(Unedited from original entry Wednesday night)
11:36 p.m.
It’s funny. I guess more in that funny ‘peculiar’, rather than in that funny ‘ha-ha’ kind of way. First I contemplate whether or not I want to write an entry. Inevitably it’s not.
Usually at the point that I want to write I am bubbling up with angry hateful bile or worse, some useless babbling that has no value to anyone whatsoever. Often it’s something boring about how work is simply work.
Tonight it was angry vicious bile. The same angry bile that has been stuck in the pit of my soul for 2 1/2 years now. And as always, it sadly matters to no one but me. There is no justice…That’s why vigalante-ism is illegal.
I was too lazy to journal on the bus as I stared at the 4-15 year old girls, contemplating the great philosophical concept about how Whedon is doing a better job at portraying ’15’ in Dawn than he did with Buffy.
And then I got home. I have an ugly cable bill I need to pay soon. I keep forgetting that the bills never end. Sounds silly. This shouldn’t be a difficult concept. But then again, there are so many common place concepts that I just miss on.
I know I miss on them…but hey. It’s my job to fix it. And if I’m not sure along the way. Oh, well. It’s my job and everyone else knows how to do it.
When I was in 3rd grade I was a straight-A honour student. I often wonder if those obnoxious bumper stickers had existed in 76 if my parents would have displayed them. It was basically S.O.P. in my household that I’d be an honour student.
I was in a private elementary school. I remember at one point we commented that we prided ourselves on having the largest ‘grade’ in the history of the school. (We actually hit 28 students in one grade, one year) I was a member of an elete group of about 9 of us. We were always the top of the class. I look back and wonder how much I fit into that group.
Something happened. I don’t know what. When I entered the 4th grade it changed. I stopped doing homework. I stopped caring. I don’t know why. I don’t remember. Math and Science stayed strong…English fell off. I remember the teacher vividly. Her name was Mrs Snively. She was the headmaster’s wife. He was about 150 years old and she was probable about three to four hundred. She was the meanest thing I can remember. While other kids had monsters under their beds or in the closets…I had Mrs. Snively.
She had these shoes with granite heels (yes, most colour is from the memories of a 10 year old). On our cement tile floors you could hear her approach from the other side of the building. {Clack Clack Clack Clack}. She was one of those teachers who sternly corrected any grammatical error that a poor child might erroneously have the audacity to utter. My least favourite correction was the attack of deafness she would contract at the utterance of the word, “Yeah.”
“Did you complete the assignment?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“YEAH.”
“What?”
“Yes, Mrs. Snively.”
It was like a drill seargant…without the push-ups.
So English took a header, as did History. American History would be my living bane until the summer between HS graduation and the first semester of college.
Socially it was all going wrong too. I was getting hyper in school. But I was floundering in classes.
The headmaster (I’m told) sat my parents down and gave the 70’s equivalent to “He’re what the latest experts think is in vogue for a situation we can’t deal with”
“He needs to be a boy. It’s a phase. Ignore it and he’ll grow out of it.”
So this mama’s boy of a 10 year old who had lost any and all focus had found a rope to hang himself with and the parents left him alone in the garage with the rafters beckoning.
This of course is just colouful allegory; but the truth was…instead of being punished, or grounded, or for god’s sake…motivated; or taught what motivation was…All bad grades got this time was a painful look of disappointment.
That was my punishment. The knowledge that I wasn’t good enough and there was nothing to be done about it. You may say to yourself that there was plenty that could be done about it…I can look back and find things I could have done to stop that process then or set it straight…
But then again, dear reader, like yourself; I am not a 10 year old boy now. I don’t think like a sheltered 10 year old boy…
I didn’t know what ‘race’ was until I was 13. The most I knew at 10 was that I went to one place on the weekends to be bored with older people (Synagogue) and everyone else I knew (With a few exceptions) went somewhere else.
So…why am I bothering to talk about this stuff tonight…
My slow, angry simmer came to a boil in bed tonight. Once again I discovered I was going to spend the first hour trying to sleep getting very angry with the cat. Ares is a big white and grey, fluffy, maine coon. With a mean streak. The theory is that he was badly abused as a kitten. He is the antithesis of everything I am used to in a cat.
He has no grace whatsoever, I have seen him roll off a cushion onto the floor landing back first. He scaps like a puppy, he has sat at the window and barked when people come home. He has specific places in the apartment that he wants to make his (complete with marking) that I have had no luck training him out of.
I have empty a water pistol on him. And when he’s most indignant, he lets me spray him with water as he stands there as if challenging me to spray more. I almost broke the plastic gun in my hand.
I was yelling at the cat in a cold emotionless voice. Verballizing empty threats…knowing tonight I’d scare him off 2-3 times only to have him come back.
And it struck me…and I had to write.
I sounded like my mother when she was pissed. Rambling like I should be committed to someone who doesn’t fully comprehend the words that are coming out.
I’m 33 years old and hope to breed within the next 3-5 years. And I’m scared to death of screwing up my kids anywhere as badly as I often wonder about how much they seemed to screw me up.
I sit here tonight stewing in my anger at my original gripe. I see myself turning into the person I feared the most. An angry, solitary, unrelyable person who is incompetant of taking care of themselves. A person who has more acquaintances than friends because most the friends have given up and fallen away.
The people closest to me, really don’t know me very well at all; and I’m terrified of what they’ll see. The people who thought they knew me well now tend to see me primarily for my worst…rather than my best. Which is understandible when you’re your own worst critic.
I don’t know what best there is.
In a period of one year I watched a social circle I was in blown apart because of stories told about me. I forgave the person…most to the chagrin of the two people closest to me. I rarely felt any bitterness (save one song that will forever be tied to the happiest moment I spent with this person)…I was given the impression I was supposed to be bitter because the situation would never have closure and the bitterness was to help me deal.
Oddly enough a few years later I would watch my recovered social circle blown up again. I felt lied to, lied about, betrayed. Once this had occurred I did dumb things too. I was angry and hurt. I felt like a discarded lover; and if you knew the situation; you’d know how weird that all is…To this day…I feel anger…bitterness…. This situation hurt the most because I gave up trust. I look back on my first loss. The first major blow to my social circle. The one that pushed me to the brink of suicide on more than one occassion….And the best thing I guess that I learned from that was from one of the people close to me to teach me to be bitter in a situation that you know you’ll never get closure in. I owe him for teaching me cynicism. So that I could wield it so mightly against the person in the second pain.
As I mentioned…it doesn’t really matter to anyone but me. I can have all the pain in the world….because it’s mine. And no one really has to care if anything makes that go away.
The end story…Forgiveness has run rampant among the people I knew back then. All are closer again. Lots of sociallizing.
Am I trying to paint myself an angel? Hell no. Lies and deception were huge back then. I was just as guilty as everyone else. I did really dumb things. I still do really dumb things. The jury is still out on some of the dumb things I did.
But what I learned was the sadest twist of them all. My lies and deception were in the hopes of helping others. The lies and deceptions that thrown to make me look bad were for those people’s self preservation.
And the good news is. I lie and screw up in the hopes that someone else won’t suffer. Others lie and screw up in the hopes that they won’t have to suffer. And I’m the one with the screwy outlook on the universe that has one friend constantly wanting to know that I’m in therapy.
I couldn’t find my failings gently with my friends, so now I face them blankly and surgically with a complete stranger.
Now….before I get myself in more trouble. I now have a few people close to me. They haven’t known me for long. And in some ways they’ve barely gotten to know _me_. Their patience and understanding has been wonderful. But I fear that the deeper they see me, the more I show of what’s really in there. The more I’ll scare them away. Which at times seems safer for all involved.
I have bile and anger tonight, because I feel like all I’m really here for is to make people angry at me and disappointed in me in the long run.
It’s what I was taught how to do…
Well enough self-loathing and self-pity for one night. I think I’ve bored the cat to sleep. I have a bus to catch in the morning, a cup of St. John’s wort to get my spirits back up, a football game to try to help, and a ticket to see Monster’s Inc. And the “El Capitan”. This is Disney’s big debut theatre on Hollywood across from the Chinese Theatre.
I’m tired…I’ll take the hint…
Night all.
-me
12:38am
{clack clack clack clack}
Comments are welcome, but I program on unix now and know where /dev/null is.