Manipulation All Over The Place

Professional manipulation is a scary thing. Take a strong leader with the capability to get people on his side and add a healthy dose of well-placed manipulation, and now you have a leader with people willing to go out of their way to please him, to do anything to gain his support. Do something to fall out of favor? He will make you feel as though you've lost his trust, and he doles it out so generously that it must be a hard thing to lose!

"You're in a bit of a tough spot. Now you're in the position where you have to earn my respect back, which is so disappointing to me because you're one of the people I'm most fond of, if I can speak freely for a moment." Bravo. I'll take your compliment with a heaping dollop of guilt, please!

I am finding myself recently in one of the most confusing stages of my life. I have been thinking a lot more deeply about my childhood, and how I let people around me control my actions with fear. How easily they could.

When I was in third grade, I was finishing up a paper that the teacher said we had to finish before we left for lunch. I was the last one in the room with my teacher, Mrs. Ramsey, when she called me up to her desk. I knew she wanted the paper, but I just had a few words left to write, so I called out, "Hang on just a second!" Her response was to storm over to me, grab me, and lift me slightly so that she could yell, "Never tell ME to hang on!" at me. I panicked and left the room to lunch, scarred for the rest of elementary school. I never wanted to be yelled at for another absent-minded colloquialism again. I zipped my mouth shut and retreated into my shyness again.

All those stupid memories I keep in my head that make me cringe just thinking about how horrified I felt, and now that I'm older, I wonder if they even noticed or cared, or if they noticed, did they take pleasure in terrifying a nine-year-old kid who already walks the playground like she lost her family in the war?

Oh! Another great memory I had almost forgotten about: when I was in elementary school, I knew already that I didn't fit in. There used to be another girl in my class with my name, but she was much more popular than me. We would be out at recess, and the kids always shouted each other's names, and I kept hearing people shout my name every day, but they were never talking to me. That was depressing. Almost as depressing as being a fourth-grader and trying to tell your parents that you were depressed, but they just laugh.

Who would've guessed that this button-nosed little ham would have turned into such a hateful, unequally-yoked-with-your-son monster!

Life just gets more complicated as you go. I already see why people are so wistful about their youth. I would never want to go back, but if only to remember what it was like to not know so much about other people. I never thought people were trying to manipulate me when they did things that scared me. I just thought I was bad because I was raised to believe that any wrong move or mistake warranted being whipped. I just fucking thought I was a bad kid.

I also find myself, though, in a time of my life where I am trying to make a place for myself in a world that doesn't want me here. I feel like I'm always on defense for myself, and I think it's to my detriment. I'm finding myself on the side of the villain, I think. Some people are destined to be famous, and some people are destined to be infamous. I worry that my life will turn toward the latter, even though I know most people in the world don't know me. In fact, this is roughly the percentage of all the people in the world who know me: 0.0000071%,

The more I analyze my place in the world, the more I seem to step out of it. It is an elusive idea that bothers me. I want to always know how people feel about me, but when manipulation is all I know, I guess I know very few people.

I guess I will keep trying to push through it, but I also know people don't like you much if you don't respond to manipulation properly, so I won't be winning friends any time soon with that. I just can't win!

Anyways, I'm exhausted, and another protest is being live-streamed, so I guess I will close the night watching other people shout about their anger instead of me. :)

Emily Dickinson Wishes

Remembering my childhood fantasy of becoming Emily Dickinson right now. Definitely sounding a lot better to be a hermit than leave my space to interact with people who don't seem to enjoy my company. First day of work and I've erased the good feelings of my vacation. I guess I'm just not good at making friends, and especially when it's people I work with. I tried to say goodbye to someone before my vacation started, since I knew he would be leaving before I got back. But when I tried to say something, I got a "shoo" hand motion instead.

I feel like I'm one of those people who thinks that everyone around them doesn't like them, and that they are just pretending, but instead of it being my imagination, it's real. I don't think the people I know like me. I am a pathetic waste of space who over thinks too much and doesn't do enough of anything.

I wish I could be like Emily Dickinson. Although much of her life was marred by death. I just don't know how to cope with life.

A part of me wishes I had some kind of life-manipulating disease that would take a fews years off my hands. I don't want to die, but I don't know what to live for, either.

Memories and Being Normal

I'm on vacation! Vacation, vacation, vacation! (Some bastardization of a Greg Warren bit)

Small town Indiana

I'm back in sweaty, swampy Indiana, and over-thinking as usual! Yay! Currently I am chilling in the lovely central air at Brandon's parents' house, which allows us to pretend like we are somewhere else besides this humid nightmare of a red state. But it's all good, because I am enjoying myself, I promise. I just like to be real, you guys. And part of being real is acknowledging that things aren't always butterflies and unicorns and magic. Although I wish it could be. Magic would be pretty sweet.

If we all labeled ourselves (which is something I'm everyone does, but I don't know what's inside everyone else's head), I would call myself a self-commentator. That's all my life is. Me doing stuff and then thinking about the things I'm doing and wondering how they appear to others. It's great that I kind of keep a blog, so I can go back and reread the things I wrote to ponder how they might affect others who (probably don't) read it. What can ya do? I've kind of accepted it, and I try to just let it happen naturally, but not take over my life. I'm getting so much better.

My family is very happy that I've come back for a visit, but I feel bad that I'm spending most of it at Brandon's parents' house. They're probably just happy I'm here, but I know they wish I would stay with them sometimes, too. It's hard to talk about, especially because my mom tries to keep such a clean house, but I hate being in that trailer. It's a reminder of the bad shit that I went through in high school.

I felt like white trash. I lived in a room where paint just peeled right off the walls. We went from living in a three-bedroom house near town in a non-scary neighborhood to a shitty trailer with black stuff all over the bathroom and the walls that I wondered if it ever came off. I had to live in a mold-infested room in the back of my grandparents' old cottage while my parents lived in Indianapolis and looked for a place for us to live (which turned into the trailer).

Me in the back yard of my house

When we lived in the house, I felt normal. I had a nice room with a window that opened (just having the window was a step up from my previous bedroom, which had none), and I could go into the living room without being in a cloud of cigarette smoke. I played guitar on the porch and ran around in the backyard with my friends. I felt like I finally had a normal life.

I don't want to romanticize the house, at all. The neighbor was some crazy old couple who beat their dog, and when I would take walks around the neighborhood (at thirteen), I would get propositioned by older dudes driving by. Fucking creeps. They knew I was thirteen. I even got asked to join a gang, but it was literally just a bunch of poor white kids with squirt guns. No, thanks.

While we were living there, my mom got into a car accident on her first day of work and ended up living in her bedroom for a year, so I didn't get to see her much. My stepfather would ignore me for months for reasons like me getting a boyfriend. I was alone much of the time (except when I was with my best friend), and I spent most of it dieting and exercising. I would work out for hours and eat very little. I starved myself because I was dealing with the after-effects of being mercilessly bullied through middle school for being "disgusting."

I wasn't happy, but I was getting attention from people at school for losing weight and being prettier, so I felt like things were starting to look up. (This was through the end of eighth grade to the end of ninth grade, by the way)

But then, I found out that we were being kicked out. The land-lady needed to sell the house because she developed lung cancer and needed to get money quick. We couldn't afford to buy it, so we were tossed out. My parents broke the news to me, and I calmly nodded, said okay, and walked out. I remember shaking a little as I went to the backyard, picked up a big stick, and started bashing it against the shed and crying. I just wanted to have a normal childhood, and now, I had to pick up my life and put it into a new place. I just knew we weren't going to be able to afford anything like what we were living in then.

We had to leave the day after my birthday. It was a great birthday, too. I had so many people show up, and we danced and listened to my then-boyfriend's band play grunge rock, and we had cake and a chocolate fountain. It would have a depressing echo to my graduation party years later that brought a grand total of four people to share in the party, and the food sat untouched. After we moved out, I began a depression that led me to losing all my friends and lashing out at everyone.

I graduated with one friend, and my boyfriend hated me. I hated me. I was more alone than I ever wanted to be. But part of me noticed that people only liked me after I got skinnier. And they only liked me when I was living a normal life in a house with a fenced-in backyard and a mailbox. I wonder, though, if people just didn't like me anymore when I stopped liking myself.

Maybe now that I'm older, I can figure things out. I am much happier, and I'm in such a better place, but I have so much left to figure out. I am friendless, but I've been without friends for so long that I'm more comfortable this way. It's scary to invite people into your life and allow them to see you as yourself, and not just your small-talk persona (of which I have none, so people probably don't see me in a very good light).

I want to keep getting better, but it always helps me get these things out of my head. And with that, I'm going back to being on vacation.