Conversations

"I'm sorry I feel like I have the right to put my hands on your body without your permission" She said.

"Sometimes it feels like we're drawn together. Like we got past permission a long time ago." He replied.

"I don't want to say I'm yours. That's too possessive and not at all like what I mean."

"I do not belong to anyone but I feel connected to some people in a tangible way. Like I believe there are, on some plane, tangible lines binding us to one another."

"Those connections are hard to find. They throw your life into the turmoil of a new path with their force. If they are severed it hurts forever and leaves a lasting ache. When they've become too thick and grow too strong they hurt to stretch apart too far."

"Maybe they are more like vines growing into what we'd call a family tree."

"I don't know if blood explicitly or bodily fluid exchange in general creates family. Germs."

"Humans are a gooey species."

"We're amorphis."

"The skin just creates the illusion that we're a solid being entirely separate from our environment."

"Sometimes I can feel people standing next to me.

I am certain if I were blind I'd be able to tell when certain people were near. I feel like blind people could verify this. That their other senses, more than 5, compensate for the lack of visual sight."

"Same reality but completely different."

"Exactly."

"Sometimes I wonder if I'm living in the same reality as everyone else."

"I look for moments no one else even notices."

" I really don't think we're crazy."

"Maybe just advanced?"

"Maybe... " she laughs loudly and awkwardly

"Certainly from another planet."

"When I was 9 my mom let me pick colors for the walls of our room. A room we had to share. Everyone said she was crazy but she let me pick hot pink and jade green. Red and green are complementary colors. But this wasn't just something nice. It was the brightest, safest space to grow up in."

"Sometimes you just have to trust your instincts."

"I didn't think I'd be able to do it. You know?"

"Do what?"

"Paint the room hot pink and jade green, I just thought it was a good idea. Worth a shot."

"I don't like to read too much into things."

"I read too much into everything. Life is about the more memorable crazy decisions."

"Things that get the human juices flowing." He laughs

"Hormones. Sweat. Pee. Poop. And the ever elusive sexual fluids."

They both laugh

"I guess I should go."

"I never want you to go."

"I always come back. Usually too soon."

"You have to go so we can live more to talk about."

"I always talk too much."

"Not for me."

Don't Read This! (Alternatively Titled: Things Nice People Say)

"      I do not want you to think that your family does not love you.  And, if you truly have crippling depression you need to seek professional help.  As far as your consideration for others, I think you need to stop kidding yourself.  You cannot preach on Facebook and pretend that makes you somehow more enlightened than everyone else.  I have remained quiet after reading many of your posts, despite wanting to address some things.  Let’s start by clearing up the fact that people that have cable and jobs are not the enemy.  I am tired of reading about your outrage over the education system, state of the government, poverty levels, religion, etc. while you sit on your couch and do nothing.  It frustrates me to read you complain about differences in wages among Americans when you do not work.

      My father works hard.  He has lost people in the last year as well.  His brother is dying.  And yet, he has to take time from his schedule to clean the house that you are renting from him.  The rent that you agreed was contingent on you taking care of the house as if it were your own.  For a proud man who has always taken care of himself as well as his extended family, getting a letter from a township saying that the yard was in such a state that they could be fined was an embarrassment.  You may not take pride in the home you currently inhabit, but my father built the addition you are most likely sitting in as you read this.  This is the man that rebuilt your grandmother’s house in a matter of months, after having his knee replaced.  Or, looking at it in another light: my father is the reason your father no longer lives with you.  You should be eternally grateful for the work he has done, and keep in mind the character of the person that you are attacking.

      You chose to rent from family.  Your rent is cheaper than it should be.  Your son goes to a very good elementary school, for which you technically do not pay taxes.  I wish you would practice the posts you share with the world on Facebook.  If you could truly view the world from someone else’s eyes, you would likely see yourself as selfish and immature.  I will not let you publicly trash my parents for trying to give you a break.  The fact that my father and brother had to go over to clean “your” house should embarrass you.  Your claim that they hurt your unbudded flowers 
   
(the flowers eventually bloomed even with being stomped out)

is childish and shows that you take no responsibility for your negligence.

     If you are frustrated by any actions of any members of my family in the future, please try to address it in private."

 
This is from someone who hadn't spent time with me in over 3 years. This is someone who left me blacked out drunk while I was having a problem with drinking in my early 20s at a bar. Not only left me blacked out, having driven myself out, kept buying me drinks well past the point of gross public intoxication, laughed in my face, and left. A friend had to sit with me all night until I could drive home.

This is from someone who climbed into my window on December 30th, 2010 while I was not home. 

That is how she thinks she knows the state of my home. She broke into it, uninvited. While I was at a Doctor's Appointment, and then doing hair and make-up for, and attending, a wedding, just days after Christmas. And she didn't tell me until I asked the next day while having what I now know of as Panic Attacks about someone having been in my house. 

I could tell things were off. But I was not asked. I was told they were coming. It was not a good day for me. So they broke into the house. That is what a nice person does.

This is the kind of thing you get on a regular basis when you choose to say the things I choose to say.

How's that for keeping my personal life off of Facebook? 

I never negatively mention anyone specifically in my Facebook posts. Those of you who follow along regularly know this. If you know who climbed in my window and who stalked and harassed me for 4.3 years than you could have figured out who it was about. Only if you already knew who was silently, angrily, driving by my house or stalking around my yard while I went to work in the morning would it be obvious.

Maybe someone with better "character" would learn how to apologize for being an unrelenting dick. If you are a man, your nasty attitude from your hurt feelings is perfectly acceptable but if you are a young woman, you need to get a hold of yourself. Even though I am supposedly of less life experience. I am expected to act like a lady. You all know how I feel about that, Fuck That. I am a lady therefore what I Do is what is lady-like.

Maybe someone with better character would have talked to me as the things that upset them were happening instead of waiting and waiting, for months and months, until I was at my lowest from losing my grandmother and my uncle while my extended family was in a fight I can not mend, nor did I start, to hit me while I was already hurt.

This is not what family does. This is a tear down email. This is emotional abuse. This isn't how you help someone who is a friend. My friends. came over and helped me, asked me how I was, literally physically helped me weed my yard, and rake my leaves. I have had a lot of friends helping me in the last 2 years. I suffered a Major Depressive Episode in August of 2012. While I was already going through that, Hurricane Sandy came and forever changed the landscape of the towns that forged me and everyone I know and love.

This email is also from someone who when my Grandmother and Uncle died, didn't say anything at all. Not a card, not a letter, not a phone call. Not even a text. Just this email. After not talking to me for 3 years.

This email is from someone who used to beg me to come to my own Grandmother's house early on Christmas Day with my son so she could still see us but not have to spend as much time with our Grandmother. Who she has nothing nice to say about. I didn't show up early because I knew my husband, son, and myself would wind up there long into the night as we did every year. 

The year after Hurricane Sandy, when my entire family was together for Thanksgiving and Christmas Day at the house I rented from family. The family I rented from STAYED HOME. My aunt even Dropped Off my Gram and left. This year they are having the holiday with my Gram, and I was invited. 

They were welcome to my holiday, 
despite treating me with such disdain. 

Even though they climbed in my window and not only didn't apologize but 

STILL TO THIS DAY 

act like they have done nothing wrong in this scenario.

This same family referred to my uncle, the subject of this email, as the Patriarch of our family. Even though my father is the oldest living Male, with the family name. 

But let's get this fucking straight I came from a Matriarchy. 
(two of them really, RIP Grandma Jackie)

And my Gram Jean Lane is the Matriarch. 

But I am the bad guy for being politically active on the internet. Political action which directly effects my family's two small businesses and my son's future. And the entire fucking world. I should go back in the closet, and forget what I know, and become more ignorant of the evils of the world somehow because it makes my judgmental family more comfortable in their upper middle class lives?

This is from someone who Didn't have a real job until she was 22 years old. 

I have worked in my mom's salon from the age of 5 years old (yes, I used to answer the phone and sweep). I started working on the books (taxes withheld) for the salon at 14. I had my first job outside of the salon as a Super Market cashier for minimum wage at 15 years old. Until my nervous breakdown in August of 2012 I had worked straight from 14-27 with no break. I worked the entire time I was in college, I didn't get time off to binge drink during the semester. I was in college and working part time the entire time I was pregnant. I was working 2 months after my son was born. 

Working is not my problem. Finding time for myself between 2 businesses, a child, a husband, and all my social activities IRL and online was my problem. Through the support of my husband, most incredible best friend, and incredible family and friends who surrounded me, I have been drug up from the depths of despair. The love I learned from being at my lowest will stay with me forever. I will always be compassionate towards those who are struggling because of how vividly I remember the unkind words said to me.

There is always more work to be done by me. I had to push back like no one has ever pushed before to get the time I needed to heal. Before that I had to figure out what was wrong, without health insurance, being as broke as I've been in life yet, with a laid off husband. 

It took a long time. 

But I am much better now than I ever have been. 

I know more about myself than I ever have. I found the root of my anxiety and social fears and it was not what I thought. Sometimes it is not the overt evils that exert their power over you. Sometimes it is years of people filling your head with negativity. About not just yourself but everything and everyone. I have chosen to stop judging. I have chosen to look at my criticisms of others and analyze them as things that pertain more to me than they do to them. None of this did I learn from this Terrible email from my cousin. 

When I got this email I was already down. And she kicked me right in the face. 

You can say it in the most pleasant euphemistic words you'd like, but a kick to the face, is a kick to the face. We are 11 months apart in age. I have no sisters. The closest thing I have to a sister sent this to me during the deepest depression I have faced since I was first diagnosed at 16.

I worked through this most recent worst episode with exercise, diet, reading, mediation, and obviously writing. But this family would have preferred I just take some antidepressants or anti-psychotics become a zombie and shut my fucking pie hole.

The man referenced in this email points the finger at everyone else for his own misery. The reason my father was in his own house during Hurricane Sandy when it flooded and not with family was because my uncle, who's house I lived in, who I rented from and his wife, my father's sister, said no to my father and his wife when they asked to stay on higher ground during the storm. Not only did they say no, no one called and told me my father was too proud to call and ask me. So multiple times his life was at risk wading in the flood water, and staying in his house for 2 days until the water receded because of these people. And they have the audacity to tell me I should THANK THEM. 

I may not always like my father but I love him. I am glad I got to live with him at an age I could remember since we moved out when I was 5. And I am thankful that he got to know my son and vice versa.

I silently thank them for the time I lived where I did. The friendships I made with my neighbors there were priceless. I appreciate all of my life's experiences. But they have done nothing to deserve my verbal praise or respect. 

I don't understand constantly criticizing someone for being overly emotional. And then telling them that they can not relate to the emotional pain of losing loved ones. After they just lost 2.... and are behaving very emotionally about it. As if I do not or will not mourn the loss of all of my cousins' uncles, aunts, and other grandmothers. We were all raised together, they were all my family. I don't make distinctions of who I love more. 

Love is not a game with winners and losers to me. 

Real love does not come with conditions. 

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