Something to Ponder (but probably only if you're me)

I've been giving this some thought; why do I have so much trouble, not so much finding, but keeping, friends? I think I may have figured out why. I have a hypothesis, anyway.

Basically, in some ways I'm less like my own person, and more like a mirror. If we're friends, then I'll invariably pick up A LOT of your mannerism, expressions, speech patterns, and ideas; and I'll do it very, very quickly. So much so that, by the end of a relatively short time period, we'll both have forgotten some of the parts at which you leave off, and I start. We'll become a bit like one person, sharing one mental wavelength. And for a time, all will be well.

However. One thing I am, is honest. I am honest about who I am, and I will be honest with you, unless you make it clear you don't want my honesty, in which case I'll shut up. Not forever, but long enough to postpone the death of our friendship.

Invariably, though, you will come to realise that, for all my inadvertent mimicry of your personal gesture and idiom, I AM actually my own person. You will learn that, on many subjects and in many ways, I disagree with you. You will learn that, for all my quiet, unobtrusive voicing of my own opinions, my beliefs are either A) rock-solid, or B) things about which I refuse to have a definite belief. Either way, you will learn that for all I enjoy hearing your opinion, and for all that I'm happy for you to keep it, your feelings/beliefs/wants/desires will have absolutely no effect on me, if they are contrary to my own.

Which is not to say that using logical, factual argument to change my mind will fail. Being unable to admit you're wrong, even when the cold hard evidence is slapping you in the face, is my DEFINITION of 'stupid'. I'd like to think I'm at least a smidgen above that. However, chances are, if you're arguing with me, you're either A) wrong yourself, or B) trying to get me to admit to an opinion on a subject which, by its very nature, is mutable/can have differing outcomes. In which case, my opinion will change accordingly.

When you realise, however, that YOU will not be the agent of change, in getting me to alter either my personal viewpoint of method of behaviour, you will become enraged. Incensed. Totally pissed off, not to put too fine a point on it.

And for all my protestations that I want to remain friends, and I don't see why you're so upset, and I really wish you'd just let it go, that'll be the beginning of the end. Whatever we disagreed about will come up in future conversations. It will sneak its way into the very fabric of our mutual existence. It will begin to permeate the very air we jointly breathe. And one day, you will make the mistake of calling me a liar/idiot--when, going by my recollections, you're the one who refused to believe the truth that was staring you in the face--and I'll respond in kind.

And if you're the kind of person who will call someone a moron, or try to paint them as a liar, because they don't take every word that falls from your lips as Gospel, you won't put up with having the same done to you. You won't see it as me returning the favour, or just giving you a little taste of your own medicine. You'll see it as being bang out of order, well worth calling off our friendship over... and if you do it enough, I'll stop trying to mend things. You'll get away with it once, everyone does, with me... you'll probably get away with it twice... but if you start to make a habit of it, I will cut you loose like the dead weight you are, and I'll keep chugging along, angry, hurt, feeling a bit vindictive, but justified in my behaviour.

And, like all those who claim to be honest, as long as the situation is just/fair/deserved, I can live with it. I may prefer mercy; but if you force my hand, justice it will be. You will lose me.

And dammit, you will miss me once I'm gone. Everyone does. I'm like a very, very low-level addiction (caffeine, chocolate, sugar) and by God, you might not want to kill yourself once I'm gone, but you'll have a damn persistent itch you can't scratch. And it will last much, much longer than you think. Which you deserve, you ignorant, narrow-minded, fake-nice....

Ahem. Forgive me. I digress.

To get back to the point; I am a mirror. I will treat you, for the most part, as you treat me. I may try to be a little nicer to you (especially if you're hurting my feelings without realising it--lead by example, etc) but eventually, although I cannot change my mind to conform to yours, I will alter my behaviour to match your own. How you respond, is a pretty good indication of the kind of person you are.

The people who don't like me, are just the people who don't like themselves.

Which explains 2 things, actually. 1) I have few friends, because few people really, truly, genuinely like themselves, and 2) the friends I do have tend to be male, because out of all the people on the planet, men are the ones who are usually the most okay with themselves. Conceited and arrogant, maybe; prone to random bouts of depression, maybe; superficial and immature, often; but reasonably well-adjusted, for the most part. But that's a topic for another day.

New Friend?

Right. Daily rant aside (because we all know I have to get these things out of my system) something nice did happen to me this week. Actually, technically speaking, it was last week--whether you count Saturday as the 6th or 7th day of the week, the Saturday preceding Monday belongs to the previous week--but in days, obviously, it was within the last 7.

Blah. Blah. Blah. I'm babbling. It happens. I'll move on.

My point was, something nice happened to me. Not that nice things don't happen to me all the time, they do, and in spite of my pessimistic and vitriolic view of my personal life, I'm actually quite a fan of life in general, I'm a regular cliche-spouting tree-hugging hippie in the main part of my soul, and I firmly believe that good things are a regular life occurrence... but this was an unexpected good thing.

Have you ever met someone, and they turned out to be SO MUCH BETTER in real life, than you thought they would be? It doesn't happen much; generally, meeting someone new goes the other way, and you wind up killing time with someone who, although they're probably a perfectly acceptable person, is about as far from your mental wavelength as a person can be.

Or they're just thick, and they use the internet to mask it. You know the type. Via IM or text, their responses are always witty enough, but they arrive a little more slowly than you'd expect. When questioned, the apparent God of Wit blames the time lapse on AOL/msn/their phone/the network they use... then, you meet them in real life, make a comment that would certainly have prompted a humourous response online, albeit after a slight delay.... and suddenly, with no technology to take the fall, you find yourself trapped in that same 10-second-delay place.

Oh, no, you think to yourself, but it's no good, you have to stay at least an hour, and make small talk with this random individual whose brain works at approximately one-third the speed of yours. Not that this makes them a bad person, you know it doesn't, and you feel like such a bitch for even thinking nasty thoughts about them... it's not their fault they're not as quick as you, and god knows, it's not like you're the sharpest knife in the drawer, you have plenty of spoon days yourself... but you cannot make yourself like someone who takes at least 5 seconds to respond to EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE you utter.

Well. That's the opposite of what happened to me on Saturday. Or maybe not the opposite--I don't think my new friend was sitting there thinking I was thick as pigshit, and that would be the opposite of the situation I've just described, wouldn't it?--but the general experience felt like the opposite of bad. It felt good. A meeting of (slightly deranged, reasonably unique, mostly intelligent) minds. 2 souls, flying along on the same wavelength, like crazy random birds who, a hundred miles apart, are in perfect formation.

Wasn't that a poetic description? I was going to come up with another descriptive sentence, but I liked that one so much, I'm just going to leave it there. Lol.

At any rate. The point is, I maybe, just maybe, just might have a new friend. And, y'know, I could use one. Though that's an interesting word choice... 'use' one... I'm not making a sexual joke (though I'm aware of the potential for innuendo in that word)... I'm pondering the action of 'using' people, i.e. to achieve one's own ends.

Luckily, in this case, the simple acquisition of a genuine friend IS the end in itself. There is no ulterior motive. Just to have some company in my loneliness, just to be a little less alone, is enough.

I'm already planning next time. I'm compiling a list of movies. Man-movies, for the most part (my favourite kind, or one of my favourite kinds) because my new friend requires an education in manly films. Although. Oh dear. What if he doesn't like them??? There's usually a reason people don't watch a certain type of film. I'm hoping the reason here is simply that he hasn't discovered the best man-films, that he doesn't have the necessary skills to find good movies to watch... but what if he just doesn't like them???

This could throw everything into chaos.

But, for once, instead of worrying (after all, he passed the first test with flying colours) I'm just going to relax. Just for today, maybe even just for a few hours, I'm going to be happy. It can't hurt me to feel happy just for a little while. Can it? No, it can't.

*raises glass in imaginary toast* So. Here's to new friends. And happiness. And rainbows and flowers and ponies and.... ahem. Sarcasm aside (it's so hard for me)... to new friends *clink*

Happy Holidays

Let me start off by saying that the subject of this post is ever-so-slightly sarcastic. Not dripping with sarcasm, not coated in it, not marinated overnight and baked in facetiousness, but there's a hint of 'yeah, right,' about it. I have nothing against the holidays per se. I claim to be, well, more or less Christian, depending on my mood that day and whether or not God's done something to piss me off, so Christmas should be okay with me; and anyway, religious or spiritual beliefs aside, there's nothing wrong with eating good food and having a little too much to drink and putting up sparkly decorations and lights on every surface in your house.

Or, if you're not what the English term 'Christian,' (where I'm from it actually means something, not so much here) there's still nothing wrong with having an extra couple of days off work, and just generally loafing about doing whatever you please. It should be a good situation for everyone involved, regardless of spiritual or ethnic or cultural considerations.

But. Not counting spring (because isn't it depressing to see the whole world bursting into bloom, Nature renewing herself, a baby boom in the animal kingdom, etc) more people kill themselves at this time of year than any other. Now why do you suppose that is?

In case you don't know, I'll share my theory. It's less of a theory, practically a fact, really.

Basically, this is a shitty time of year to be alone. And there are lots and lots and LOTS of people who are, if not technically alone, alone in every way that matters.

If your computer is your best friend--either through an internet porn or gaming addiction (the two often go hand-in-hand) or because you lack the confidence to make real-life friends--you are alone. If you're away at university, and you can't get home for Christmas, you are alone. If you're over the age of 35, and you have no spouse and/or kids of your own, you're alone.

If you've spent 5 of the last 7 Christmases without seeing your parents or siblings, and you're about to do the same thing again, you are alone. If you can't remember the last time you looked forward to Christmas, you're alone. If you swore to yourself you would never feel this way again 2 years ago, but you haven't changed anything about your situation during those 2 years, you are alone.

If you spend 2 weeks every year exchanging cards and presents and precious time with people who don't belong to you, who aren't yours, who can't love you because they don't understand you (and don't want to)... you're definitely alone.

So. Not referring to anyone specific there. But I'm going to make the tentative suggestion that if you know anyone who fits any of the above criteria, even one sentence, you keep an eye on them, at least until the first week or so of January is behind us. Pay particular attention to wifeless middle-aged men; statistically, they're the highest risk group for completed suicides. I suppose it's the spectre of old age rushing down on them, coupled with the near-certain knowledge that nothing they've done will be remembered, nothing they've done will continue, once they cease to exist.

At least I have kids. Presumably, they will continue, after I'm gone. After I'm dead, to call a spade a spade. After my lifeless corpse is shovelled into a lonely grave (though I'm sure you can be buried in a biodegradable coffin, below a little sapling, and therefore your decomposing remains can help a little baby tree to flourish. I like the idea of that.) But, I digress. My kids. They give me a purpose, and also a reason to hope... So maybe, just maybe, I'll manage to make it through this year, the same way I made it through all the others.

And come spring, I'll have a whole new list of people who might require a little extra attention. This will centre on people who feel old, have pointless jobs, and realise they're not fulfilling their potential--but I'll save that for the appropriate time. For now, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, to anyone who can actually achieve those objectives.

And, shit. Merry Christmas to the rest of you, as well. If you get through it, things'll only get better, right? And so we'll continue telling ourselves, for as long as we can....

Love Letters

This stupid blog is becoming like a series of love letters... from me to my friends, from some of my friends to me, now even my insignificant other is getting involved.

I'm sorry to offend him. I don't wish to cause him distress. He was, up to a certain point in my life, very significant. But he threw it away, and every time he gets another chance he spits on that as well, and I'm just damn tired of it. He cannot be the person that he admits he is, and expect to share any real part of my life or who I am.

I have tried to better him, as I try to better myself. I have tried to be his sounding board, his friend, his confidant, and anything else he needs. I have often, not always but often, put his needs ahead of mine. And when I eventually stood up for myself and my rights (however badly I chose to make my stand, that's what I was doing and I had every right to) he and his whole family turned against me.

So now, I stay, but I stay for the kids. I stay, because I've got nowhere else to go. I stay, because no matter how cavalier I sometimes am with my own health and safety, there is NO excuse for taking risks with my kids. And I stay, because it is perfectly possible to live in the house with someone, and barely see them at all.

The worst part is, if he would get his ENORMOUS HEAD out of his UPTIGHT ARSE and even make some consistent effort to change, I could manage. I don't think I'll ever be able to trust him enough to fall in love with him again--and I'm certainly not in love with him now--but I could respect, genuinely like, possibly admire, and have sex with him (and that's enough, really, to make a relationship work; I mean what else do you need?).

But no. There he goes, lamenting his lot in life, bitching about how rubbish he is, yet making no move to change things, just sticking his head further and further up his rectum...

What am I meant to do with that?? I mean, really, what???

Wave Baby

Since I've broken my rule about not writing about my kids, I think it's about time I wrote something about my son. So far, he's hardly had a mention, aside from vague references to his existence. There's so much I could say, about both/either of my kids, that I hardly know where to start. The easiest way is to kind of set them in context, i.e. as foils for each other.

Because that's what they are.

My little girl, for all her sweetness and light (and she is, so incredibly, undeniably, wonderfully shiny and sweet) has another side. She is smiley, and playful, and funny, and so unique; but she is as unyielding as a brick wall. Since she's built like one, as well... suffice it to say, sometimes she is like an immovable object, and other times, she's an unstoppable force. Either way, it's her way or the high way (as, funnily enough, my own mother used to say to me when I was a child--now I've got 2 of them).

But my little boy... he's just a baby, but he's got his own little personality, and it's nearly the complete opposite. I don't mean to say that he's not smiley--he smiles and giggles all the time--and I don't mean to imply that he's any less cheerful or playful than she us, or even that he doesn't have a will of his own. He's all of those things, and his will is asserted whenever he feels the need.

But that's just it. He so rarely feels the need, to assert his will. Aside from obvious physical discomfort (and even that, he'll put up with for a while) as long as we're all together, he's cool. Whatever we're doing, it's fine with him. Unless he's exhausted, starving, or sitting in buckets of poo (buckets, mind you--a smear isn't that bad, he can ignore it) he's perfectly happy to just go with the flow.

Which is why he's my Wave Baby. Which works perfectly.

My daughter, you see, is like the moon. Moon Baby controls the tide--guess who--and the tide pulls along the Wave Baby. Of course, as the tide, I have to figure out the path to take to get where I'm going, and how to accomplish getting there, but really, that's based on what the moon requires. And in the end, we all wind up exactly where we're supposed to be, and everything's okay. And it's lovely, in some ways, going on Moon Baby's journey. It's a more interesting one than I'd have picked for myself; but sometimes it's no bad thing, to be forced to take a different path. The road less travelled, and all that.

But thank God my son is less like the moon, and more like a wave. I am learning to be more flexible, more resilient, more mutable, like water--but 2 moons fighting over me would still pull me apart. Or at least make for very stormy seas.

And just to finish on one final cliche (what difference is one more gonna make) I'll remark that where my babies are concerned, I would prefer smooth sailing.

Fragility

Sometimes people just feel fragile, don't they?

I feel very fragile, lately. I made a new friend recently, and I want to be excited; but we all know how my friendships turn out, don't we? So I'm uneasy, uncertain, unable to relax. Added to that apprehension, there are things going on in my life right now that absolutely terrify me.

I say a name every day, and it's like a prayer, but I'm not sure what I'm praying for.

One thing I spend a lot of time and energy worrying about, if not praying, is my daughter's health. She looks so tall and strong and healthy, she's such a fierce little thing, but she's only two-and-half. How much can her (comparatively) little body take? Tall and strong at two-and-half, is still only a little over three foot tall. Tall and strong at two-and-a-half, still weighs little enough that it can be carried in your arms like the baby it still is.

Standing, she comes up to my stomach, and she's so desperate and determined I can barely hold her down when she fights me. My hand (comparatively small, with it's short wide palm and stubby fingers) is still large enough to cover her tiny face. Her hands, by comparison, are not yet big enough to grasp the lid of a peanut-butter jar; and they spend so much of their time clenched in fists, as she struggles with pain and frustration and helplessness that I can barely begin to understand.

I know that to the mother of a child with a terminal illness, I would seem lucky by comparison. I know that a little girl with any one of the many fatal diseases and conditions on this earth would likely trade places with my little girl in an instant. I know that there is untold suffering the world over, and I know that some children have suffered in ways my little girl couldn't imagine.

I was a child myself, when I began shedding tears for starving Africans/Romanian orphans/whatever the charity ad of the week was. I KNOW that millions of children have suffered more than my little girl, and my heart goes out to each and every one of them.

But my little girl suffers too. My little girl is still broken, in a way I can't define. She is broken; and she is my heart. So where does that leave me?

I don't care. I would take all this pain and more, if it could help her.

Obsession

Just lately, I've been avoiding my blog. There's been a lot on my mind, and I could use that as a valid excuse, but I actually think it has more to do with what I want to write about. I'm not sure I'm brave enough.



I hate coming across as trite. I hate repeating things that've been said billions of times before. I hate struggling, searching, grasping for the perfect, unique words I want, when I know that everything boils down to the same thing with me.



Tonight, I'm not going to worry about how I sound--I'm just going to write. I'm going to write about my obsession.



Love.



I mentioned in my last entry that I'm obsessed with lovesongs, and it's true, but it's also a much broader obsession than that. Or narrower, depending upon your perspective. To say that I'm captivated by every aspect of love, entranced by all the different ways of expressing it, makes it seem like such a diverse category; then again, it's really just a way of saying I'm fascinated by love itself. I personally believe that as much as I may love song lyrics, and poetry, and romance novels (sorry, but I am a girl) what I really love, is thinking about love itself.



I love the way it feels to be in love. Not just the initial rush, when you think you might be falling, but the easy, almost casual glide of day-to-day life with the person you love. I love the passion and adventure of being swept up in the moment, of naughty deeds in public places, of frantic coupling in a car, against a wall, from behind; but I also love holding hands, cuddling under a blanket in front of a movie, giggling like a little girl over inside jokes and that thing the other person did that was hilarious, but only to the two of you. I love that.

I even love, or at least love to hate, the feeling of being in love with someone who doesn't reciprocate. I love writing bitter, furious, obsessive, despairing poetry about people who don't even care, and I love writing resigned, heartsore, bloody-but-unbowed poetry when I start not to care, either. I love being able to say that if I ever loved someone, I still love them a little bit now, even if I've made the choice to move on. I love knowing that in some cases, I have loved so strongly and been destroyed so completely that I will never truly recover.

I love knowing that for me, love is suffering. If it doesn't hurt, then I'm not really in love. I'm frightened every time I feel a pull, a yearning, toward someone new, but at the same time I'm comforted by knowing that at least I don't have to wonder; I know it will hurt, at some point.

I love that I love being in love so much that even knowing how much it hurts, I always fall in love again. I love knowing that every time I ever said, 'I'll never love anyone again,' no matter how much I tried to mean it, no matter how much I wanted to believe myself, I knew I was lying.

I love that I don't mind sacrificing myself on someone else's altar of neglect and passivity. That I realise, and accept, that I will never be loved as fully as I love. And I love the fact that I hate it, and refuse to accept it, and rail and scream and curse in the face of it.

I love that no matter how love batters me, belittles me, and in the end finally breaks me, I always return for more. I love how I make myself forget how much it hurts, and convince myself that this time will be different, better, less agonising. I love how, when people slice off tiny pieces of my heart one by one, until finally they've carved out a great whopping chunk, and then they devour it one sliver at a time, I make myself believe that I don't mind; and I kiss them still, even when I can taste my own blood on their lips.

I love that, if I loved you, I would let you slap my face and bruise my body and even break my bones. I love that I would do the same to you, if that was what you needed. I love that I believe that when two people are in love, everything they do is sacred, and even if they maim each other, die for each other, kill each other, no one has the right to say it's not beautiful.

I love that even though I'm writing about romantic love, I feel the same way about any kind of love. I love that the purer your love is, the more it's like fire, and the more chance there is of it consuming you from the inside out. I sometimes wish that love was more like water, that I could use it to cool a fevered brow, or wet dry, blistered lips, or soothe the raw, scorched flesh burnt by some other love; but I know it is not.

I love that for me, love is a disease; most of all, I love that there is no cure.

untitled happy entry

I'm tired of being unhappy. I want to write something else tonight, something that won't make me sad.

I love music. Not all music, certainly, and probably not even most music, but the music I do like, I love. And as with all things I love, I tend to get a bit obsessed. And, I have a crazily good memory, when I choose to activate it.

All things considered, if I wanted to finish this entry with nothing but lines from my favourite songs, I could definitely do it; and I reckon I could do it well enough that I wouldn't get caught. Although that would be amusing, and terribly clever of me, I'm going to decline. Instead, I'm going to focus on one of the aspects of one of my favourite types of music.

I love lovesongs, but most especially, I love lovesongs about women. Not all lovesongs about women--I hate the song, 'Woman,' though that may be because I think John Lennon + Yoko Ono = the destruction of a mostly good band and a load of worthwhile friendships--but most lovesongs to/about women are lovely.

There's a singer/songwriter you've never heard of, he was mad famous back in the day (like a decade before I was born) and his song, 'Something in The Way She Moves' is a perfect example. Slow, soft melody, low, gentle voice, and the lyrics... they're so understated, so quiet, you almost don't realise that it's a song about man battling his horrific inner demons, and only making it through because she's there, distracting him, soothing him, making him forget how much pain he's in until he's managed to work through it.

Considering the song was written by a current and/or recovering heroin addict (he was definitely an addict at the time, but I'm not sure whether he'd started the recovering bit yet) it's a powerful thing, to imagine a woman sticking beside him and actually knowing him well enough to be able to help him through all that. The image, if you can get it in your head, can't be anything less than utterly moving.

But I digress. The point is, it's a beautiful song. And I like beautiful songs. I like beautiful things, period. In fact, the key line from my favourite song is, 'man, I wish I was beautiful;' my admiration of beauty extends even to myself, in that I wish I had some.

See, I told you. Like it = love it = obsessed. Lovesongs, beauty, new people, whatever, as soon as I'm interested, I'm a goner. Untold amounts of my time, energy, appreciation and effort will drop, kerplunk! into the toiletbowl of my newest hobby. Which wouldn't be so bad, except I never seem to let go... most of the songs I loved at age 11, I still love, the friends I had then, I miss now, and the beauty obsession has been a lifelong thing.

Which is good for you, if you like me. Not so good for me, since chances are, I'll still love you long after you've moved away/lost my number/stopped replying to my emails... but that's only the case with people. A lovesong, I can keep with me wherever I go. If I really love it, I can keep it in my very head (crazy memory, remember?). And every time I play it, either audibly or in my head, I'll find something new to appreciate and enjoy.

Am I the only one who feels this way, about songs/lyrics and particularly lovesongs? I hope not, but I only know of one person who's as obsessed with lovesongs as I am, and he's imaginary... even if I'm all alone in my admiration, I still feel better for loving lovesongs. And for writing this. And for using the word 'love' approximately 800 times in a dozen paragraphs. Well that's both exaggeration and understatement, respectively, but you get the point.

I'm gonna use the word just twice more. I love lovesongs.

Even Better Than A Follower; I Have A Mother

Seems fairly obvious, I know; but that makes it no less worthy of celebration. I have a mother. And she's a damn fine example of one, too.

Without getting into a clinical diagnosis, I need to make clear the fact that I, for all my charm, wit, and general attractiveness, have some moderately serious... social/emotional issues. It's not that I can't relate to people--I'm actually pretty fantastic at getting people to open up and talk to me--it's more that I can't always get them to understand where I'm coming from. Almost all my skill at verbal communication is focused outward. If you met me, chances are you'd wind up telling me all sorts of stuff you didn't mean to, but you'd go away not knowing much about how I feel... unless you ask me a question, I have trouble actually saying what's on my mind.

Don't get me wrong. I can talk for England, and I can be by turns, amusing, empathetic, informative, playful, silly, insightful, thought-provoking, and just plain fun. As well as a tendency to verbosity and nosiness, but nevermind that. The point is, when I'm on, I'm SO on. I'm a conversational ninja.

But underneath that, I am so, so very private and withdrawn. I don't want to bore you with my story. I don't want to be a nuisance. I don't want to be selfish and narcissistic (I mean I know I am, but I'm trying to become less so).

Most of all, I want you to be as interested in me, as I am in you. But since I'm possibly THE MOST INTENSE person you'll ever meet, that's unlikely to happen. You cannot be as charmed, or fascinated, or intrigued by me, as I will be by you.

*adopts melodramatic tone* It is my gift, and my curse.

Lol. Histrionics aside, if I choose, I WILL make you feel better for having met me, and chances are, you won't think/don't know how to return the favour. And even if you did, God, I just require so much effort. Some people can do it for a little while, but no one can put up with me full-time.

Except for my mom. And I know all mothers should love their childen wholeheartedly, and be able to 'put up with' them, but that doesn't mean they do. Even leaving bad mothers out of it, not every mother is willing to continually put her child's needs ahead of her own. I know that most women couldn't have dealt with me as a child or an adolescent.

But my mom. You know that saying, about a woman being a hole, into which all the futility of the world is poured? That was me and my mom. I just poured, and poured, and poured, all my pint-sized rage and pain and suffering and aloneness into my mother's sympathetic, empathetic ear, and she gave me back love, and love, and more love on top of it. Nothing I said, nothing I confessed to (I was a naughty, but repentent, child) ever made her treat me any differently, or love me any less. My mother was forgiveness and mercy personified. And patience. My mother had, and still has, all the patience required to listen to someone talk about, and around, and over and under and though the same thing, for hours at a time, until they've processed and dissected and verbalized every subtle nuance of the matter.

And on top of her patience, and understanding, and the gentle way she reacted to everything I did and everything I was, she was so proactively loving. Every day of my life, every single day of my life as a child, I was told I was loved. Every day, I heard that I was so special, a marvel, a gift from God, and did I know how wonderful and amazing I was? Sometimes I would be looking at my mother, chattering away, and I would catch the look on her face, and I would just know that no one, ever, in the history of the whole world, ever loved anyone the way I was loved.

And I wasn't the only one who knew my mom was special. I lost track of all the times my friends told me they wished their mom was more like mine; for that matter, I lost track of all the friends that wished we could just outright swap.

I was horrified. I loved my mother. I could never imagine wanting to swap her for anyone else's mom. Then again, I could see why my friends would want to exchange mothers. I knew mine was the best on the planet.

Mostly I knew this, because she was forever telling me I was the best kid on the planet (and my sister as well, of course). Which was so silly. My sister's alright; but I was awful, lol.

But not to my mother. In my mother's eyes, I was as close to perfect as a child can be. Practically perfect, in every way. Bright, and gifted, and sweet, and thoughtful, and unique, and a hundred other brilliant things. From birth, my mother brainwashed me into believing her version of me--and to a certain extent, I achieved it.

I am not as amazing as she thinks I am; this is to the detriment of the world. If I were all that my mother believes I am, the world would surely be a significantly better place for my being in it. But I will always strive to become all that she thinks I am, and so, maybe the world will one day be a little better, for my having been in it.

Without my mother, all the darkness of the world--and all the darkness of my own soul, psyche, mind, whatever--would have consumed me long ago. Instead, because she has raised me to be the person she knows I can be, I am doing what I can to spread my own tiny bit of light around.

Even my mother can't untwist that light, as it shines out from the spiralling labyrinth of its origin (my mind), but she has at least ensured that it is shining. She has ensured that I feel worthy, special, unique enough, to have the right to say and feel and be whatever I am. And if my mother can do that for me, then perhaps I can do it for my own daughter. I'll try, at least. And I should succeed.

After all. That's what my mother raised me to do.

I Have A Follower :)

Lol. It's so exciting. Someone's added me to a little list somewhere, and now they're following my blog. Ooooh.

Of course, the excitement is slightly mitigated by the fact that I know exactly who it is. And then, like, the fact that I live with him as well... yeah thinking about it, I can't get too ecstatic. He's more doing it as a show of support, than a genuine interest in what I have to say.

But even so, I appreciate the effort. He doesn't have to follow my blog.

I'm not following his yet, haha.

So, points for you (you know who you are, and so does everyone else who knows me) and thanks for taking the time to read what I have to write.

Although (this is a broad question, directed at everyone) does that negate the need to listen to what I have to say...? If someone's attentive enough to reply to most of your texts, and read your online journal, and usually answer you if you have a specific question for them, do they have to, y'know, talk to you as well? Or is it enough to keep in touch via phone/Internet and, I don't know, maybe 10 minutes of conversation per day?

I hope someone posts about this. I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts.