Sick phoques.

An atheist friend of mine asked me this question: "Do you think God might be a bit of a sadist?"

Atheists are sadistical. They have no reason to harass theists, yet they don't cease. If they truly believe there is 'no' God, it is a waste of their time to discuss the matter. Immanuel Kant told us that if people who have silly beliefs, we shouldn't hate them: we should just feel sorry for them. Enjoy the freedom and be proud of how much smarter you are than everyone else.

I remember something that George Orwell said, in Down and Out in Paris and London: that [a character] did not seem so much to disbelieve in God, as to have a vindetta(sp?) against him. Such seems so much to be true of so many "atheists".

John Locke told us, "It is not reasonable to deny the existance of an infinate being, simply because we cannot understand its operations." Deists have call to write libel against God. What is it that motivates the unbeliever to do it other than cruelty?

Retaliation? Fine: people of faith push it onto those who lack it. But they do it because they care. They genuinely believe that what they have found is important and can help people. Maybe they believe it is imperative to our status in the next realm. And maybe they are wrong. But they are motivated by compassion. Irreligious people are motivated by spite.

They could be wrong. And they could be responsible for war or terrorism or hate crimes or persecution or whatever. But if it is all a ruse, if it's all biology, if we are just animals without souls, then this "plague" of religion is an inevitable mirage in our minds with some weeding-out-of-undesirables purpose for the continuous, changing parasite of the planet earth that is "life". If ethics, if morals, if feelings, are just instincts, or preoccupations of our minds, now that they are overly developed, then what we percieve as suffering, is just learned behaviour to avoid a similar fate for ourselves that would hinder the survival of our species. And it doesn't effing matter.

On the "Mountains of Evidence" Against Theology

I don't think "science", as we call it, is very reliable. Historically, science hasn't maintained very much credibility: only a hundred years ago, bloodletting was still a popular remedy. Lobotomies enjoyed their peak less than fifty years ago.

However, Darwin theory has always felt, to me, affirmative to "Creation" theory: it blows my mind how closely evolution mirrors the order of the events of creation week: first, just rocks. Next, water. Then, aquatic animals. Birds, land animals, and, last, people.

Any thoughts?

I don’t like the drugs, but the drugs like me. For a month or so, I’ve been trying to get off of Trazadone. It helps me sleep and stay sane, but without it I get so much done & never want food! My meds are in a conspiracy against me: My doctors will never cooperate with my thesis that I don’t need an antipsychotic. Trazadone was something I added for sleep and am now functionally dependent upon. And because of it, now I need a mood stabilizer! And I could so use benzo-diazepines again, if it weren’t for my friend, who thinks I’m "not responsible" with them. How many RESPONSIBLE people need attivan?? If I was responsible, I wouldn’t keep running to the shelter of a Mother’s Little Helper.

I hate smart people. I hate how they feel entitled to things. When they say they shouldn't have to work at an unfulfilling job because of how much more intelligent they are than their co-workers, I feel like they are saying, "I'm too pretty to work here with all of these ugly people." And I hate all of these movies about rebellious, irresponsible, rude children who are "special" and "unique"; have some special ability that omits them from having to behave. That they are just "misunderstood" (translation: their parents are too stupid for them to have to listen to.)

Stripping was such an awesome job. No cleaning, no boss yelling, no kissing customers' asses. All I had to do was show up on time, stay until closing, and refrain from sex, drugs, and fights for the duration between, and I was the best girl there. My boss fucking LOVED me. I loved the clothes, the music, the dancing. I know it wasn't ballet, but it was also my hobby and I became rather accomplished at it. I worked there the longest: four years.

Man, if I had my old ass back it would so be back up there! ;;)

Composition

Okay, so I found out what composting is, and I'm a little freaked out about it! I mean, encouraging trash to rot more? To get hot and wet? WORMS?????!!!!!!!!!

I'm just having a hard time realizing that throwing trash in the yard is GOOD for the environment!

And I did not know that soil is worm dung!!!

My disillusionment is happening rather quickly, and it's jarey. It is hard to think that environmentalism means letting the bugs live in my house, not cleaning or disinfecting, going days without showers, leaving pee in the toilette. I guess I thought of ecology as making for a CLEAN world...but now it's like, bleach is bad, poop is good, and we want MORE germs, mold, algae, and insects.

Composting is a can of worms I'm not sure I should have opened.

शीन ओं यू क्रेज्य दिअमोंड्स!

I vollunteered in my child's class Monday. She is a preschooler. The teacher stays busy and cheerful all day. She spent so much time introducing them to one letter in so many amazing ways. She spent time with each child individually working on counting. The school day is fully seven hours (including lunch) and she had to be there significantly before and after. She has to be with them ALL of the time, lunch & all. She went to the bathroom one time, as did I.
Teachers kick so much @$$!!! Most of us CAN be late to work, be grouchy, and slack of SOMETIMES. Our coworkers understand when we have personal problems. Teachers cannot, EVER, and they don't even have coworkers that they can talk to during the workday.
I am so lucky that my little girl is able to go to preschool. She needs this so much! Teachers, I applaud you.

Wearing of the Green.

I thought my friends were queer. Organic milk sounded to me like they did something wierd to it. She goes to such pains to rearrange the way they compose her tacos at the 'Bell so as to include beans instead of meat. One day when my friend was re-bottling nasty used oil, I said "Criminy! Why don't you just throw that away?" She said, "I am".

She does those things, because she cares.

I pretty much gave up on my ideas about "doing my part", because I didn't feel it made a difference. Even if I became a vegan, I reasoned, it didn't mean they were going to let more animals live. That would just be product that went unsold.

Just what was the point?

Now I am seeing so many more and more people taking action. Enough for it to be profitable to Wal-Mart to sell organic foods, etc. Change is happening.

I don't think I'm willing to let people who are making sacrifices go on feeling that their efforts are not helping. More people are doing it. It is GROWING! It is going to keep growing!!! I didn't think it could happen; I thought, ultimately, people's moment-to-moment cheapness and laziness and greed would supercede. But I was wrong.

I am making changes now, because of my friends. By doing your part, you are spreading it. There are enough people, now, that it IS denting the industries that capitolize on irresponsible & selfish products. Don't stop now. For all that is good. Don't stop. It does make a difference. It does.

I am ashamed.

I am ashamed that I left my husband. I do not think it was right at all.

This is certainly not what I had hoped and intended to become. I once was a person of high ideals and values. When I was young, I had a kind of fear about the things that repulsed me. I wanted to be...oh, so many things...but, it's like I recieved the prophesy of Oedipus' parents. Everything that I did, to avoid this fate, only served to bring it about.

At twenty-seven, married, with a three-year-old girl, I no longer worked. I did none of the cooking, cleaning, etc. It had come to a point where I slept ALL DAY. My husband slept for four hours in the evening before going to work at night, and I felt that I just could not go on being up with my child during that time. Just four hours a day of seeing her. I had never wanted to be like that. Everything I had ever been afraid of and repulsed by. Yeah. Me. Lazy, fat, unfaithfull. I didn't even wait for him to leave the house before I was on the net with guys.

I left.

I now live with my child in an efficiency apartment. My slumlord has done nothing about my stove that blew up or the bugs he'd told me he was having taken care of. I get less than $500 a month, plus food stamps.

And I'm happy.

I don't know what is wrong with me. But I could not stay in that house any longer. I now have my daughter all the time, and I relish her company! I don't even care that no guys want me!

I don't like what I did. But.

Insoniac Musings

i'm altogether not a very practical person, but occasionally something will come along that just drives me insane. like people who have those lamps that carry the option of three different settings, yet the bulbs only allow for on and off. that's not the part that upsets me. but the people who have these lamps should know by now that two turns of the switch is necessarily to activate them, yet every time they turn it once, look at it like it's from another world, and turn it a second time. you know how you can tell? it always takes two turns to activate. if they were able to accept this, chances are, they would automatically turn it twice everytime and eventually they'd probably realize that it's less disturbing on the psyche if they would set it in such a way that the first turn would activate the light, while the second would only save them from the dissettlement of futility, which is the way i feel everytime i turn these switches and nothing happens...another thing; 'spray bottles' are like this advanced science to people. you've seen these people turn the bottle upside down to spray their hair or their furniture or whatever the use of the bottle's contents suggests. it works for about two applications of the mechanism, and then they wonder why it stops. they'll never figure out that it is because, upside down, the suction device isn't drawing any liquid, because once they turn it right-side-up, it still doesn't work for another couple of applications while the straw is retrieving the solution.

when ann lived at nine greenbrian in not (by the time i lived there myself i had accepted defeat) there were two switches to the stairwell light. because of some...symposium of their nature...they could both be positioned in the traditional "on" in agreement with the light's status. but in order for the light to be "off", the switches had to be in disagreement. this was inharmonious to me, and it disturbed me nearly enough to lose sleep over. i wanted to fix it, and after an extensive study, i thought it could be done, but only if i brought in a second to stand at one end of the stairwell and flip the switch at the exact same time that i did. if it could only be done in exact unison, the problem would be solved forever! after a while, i even realized what had happened initially to upset the world's balance in this way: some persons unknown had to have done this. conspired to simultaneously switch the lights in order to upset the natural order in the exact way as the solution at which i had arrived.

10 March, 2006

Random Thoughts:

I no longer desire any other material things, but to have books, books, books! Not leather-bound or hard cover or gold leaved, but dozens and dozens of second hand paperbacks, rare and out of print finds from used stores. I love the atmosphere, the very smell of used book stores, whereas new books, are like, evil. The way the smell: that fresh parchment. The nonconformity of the binding when you try to open them. The feel that by merely holding them, you are depreciating them. Oh, but old books! To open one, have it fall naturally to the page that was most significant to the previous owner. To find a note written in it that's thiry years old...

I've always said I was a writer, but I'm like someone who says, "Yeah, I'm gay, and I'm still gay, even though I haven't had sex in six years."

On Christianity:

I may or may not find that all Churches of Christ have Hon as a pastor. I don't know; he's the only one I've known. He had some qualities I really respected. Not many people would take an hour a week to talk to someone like me, knowing there wasn't going to be a big profit for the church in tithes. But he kinda psyched me out a little. Like, I didn't realize they were one of those churches who thought they alone were the ones doing everything right, and everyone else was totally wrong. That's like impossible, given that we believe that no human being is perfect. I really think Hon thinks he is. Like I asked him, so if you think that unconfessed sins must be accounted for when you die, what do you do? And he was like, well, I just don't sin at all. And so I was like, so wait a minute, you think that everyone except people of Church of Christ are doomed? Only they are saved? And it blew my mind when he said, "No, I wouldn't say just everyone of Church of Christ. Mostly just the ones in my church." ! It really made me mad that, when my friend told him I'd decided to keep going to the Lutheran church, he was like, "Well, we tried." Implying that he'd tried to rescue me from damnation or something. Like I'd chosen to go back to life as a crack whore or something.

Another thing I don't understand is the "Early Christian Church" thing. Church of Christ's big hangup is immitating the church as it originated in the New Testement, with the exclusion of any kind of practice or doctrine not outlined in the Bible. That is why they do not use musical instruments. Even though there are references to them in like Psalms & such. Not in the New Testement. But the original churches didn't have flushing toilettes, either. We owe the precursers of those to the Cretes, a pagan tribe who practiced human sacrifice. And what made the first Christians so perfect anyway? It's not like Jesus even established Christianity. Those that did--the apostles and Paul and them--did a great job globalizing the Word. But they're not perfect. And the first churches were confounded with problems. That's why we have the Pauline letters.

It's kind of a touchy area to start trying to interpret God's word with too much supremacy. Too many inconsistancies arise from trying to understand everythng the Bible\God says\means. The real problem I see is that people cannot accept their human limitations. They think there must be absolute truths. I think some absolute truths may exist, but as long as we are human, and imperfect, many thngs will be elusive to us. I'd love to see more Christians unite to try to understand God, His will, His ways, and what He asks of us, instead of slandering each other and card-stacking.

I'm going to a Baptiste church again, because I think that their doctrine follows the Bible as closely as I can imagine. I see them trying to understand and follow God as best as they can, although there are things that they believe in that I think are flawed. For example, they believe in this like salvation experience--this single, definative moment in one's life at which he "accepts Christ", "is forgiven", "gives his life to the Lord", etc. They call it being "saved", "inviting Jesus into your heart", "accepting Him as your personal Lord and Savior", etc. I think it is important to do so, but I scruple a little over it being this one, big thing. Like, one minute ago, I was "lost", and now I am found. I think that Baptistes and similar denominatins, usually called "Evangelicals", teach this "conversion experience", this "Sinner's Prayer", because they realize that something must be done to become saved, to accept God. But, in general, I don't think that the Bible gives us enough of a blueprint to be sure how this is to be accomplished.

All churches seem to have theology to provide for the philosophical baffles our minds create and for which there seem to be no answers. They do it because they can't accept the incompleteness of the map the Bible provides, but I think it is dangerous to fill in the blanks with our own inventions. It is vanity to believe that, as mortals, we can ever fully understand God, but I believe that His love is available to everyone--even to those who cannot read the Bible, as they are illiterate, cannot be baptised, as they live in drought, and cannot take the Eucharist, as they live in famine.

Song of Myself, Part the Second

Virginity was this, mammoth part of who I was. I wanted to believe that I possessed something speacial--hidden. Gnostic. In fact, I was nothing by myself. Not even a whole person. I needed to be meshed with someone. For many years, I felt that all I had to offer was this sexual innoscence. Once it was gone, what was I left with? Feeling that way, what drove me to chop it up and distribute it? I seem to think it was because life was so meaningless. My dream--my beautiful, perfect world I'd created--had failed me. So I took the broken, shattered pieces of that world, and gave them away. They were useless to me now. Why hold on? I could never put them back together. It hurt a little, to see them go. Not a wonderful, brutal, tragic hurt that would have shown me I could feel. That I was real. But nothing. Emptiness. Apathy. Numbness. I didn't do school work, but I didn't quit school. I just went. Stared at the wall I guess. Some part of me couldn't let go of the pipe dream of perfect love. Part of me still believed, wanted to believe, coudln't let go of that final piece. There was no point in going on, I knew, but I was stuck here, and what did I care what happened? It just didn't matter anymore. Disillusionment left me just wanting to cease existing. Still, though, I held on to that last piece, and I hurt myeslf with it. I held it so tight, it cut me.

What does it say about me, that the ultimate life experience, in my perspective, was losing my virginity. Losing. Breaking the hymen. Hurt. Giving myself to someone. Away. And as that was all I wanted, to me, the me, as I knew her, would end. It wasn't sex, like, this thing you do, for pleasure, or whatever. It was...the climax. Glorious, effervescent, resplendent, and then, gone, taking everything with it. Like the orgasm itself--so much builds it up--the intensity, and then, it's like, euphoric, for only a moment, and then it is gone. Like...a phoenix.



I think, when I realized my perfect world wasn't going to happen for me--the happiness, church, God, meeting the God-following man with whom I would spend my life, in accordance with what, I'd assumed, God had planned--I was dissappointed. Jaded. But it was hard letting go of that final piece, of the waning hope for everything I'd imagined, felt, wanted, worked for, survived for, and been able to pick myself up off of the floor in a pitch black room, where I'd lain, sobbing, until, depleted, I dug my nails into my flesh, bit my knuckles, constricted my throat until it throbbed, and let tears that wouldn't fall be suspended until my eyes burned...for. That futile hope, of being accepted. Being wanted. Being noticed. Being used. Being loved.

Song of Myself

14 March, 2006

My sexuality developed in such a way as to be characterized by radical polarizations. I imagined sex as being romantic, passionate, an act of love. Still, for most of my life, I was plagued by insatiable deviancy.

Jos is so unhappy. I know that I am the cause of it. I am the one who wanted to have a baby. I don't work. I don't cook, clean, shop for groceries, or pay bills. I leave most responsibility for the baby on him. And I never have sex with him.

I'm finally to a point where I have to admit that I married Jos out of need, and an inability to initiate change. I've never broken up with someone. Once I'm in, I'm in. I wanted a man to love me. It was my greatest, and really my only, want. Who was I to refuse the one who finally stayed? The first night we were together, I slept with him. I couldn't let it go as nothing. I had given him the final meagre piece. All I had left, I thought, of myself: the hymen. I'd have had nothing more to give to the next person. And we were two months from our wedding when I found out that he was an agnostic.

Was I never in love with Jos? Was it even romantic? Is he a missing patriarch figure? God? I was always lonely, and needy. For friends, my mom, God...but, I thought, the only thing I really needed was romantic love. I could create it in my mind so perfectly. I could write beautiful, passionate scenes of love-making. That was my whole world. Yet it was a world that for me did not ever really exist.

All of what I had imagined that made sex so magnanimous had been concentrated into one experience--the first. Losing your virginity. Losing. Giving. Being left with nothing. Not being a person anymore, but having given yourself to someone else.

They always said we were supposed to give ourselves to God. Mind, body and soul. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Wholy. Holy.

Lamentations

9 March, 2006

I am finally going to write about some of the most horrible thoughts I have. I'd caution you about reading it. But I know you've already reached the point of no return.

Sometimes I think it was very wrong of me to have Vei. My life has been so unhappy. Why would I do that to someone? And it's not just me. When I was forteen or so, I thought it was just me. My life was horrible--everyone else's was great. I really didn't want to die, so much, as want to live, which I felt I was not. But now, I think that in some way, life is an unceasing tragedy for everyone. The small fraction that aren't starving or abused or lonely are mostly not "saved" and, I am to understand, they're eventually going to end up in Hell. So it would have been better if they'd never been born. I am so against abortion. But for the years when I was undecided on the issue, it was because I really thought maybe it would have been better if none of us had ever lived. The world just keeps getting...maybe not always worse, but certainly not better, and it never will. There'll be more overpopulation, hunger, disease, abuse, violence, murder, and as the population of the world increases, the percentage of those who know God decreases.

Sometimes I think it was wrong of me to have Vei, because I could have adopted a child who was alone, abused, neglected, and didn't so much as have a mommy to comfort him. I just can't imagine being a little child and being so sad, laying in bed crying, without my mom...that is not something I can accept. Somewhere there is a child (child--hell, children--thousands of them) that I could have adopted. Cared about. Loved. But I had to have my own. I had to say to that lonely child in an American foster home, or a forien orphanage, I realize you have no one to love you. But I won't love you either.

Sometimes, (I think this is probably very abnormal and wrong) I feel bad that Vei is healthy. I feel...sometimes, I wish that she where handicapped in some way. I don't know. Like I was given a healthy, perfect baby, and someone else, who couldn't love a child who was different, as much as a "normal" child, was given that child. But I guess God knows what he is doing. Maybe He knows that person can learn to love that child, and must, and will. But does that mean God recognizes that I could not? Does it mean that I'm not capable of unconditional love?

Worse, often, I think that God didn't give me a baby with problems becuase of the way I behaved when i was pregnant with her. I smoke, I took antidepressants. I didn't eat right. I did some drugs. He knew I'd never overcome the gult if I thought I'd hurt my baby. Which, actually, I did. She had apnea. She would stop breathing. She could have died. I begged God not to take her--not to end her life because of what I'd done. But I didn't deserve to keep her. That was grace. Mercy. I deserved to feel the guilt of killing my baby for the rest of my life. Instead, I have a beautiful, happy, healthy child, when other women who ate lentils and legumes and leeks while they were pregnant, and never took any medicine, their baby dies suddenly in the night.

I prayed, asking God for a baby. We intentionally got pregnant. Then I was so ungrateful. I even told people I wished I could arrange an adoption. I very seiously considered suicide while I was pregnant.

But I loved her so much when she was born. And I was so...if something had happened to her...it was sickening. Maddening. To think about. I was too afraid to express it. To ask. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand how serious what they were telling me was. I felt, they might know she was going to die of SIDS, and they wouldn't tell me. No one would. They'd see I was already sick with it too much. But it was worse, the not knowing, but to ask, to have that ominous silence that would go before whatever hard truth they'd lay out for me, even if it wasn't as bad as it could be, was worse still. There's nothing like it. Like being in a place so horrible, that you could never have imagined, and, yet, thru a window, you see halls and halls of places worse still, where may lie your fate. It was, beyond all consideration, the worst experience of my life. I wish I could make you believe that I love Vei. How precious she is to me. But every fucking time I think of her--see her--the feelings attached...guilt. Fear. Debt. Unworthiness. Inadequacy. Vulnerability. I didn't want the gift God had given me. That I'd asked Him for. I did want things I knew would hurt her. I smoked. I took antidepressants and Ambien. I smoked grass five times. Took Lortabs twice. And I didn't eat right. Now I don't give her enough attention. I don't play with her enough. I make Jos take her all the time. I was the one who insisted on having a baby, but he's the one who's such an awesome parent.

It really is that I'd want to die before something happened to her, but that's not even a compassionate or gracious love. It's selfishness. It really would hurt me so bad--so bad it's like I can feel it in a sharp pain when I think of it.

I love Vei. And it kills me. This responsibility...Oh, it's horible! If only the fear and guilt didn't just swamp the joy I could feel at having her. But all the time. When she's sick, I'm so afraid. I was not prepared for this. I don't give it a thought when I'm sick. I asked God to take me a hundred times. I know he's not going to. Until Evie was born, it wouldn't've mattered if He did. Now, it's like I'm not even free to fool around with suicidal ideation. I have to feel bad about it because it would mean leaving my child to be without a mommy--to cry alone in her room at night. To cry and cry and cry. All night. Night after night after night....when I'm suicidal, I'm used to being very self-centered.

Another of the things I'm going to admit this time: Rationally i know I'm never going to do it. But, now, when I think about it, sometimes I wonder if I should take her with me.

If she's sick I know it's my fault because I don't make her wear socks or a coat, etc. If she's underweight I know it's because I don't feed her well, or because I don't show her enough love, and so she is sad and doesn't want to live, so she is self-starving. I'm not making this up. She was diagnosed, "failure to thrive".

The world is so horrible. Life is so unbarable. Often I think the merciful thing to do is blow it up. I know there are things I cannot understand about God and why he allows things things to go this way, as long as I am human. I can never know all of these things. But I can still know about them, and feel because of them.

The World is too Much with Us.

Sometimes, I think, how can anyone spend money on anything else, knowing that by doing so, they're allowing children to die? Sometimes, it really upsets me. Yet we all do it. It just shows the extent of total depravity.

I'm only going to do this once, but I am going to tell you some specdific examples of what things I think of that are so, so horible, they are, otherwise, and will evermore be, unspeakable.

**********************************

No, i'm not going to afterall. You know already that horrible things happen in the world. I have my list, and they are real things. Not citing them won't make them not real, or make me forget. But we are all sad enough as it is without ennumerating them.

I think, when I stop thinking about them, stop being sad, I hate myself. I don't want to live with this self. But when I think of them, it makes me so sad, I don't want to live anymore.

Lamentations

9 March, 2006

Life doesn't feel real to me. It's like a television show that is distracting me from something important that is happening. Something true.

So many of the things in my life that I am blessed with--that should bring me such joy--my family, Jos, Vei, Yon, Lys, God--almost all of the times I think of them, the feeling attached is misery. I feel guilty because I mistreat them. Because I don't appreciate them.

I realize there's meaning in life; there's fullfillment. But generally then I feel worse, because I don't appreciate it, or I missed it.

It's so hard to be alive...when I am happy, I have to ignore the evidence that shows I shouldn't be. I feel it's wrong for me to not feel sad when I know of the suffering that goes on in the world. It will never stop, and no matter how much I do, could ever do, it would never be enough. Why should I not be affected by children who are hurting just because it is not my child? What does that make me? If there was only one child in the world that was hungry, or sick, or ababndoned, or hurt, or who had no mother and father to love him, there's no way we'd just let him starve or freeze or cry all alone. If a child was at my doorstep who was sick and malnurished and homeless and orphaned, there's no way I'd shut the door. But not only is there one, there are thousands. Millions probably. How can I say I'd never let one go. I let millions go. Thousands everyday, while I by things for myself. I say, I do enough. It's never enough.

It's never enough.

Gates of the Mind

6 March, 2006

Well, I had to turn in a forty page novel excerpt submission a week ago. It was pretty hard work, but I got it done and was reasonably happy with it. I was so nervous about everyone in class reading it and talking (s*) about it, so I took some benzo's and recorded the session on a tape in case I was too out of it to remember what people said. I think I did okay. I was so scared, and, as unprofessional as it sounds, it was mostly because of my subject matter. (I wrote about a fifteen-year-old guy in a wheelchair who loses his virginity to a prostitute). I was so afraid everyone would be like, "how can he have sex if he's in a wheelchair?"

Well, because I was so absorbed by getting that turned in, I got behind in math, which I am now failing. Probably going to have to drop that. I've already been advised to drop French. It's sad. I'm doing well in an upper division writing class (I'm not even supposed to be taking it--I'm not a junior and I don't have the prerequisites) but I am failing remedial algebra.

After Vei was born, Jos and I did not have sex for a solid year. I hated sex. I'd had enough of it in the week we were trying to get pregnant, I felt, for a lifetime. It was so bad (not the sex, but the situation, where I wouldn't put out) I nearly told Jos it was okay if he wanted to try to find someone else (for this purpose--I wasn't suggesting divorce). I really didn't care. The only reason I didn't is because, since I've been going back to church, I've become more aware of what happens when I do something I know is wrong, even if it seems alright to me. So, I actually prayed about it, and I know this sounds nuts, but I think that God has answered, because we're having better sex now. There've been a few times when I just randomly wanted to do it. The bad thing is, the reason, I believe, that I don't like sex, is because, before I ever had sex, for like, nine years, I got into the habit of...handling things myself. It was hard to break. I was so imaginative, I had built sex up to be this whole big glorious thing that it couldn't live up to. Plus, I think I have like the female counterpart to the madonna-whore syndrome, because, although intercourse I always thought of as an act of love, other devises seemed, you know, lustfull...and until I was sixteen, I had no ideal how difficult it could be for a woman to climax from basic intercourse. So, when Jos and I did stuff, sex itself was uncomfortable and irritating, and when he did things for me, I just felt like it wasn't...appropriate. Like it wasn't an expression of love, but like, "Here. Pleasure me. Now. No, not there. There. No, move over. The other way! D*it Slow down! Now speed up. Now what the h* are you doing? Oh, just nevermind. I'll do it myself."

I've been thinking more about what my cousin Li told me about when he and my brother Tuc fooled around when they were young. I've been wondering, for a while, how our unusual development has affected Tuc, if it explains why he seems so cold and distant. I never had anything like that with Tuc. But he and I used to take baths together, until I was, like, ten. I was like already wearing a bra by then. I know that's sick. But I think it should have been my mom's responsibility to set limits. She just thought it was good we were so close, I guess. This faulty teaching, I think, may have affected both of our psycho-sexual development. Not so much, me, I guess, but there is the fact that I was, for the most part, on a practical level, unable to become involved, physically, with someone. In highschool, every guy I fooled around with, I would, like, act like I was into it, when in reality, it did nothing. Like I wasn't comfortable having someone else do that to me. Only I did that, and I wasn't proud of it. I was so ashamed that I didn't get anything out of even just kissing someone, so I faked it. Anyway, so , I worried about Tuc. He always seemed kinda...strange. He seems to be fairly well-adjusted relationship-wise. He's been with Nea for, like, over five years. But his personality's a little...I don't know. Aloof. I think it's possible that all three of us--me, Tuc, and Li--were subjected to faulty learning. Maybe our Kris cousins too. I think Li messed around with Ney when they were little. Bel and Ney always used to sit on their dad's lap, when they were in their teens. I didn't do that with my dad myself, but I didn't really think anything of it until my novel-writing class brought it up based on something similar I'd written in my submission. And my cousin Fef used to ask me about my underware and such.

Oh my gosh, my family is all freaks!!!!!

I really don't think there was any incest or sexual abuse. It was just the wake of the seventies and all our parents wanted to be nudists and share a family bed and breastfeed us until we were three. Because they thought it was like, healthy, or natural, ironically. But, you know, when I was in this intense partial-hospitalization program, they did this psych testing on me, and my results lit up like a switchboard to indicate sexual abuse. I'm sure I wasn't molested, but I think that stuff from my childhood probably had some effect on me. I have like that dissociation thing & stuff. My therapist told me the kinds of things that went on with us were not appropriate.

Vei is doing pretty good. She is very precious to me. When she was born, I just loved her so much the way she was. I was afraid to have her grow up. There are times when I still miss the baby Vei. But there are so many joys that I found as she grew. When she was a few months old, she would lay on the floor, and I would come up to her, and when she saw me, she'd smile and flap her little arms and kick her little legs. And I loved it when she could see me when I came to pick her up from nursery and she'd run up to me with her arms open and says, "Mommy!" Now, whenever she hurts herself, she comes up to me and says, "Kiss it better?" Instead of hellicopter, she says, "Apercoper". She says, "Blana" for banana. When she was first trying to put sentences together, she'd say, "Please help you?" when she wanted help, and "Do you, moooore milk?" "Mooore Veggie Tales?" "Baby 'steins?" (Baby Einstein). When I put her in bed, she asks me, "Do you, lay down a Mommy?" (She wants me to lay down with her.) I love to snuggle with her. She'll put her little arms around me and give me a kiss. But I can't do it because she'll never go to sleep. It breaks my heart to tell her no and have her scream and cry.

I'm so scared to have her grow up. I know it's hypocrital to not want her to do stuff I did. But we love our children more than we love ourselves. And when you don't know, you can get into trouble with stuff. Like I got drunk once and just started drinking Jack straight from the bottle and it was bad. At least I always thought I was in control. But if my Vei's out and I'm not with her, there's nothing I can do to protect her. And, me personally, because of my nature, I never should have done all the stuff I did with guys I wasn't in love with. I don't know why I did, when I didn't even like it. It wasn't really like I couldn't say no, I was just like what's the point? Everything's meaningless. I was just, passive, I guess. Maybe I allowed it because I realized I didn't enjoy it and wanted to prove otherwise. Who knows? I don't even know why sex always mattered to me so much anyway. I made it out to be this huge, wonderfully big deal. Maybe it's because I'm a writer. Fiction can create things, ostinsibly from this world, that take on qualities far beyond it. I can imagine, and write about, romantic love and passionate coupling with such zest. It feels so real. Yet anything I've ever experienced felt somewhat unreal.

My mind just travels all the time now. I have no real grounding in reality. I get totally lost in this alternate existence, stacking intangible ideas onto one another. I'm like a Tom Wolfe novel all of the time. You know, like that concept--the doors of perception--I think it's a book--from which the Doors extract their name? I think my mind is a little off-set. Like its natural state of consciousness leans a little to the abstract.

The idea is that, I think, our minds have capacity that we can't access--creative ways of inventing and elaborating on things outside of ourselves. But you know how they say we only use like ten percent of our brain power? It's because the rest of it is closed off. Similar to the way the chemicals that cause us to feel euphoria exist already in our brains. The only thing opioids do is access those chemicals. I guess the big movement in the sixties was that psychlotropic drugs opened the portals into the mind's deeper interior that we'd had no idea even existed.

I think that some people's minds are a little inclined toward these imaginative tendencies by themselves. Sometimes it makes them brilliant artists. But everything is distorted. Those people tend to be very maladaptive to all other areas of life. Like Edgar Allen Poe and Vincent Van Gogh and Samuel Taylor Colleridge. The had serious psychiatric disorders--undiagnosed manic depression, schitzophrenia, etc. Usually self medicated. It's nuts, because they all had miserable lives and died young, but whenever I start to feel like in all my life, I've never been successful at anything, I think, well maybe I'm just one of those artists who could potentially do one thing really well, while being completely inept at all practical living skills. I've already had the poor coping techniques all of my life. I'd love to think there's just one thing I could be good at.

Take the Cross

30 January, 2006

I'm back in school again. I'm taking four classes. They're going okay, but they're a lot of work! I have to turn in a seventy-five page novel excerpt for my novel writing class, as like, all of my grade. Vei is doing alright. She can identify numbers! She can sing simple songs. I treasure her. But, it's like...so much pressure. My parents were pretty descent, but i'm still angry at them and hold them responsible for screwing me up.

Jos' family is pretty colourful. He lived with his dad until he was sixteen and his dad went to jail for molesting his stepdaughter. After that Jos lived in "flop-houses"--apartments full of vagrants, usually misfits with little income whom I suppose all chip in for rent and drugs. Someone got killed in the house he was at once. He said he knew a raustepharian named Phasika with actual braids and a crocheted rainbow scarf. Jos also lived in his car for awhile. When he was seventeen he shacked up with this forty-something chick.

Christmas was okay I guess, but since all I asked for was money for college, and it was gone immediately, I feel like I didn't get anything. I bought Jos some movies. He didn't get me anything. He says, "I feel bad because I couldn't get you anything". But he could have, if he had used some of the money he spends on movies. Jos has gotten to where he wants stuff--usually movies--and spends excessively. He actually said that the movies I had bought him for Christmas I had bought for myself simply because I had bought movies I'd be willing to watch with him (he has excrable taste in film). The other day I said I wanted him to buy me a soda and he was like, "We don't have any money. I'm trying to scrape up enough money for a pack of cigarettes". He bought me the soda, the fags, and a candy bar for himself. I'm sure he feels I should be earning money. But we get by. And he spends over a hundred dollars a month on cigarettes and grass! I don't use those. Once I suggested that if he was going to do that every month he should give me some spending money. He was like, "I don't complain about the cost of your medications."

When I worked at The Iron Door, everyone bought body sprays from Victoria's Secret, but I always thought they were too sweet. I liked the Bath and Body Works stuff.

My mom watches ER with some devotion ever since she decided to go to medical school. I can't watch it anymore. It makes me too sad. I saw one where this woman went into preterm labour and was like, "No! I don't want a premature baby." When he was born, he was so very tiny, and she wouldn't look at him, wouldn't hold him...

I hope I never have to work again. My last job was a disaster. It's like that year-and-a-half I worked in the bakery at the comissary, crying, getting yelled at, slicing my wrist open and staying an extra two hours an night without pay was working against me, rather than having strengthened my character.

I'm happy to be back in church again, and a Baptiste church at that! I'm always challenging what they say, but it's the closest I've found to what makes sense. It's not always easy to accept, though. Today we talked about sexual immorality. It made me...sad. A little angry, but, probably, mostly, at myself. I want to teach Vei to 'wait'. Would that make me an hypocrite? I will be honest with her. I will teall her I'm not happy with the choices I made. That they were made because I was unhappy...that she can do better. She's worth more. I worry about her, because I've been so unhappy in life. It wasn't my choice to be born, but it was my choice to have her, and that was selfishness. I will try to make life as pleasant as I can for her. You know something awful? Sometimes, on those days when I have brief, overwhelming suicidal impulses, I think, I can't do that. I can't leave my Vei alone. And just occasionally, I think, she must go with me. Isn't that sick? Is that why all those moms kill their children? To spare them?...

Jos has been sick over six months now. They've ruled out gaulbladder and stomach cancer and they're thinking ulcer, which I guess isn't so bad, relatively. Once in a while I think about what I would do if he died. I wish I didn't sometimes think trite things, like, I could sell all his movies. I guess I'd move into a smaller place. I could stay with my grandparents a while...if I was a better woman, I wouldn't think these things, I think. Worse, I think, maybe I think these things because I'm not entirely as happy as I'd thought I'd be. Does a part of me wish for freedom? Would that part, that would never consider leaving him, think a suitable alternative would be if he were to die? For many years, when I had thoughts that weighed heavily on me, I would always talk to Jos. But I haven't had anyone to talk to for about a year now. It got to just be pointless. He listens patiently. But he doesn't understand anything about me. We have absolutely nothing in common. We live completely parallel lives. I wish I had someone to talk to. I don't think I could tell someone these things, in the flesh. My life has been such a mess. I don't really hold it against myself that I made bad choices. I had little to work with. But I still have to live with them. I won't say I regret marrying Jason. We do love one another, and what we have is very close. But I'm redeaming the things I believed when I was young. I'm going to church. Learning there are rules, and that they're not negotiable. I'm learning that it's okay that life is so miserable, because that's what we're here for. It's not about me. It's not supposed to be easy, glamourous, or even make sense. I know I should be willing to die for my faith. I guess the toil of life, it's futility, benignly paying bills, washing dishes...is the least I can do. "Deny thyself, and take the cross."But it is hard to let go of things. When I decided against killing myself when I was forteen, it was because I had hope that it would be worth it to stick around. I doubt if I'd ever have had the nerve. But I'm glad I didn't know then what my life would be. I thought I'd at least be thin, in a clean house, and happy. I had imagined romantic love, and it was so wonderful...I sometimes think my disappointment in life was because I had created such an elaborate and impossible fantasy life. Now I have a difficult time living in and accepting realities. (I'm an 'escapist'.) But what was I supposed to do? I thought I was doing everything God had asked of me. All I wanted was to love and to be loved. To be happy. I wanted to "wait for marriage". I wanted us to go church together, share beliefs. Have Christian children--raise them to know God. I never understood why that wasn't good enough for Him. Why, when Mag was off screwing guys, did not so much as one guy even be polite to me? I remember when I went to that Dawson McAllister thing with my church youth group. I dropped my pen on the floor and couldn't reach it, and this guy picked it up for me. I f* still remember that! How good it felt. He went to a different school. He didn't know any better.

I had wanted, what I believed was, "God's Plan". But I wasn't really willing to let God direct it anymore. I'd been hospitalized and put out of school while I waited for His plan to unfold. I was so lonely. Eventually I strayed. And then I had friends, and guys were at least interested in screwing me. I became a totally differeent person. If it had just worked--living life as God wanted--none of this other stuff would have happened.

I'm not unhappy with Jos, but I regret that the person I love and with whom I shall spend my life isn't of the same faith as me. It did matter to me when we got together. I had understood from him that he had been saved, etc. Shortly before we got married he told me he didn't have any real beliefs--wasn't even sure he believed in God. We almost broke up over it. But we were getting married. We lived together. I'd met his parents. His children. He was the only person I'd slept with.

I was prettty unsure about spirituality back then, but i knew the consequences of marrying someone outside of God's will. I knew I would return to the faith eventually, and I knew I couldn't live with the fear of what would happen to his soul if he died. I've talked to Jason about God, about being saved, about at least searching, thinking about it, talking to my pastor. If possible I think I've pushed him further away. How can someone not care about this?

I'm taking diet pills. They seem to be doing okay, but they make me a raging lunatic.

My cousin Li lives with us. The other day he got drunk and told me that he and my brother "played around with each other" when they were like, ten. I had heard something about this way back then, but just that they'd like, I don't know, compared themselves. Whoa! I feel so bad for them. What they must have gone thru after that! It may be part of why Tuc is so avoidant and unfriendly...he and Li don't really seem to have much to do with one another anymore.

17 February, 2006

17 February, 2006

I feel guilty. I'm neglecting my child and my husband. My teachers think I am just careless. But I'm doing everything I can. I never get a break. I work on school every waking hour. But it's never enough. I'm not caught up in a single class. I'm failing two classes (French and math). A third I haven't turned in the one thing that has been due two weeks after it was due (composition). And at this rate, there are not enough physical hours to get this manuscript done by Friday.
It makes me so angry that people like my mom can graduate in two-and-a-half years with such ease. That for my parents, college is something they revert to every ten years or so when they become bored. And they will never understand. They think I just don't try.
My mom doesn't even think the things I study matter--she thinks this is all a game. She thought my psych testing was a game. She said well won't that be fun to hear about. She thinks everything I care about--sociology, psychology, literature, philosophy--are 'bunk'. She thinks my going to school, reading, writing, studying, is just a hobby. It is hard work! It's fulfilling because i feel it is important.
She was probably right--I can't handle more than one class. But I can't just f* take one class at a time for twenty-five years! I guess I just want to feel like there is something I can do. It just proves that, no matter what, I can't survive. I can survive: someone will always take care of me. But I can't thrive.
And I feel so guilty. Like I let everyone down: my parents, my grandparents, my husband, my child, my teachers. I feel like it's my fault--like there was something I could have done about it. I wish no one had ever helped me, or had faith in me, as all I have done is dissappoint them.
Life isn't livable as it is. It never has been. I only kept going because I thought, hoped it would be someday. I kept going for years and years and years, no matter how bad it got, because I couldn't believe this was all there was.
I was in the lab typing today for three-and-a-half hours. Not creating; just typing what was already written. In three-and-a-half hours i got eleven typed double space pages. There was a woman there getting assistance with her paper for a remedial English course. She had finished the draft in time to have more than one revision session with the assistants in the writing lab. She was a middle-aged woman who works forty hours a week and has children.
I can't even get a grant for school if I don't pass all of these classes with a 'C'. I have to go full-time if I want a grant. My grandparents won't pay for anymore of my school. I'm skipping classes to work on papers for school.