perceived as - i’ve gotten mixed, spanish and asian. but many times i am perceived as “not white”. i believe as i am getting older and my “alternative” style has become more like an old witchy type lady who just wears black and i am judged even more based on my natural looks that i am in fact coming across as more native american now than since i was a kid. 

it is kind of easy to tell by clothes if someone is experiencing poverty. kind of. sometimes people are still really insecure and want to portray themselves better off because they know its more beneficial to do so. some eople have no choice at all. as a teenager my “altnerative style” itself looked poor. i wore ripped jeans and band tshirts, i had weird colored hair that i cut myself and i probably had gross peircings. maybe i was wearing makeup from the night before. maybe my shoes had holes in them. maybe my jacket did. maybe i wore my leopard print coat. i dont know. i dont even know what i looked like or what i wore - i expressed myself through my style and i was very all over the place. maybe they judged me by this.

and its so easy to “understand” the judgement of “some punk kid” but the nuanced beliefs that follow it are not. punk to many is a criminal. a drug addict. someone who doesnt care. a kid is someone who does understand, that they can control and manipulate. someone in poverty has no choice and other people wont care. they wont care that this is a teenage girl saving her beloved pet, willing to work out payment plans and everthing else to do it. 

he did seem to understand my perspective. i have alot to deal with. this is why its offensive when i have to hear him lament about some other person’s life - who i honestly have no doubt they struggled. i really dont. if i met them independently and they told me of their lives, i bet we would get along (provided they werent a drug addict anymore) because i feel we’d probably empathize with eachother far more than he ever empathized with us. and i have only heard stories from others and every story is terrible - their successes are few and far between and they actively make harmful choices. imagine how they felt life was like for them to come to such conclusions on how they’ll live. to make choices to shoot drugs and fuck with all these people without care - that’s probably a lot of people actively not loving you and/or serious mental illness. 

but when the focus is on that and them and my struggles are taken without the same heaviness or seriousness or acceptance of how this would affect me .. it’s offensive. i do not want to be in competition with anyone for a shitty life. you cannot even be proud of that. it’s just sad. i’m sa for them, i’m sad for me - it’s just sad. but when no seriousness is taken on my life, i find myself trying to defend the belief that my life was not easy. and not just “not easy” like my parents divorced  or i didnt get into the school i wanted. like really seriously not easy, likely equal to the not easiness of this person as well. i just had a completely unique not easy experience to them and perhaps it’s not as wild or entertaining? or i’m not the cute little white blonde girl? 

i explained this to another friend about a doctor. as a teenager a friend and i  went to the doctor to try and find some help for me. we were our usual teenage goth selves and the doctor pretty much laughed and thought we were lesbians (we were not, which i guess kudos to him for accepting our perceived homosexuality but that wasnt part of the issue at hand) 

this is just the very obvious points. the examples you can see where most likely some judgement occurred but the actual bigger picture is what all these nuanced interactions equal out to. if everyday my interaction with someone is clouded by pre-conceived notions of being a drug addict, a criminal, “not white” (which in itself could be leading to the first two but is racist all around anyways) or to the lesser degrees - strange, not “socially acceptable”. but i am none of these things -  am just me. 

and you know, right now i am in a place much like my friend was as a teenager. she struggled with her racial identitiy. she did not want to be seen as “brown”. she carried hatred and resentment towards her culture and did not want to accept it despite being “brown”. so like her, i am very non-accepting of drug addicts because their existence makes mine harder. a drug addict many times lives in poverty. “not white” people are perceived as drug addicts. alternative styles are seen as drug addicts. and drug addicts themselves, many of whom i’ve interacted with, are not nice people. they are not people you want to be around and yes - they are still people. under the heroin and crack, they are still people hurt and struggling. i get it. but they just made the struggle for themselves and me ten times harder. so i have to fight and defend myself that i am not a drug addict which is so hard to prove because they can believe you’re popping pills or your trip to the bathroom took too long and it’s frustrating as hell.

unlike my friend i do not have to accept my identity as a drug addict because i’m not one. i realized that i did in fact choose to take a harder route in the struggles of life because doing drugs is the easy way. and yes, smoking weed is kind of the same but i’ve dealt and cried about life. every experience ive had with other drugs has been very numbing and exaggerated and an altered viewpoint. that is not how i react with weed. i dont know if others react differently and i wouldnt argue if they did. but this is my reaction. i would smoke 2 joints everyday before i took an anti depressant which i have taken and do not have the same very positive effects. 

but when ihave done other drugs and if i chose to continue to do other drugs its a complete escape. 100% non functioning escape. and it’s not like “do a little” mdma and you’re just a little happier all day. PEOPLE ARE STILL AROUND YOUR WEIRD ASS which is affected by this drug in unusual ways like you’re a “little happier” and everyone else is uncomfortable. congrats. i do drugs and i am writhing on the floor like a piece of shit. 

anyways, he told his mother the story about the vet and she essentially pushed it aside and said it seemed unlikely. she is why my life is shit. people ust like her multiplied into the thousands. for all the nuanced judgements and personal experiences - it seemed unlikely. but it did happen. this is my life. you’re telling me my life seems unlikely. this is exactly what happened. a grown man with a government job came in and yelled at them. i know his name. why would that occur? do you not understand WHY I AM CRAZY?

i am constantly looking for validation because of people like her. not everyone is like her. some people with vast life experiences or real open minds take you for your word. anything is possible in life. but many people don’t. and many of those people hold positions of power or authority which may even be as simple as being a teacher or principal. but those people will shape and guide the path your life in society is going to take. when i told people of what was going on - they didn’t believe me, they didnt care; it seemed unlikely. so i’m left questioning the importance, my sanity, my perspective as well as dealing with the actual active problem entirely on my own with absolutely no help or direction what so ever. thank god i was an egotistical cocky angry teenager. my punk ass attitude and anger and genera ignorance got me through things i honest to god probably wouldnt even do now. younger me was ten times harder. i was ready to do anything go anywhere but i didnt because i had guilt and apathy. i didnt have the same apathy as i do now, but there was some. i dont have guilt anymore and looking back had i followed through on my teenage dreams, i mightve been better off. i wanted to move out early. i wanted to move out at like 15 - 16 years old. if my dad had not gotten sick, i wouldve been working at a job where i made 350 - 500$ every week doing shit i was fully 100% capable of doing with no issue what so ever. in a home environment interacting with one other person. i realized i had earned like 4000$ in the 3 -4 months i was working there and had literally nothing because i spent it on weed and vodka and ecstacy. then i lost the job for being so stressed out and smoking so much weed before and during work that i couldnt even do the job anymore. which was like SHIT I DO EVERY DAY ANYWAYS. 

at 17 i spent 3 months living by myself. literally. while working. an taking care of any responsibilities my sick father put on me and this is before hes even in the house. most people cant eve comprehend the idea of me doing this now but this is what i did. what you need to realize is that my mother at the time was also still alive. so for whatever reason she just ... didn’t give a fuck this was happening. she knew. she was fully aware. but not once did she offer anything. she just wanted to know if he was going to be dead or not. 

17 year old me dealt with this by smoking an insanely large amount of weed which i do not think i have even matched to this day because never have i had that much disposable income again. but not only did i smoke weed, i did a shit ton of mdma and k and drank a lot of vodka which was my drink of choice at the time. we stole my dads van, three times, for lke no purpose. it was bad. this was essentially my most punk era of time which i now look back on pretty disappointed with myself because i had the wherewithal to get a job, maintain a job but then be a complete piece of shit teenager. that was my time - had i not given into drugs or alcohol i’d have been WAY different. period. 

by not taking that way out - and i feel like people don’t understan i made a concious decision not to do it anymore but eliminating toxic people in my life and like completely removing myself from these situations. the last time of significance that i did drugs - my friend came from toronto to visit. this is what we did. the routine. she came and we woul get “bored” and decide lets just pool what money we have and get something. so i asked everyone on facebook - at the time i had probably 150+ friends (super unusual for me a really big number) and just asked anyone and everyone. a random kid who went to our school back in the day (we were probably 18 now) said he had some pills. we walked in the dark to meet this kid and he gave us 2 pills for 20$ which is a pretty big rip off but we didnt care. we went back to my place, popped them and got high as fuck. half way through our trip, my bf at the time randomly shows up. which was a big deal; he live 3 hours away and was surprising me. we were very surprised and it was awkward and weird and it wasnt like we could send him away. we had to spend a few hours with him awkwardly before she slept in the other room and i had an uncomfortable time “sleeping” with him. 

i decided then maybe i was getting too old. i spent two years doing drugs and going through his routine and it was wearing on my body already. my teeth and gums were always sore from grinding, my lungs were always sore from smoking so many cigarettes, i was spending all of my money on drugs - there was times when the drugs were clearly mixed with other more disgusting drugs like coke and meth and it would result in way more fucked up reactions like the time i hit myself in the thigh with a baton for 30 minutes before my friend noticed and made me stop. but the repetition and pain were part of the enjoyment for me. all of the times i was on drugs, i was a different person. i was someone i would never actually be. sure, my inhibitions were lower but the filters of how i truly felt and would act are no longer there and thats not a real represenation of my actual true self. these are just deep layers of myself that i may not even want to share or would normally consent to sharing if the drugs didnt affect me. and that bothered me alot. it stil bothers me - my behavior on drugs. people out there have seen me in ways im not proud of. i’m embarassed and i only have myself to blame. 

so thats the easy way. the hard way is living life within your true self and finding enjoyment in things when you can barely find the excitement in yourself. take a drug and do any activity - it’s fantastic. do nothing and it’s great. but fining things your true self wants to take part in -- long time drug addicts know the “boredom”. they never took the journey to find these passions and instead elected for the easy way to have the excitement handed to them.

and honestly? nothing really matches the thrill of mdma. or i guess crack or heron or whatever you do. i have never felt anything like it. every nerve is awake and aware, i am hyper sensitive to all of life and my mind is clear. everything is interesting and awe inspiring. 

but thats not life. you cant carry that into the slums of the ghetto. you cant go outsie and stare blindly at the sun. you cannot do it. this is not life. and its okay to someones experience it. the same way its okay to experience the heat of the sun. you can do it lightly ad responsibly. any other way really harms you.

in the spirit of positivity, here are some things that really get me going:

- playing an entire song with no mistakes on guitar and possibly singing it without fucking up or forgetting the words. super exciting to my life in ways nothing else is. it’s not even like i’m trying to play for other people it’s just a personal knowledge that i can do this and play it and feel it and create it. 

- making good food. not just like cooking food but the satisfaction of the actual creation of making something thats really good or luxurious. 

- being physically close to the person i am in a relationship with. i like the warmth and i was very deprived of physical contact but i dont like it with strangers or friends either so its a rare and nice feeling to lay close with someone. 

- a very fascinating tv show. like one that i have to keep watching because i neeeed to know. thats a unique and interesting feeling of human beings; being really curious. i guess it’s lke reading a book but i dont read much at this stage in my life but i hope ill become hat kind of person and when i do itll probably be exciting to have so much material in a world ive rarely visited. 

- cats. i really love cats. all of the cats. i love visiting people’s cats and i like to become friends with them. cats are great because they feel very individual; no two cats are the same and no matter how much the owner impresses on to the cat, the cat is just a cat and it does what it wants so it’s like getting to make a new friend even if the person you’re visiting isnt that exciting. cats are always great. even the shitty grumpy ones. or the old ones that maybe arent into you. if you spend enough time, eventually they will be and you can be friends and people think you’re a cat whisperer. i have atleast two cat friends i see regularly but i see more cats than that. we’re just not friends yet. 

- a really good song. either with really good rocking bluesy music or clever/well written lyrics.