Monday, March 30, 2009

More of the same

There's a girl,
sitting all alone,
reading a book,
no one else at home

See here the stain,
there against the wall,
the paint's lighter there,
it's where her shadow falls

She's reading a book,
a book she's read before,
books are her friends,
she's never had anymore

There's a party going on,
somewhere across the street
She doesn't know where,
but she can hear the beat

Friends arriving,
shaking hands,
having things to say,
she doesn't understand

No one really knows her,
at work they know her name,
they know that she works hard,
but that isn't quite the same

she's one of the lonely,
they've slid between the cracks
they're lost and forgotten,
no one has their backs (I don't like this line.)

No one knows about them
they're lost and alone,
and no one cares about them,
they sit in their homes.

They're wasted lives and
wasted smiles
and wasted hopes and dreams
and no one knows or cares.

No one knows.
No one cares.
No one knows.
No one cares.

This isn't working. By the time the weekend rolls around, I'm so exhausted, I'm useless. And then, I'm supposed to do all the things I didn't get done during the week, except that I don't. I just sleep instead and Saturday morning, I start to get sick and have to flood the cold with vitamin C juice (pineapple, orange, grapefruit, w/e) and then by Sunday, I'm okay, but I didn't get anything done Saturday and I'm still exhausted because I couldn't sleep Saturday night. Sigh.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Quick and wrung-out

It's Thursday.  Thursday.  I have to keep reminding myself because otherwise I start to sink into the exhaustion.  I am trying to do too much this semester: work 25-30 hours a week, 2 significant classes, and gymnastics team, which is a huge timesink.  This will be a bad semester.  But, if I had to choose between this and going back to study, study, study, nothing else, I would pick this.

I already have a degree with study, study, study grades.  What I need right now is to get to the point where I can balance everything (better) and not be quite so exhausted at the end of the day.

Random unrelated stuff: It rained all day today.  Everything smells wet.  Inside, it smells like wet people and clothes.  Not that lovely a smell.  Outside is better, wet ground and water in the air don't smell half-bad. :)

My shoulders are incredibly sore.  Full-body ice pack wanted.  I don't even have a regular ice pack though, because for some reason, I left them with my parents when I moved down here.

I muscled myself up a wall, with a little cheating, and did a handstand about 3" from the wall yesterday though.  I couldn't do that at the beginning of the semester. :D

Friday, March 20, 2009

The one where I tell complete strangers EVERYTHING and hold the darkness back a little longer, part 1

I'm going to be lonely forever, that's fairly inevitable considering I can no longer tell harmless people from crazed nutballs and I can't tell myself from either. When you start accusing innocent harmless people of being crazed insane people because you can't tell the difference, you know the end is nigh. You might as well give up and recognize your future role as feeder of cats.

(Note before you flame me: I have no problem with cats. I'm just not looking forward to the 13 or so who will sleep in a vaguely man-shaped outline formed by the warmth from my own body after they've evicted me from my bed to serve them gourmet cat food which I'll be able to afford because I have nothing else to spend money on. (But hey, apparently I'll be employed in this bleak future, so that's something.)

Amusing Castle Episode 2 tidbit: Cheetah Condoms? Really? Isn't speed in that arena not a good thing?

In all seriousness though, I want to have friends and sex. I'm tired of not falling asleep by myself and not talking to anybody. I don't want to do it for the rest of my life. What does this have to do with my life story? I don't really know, but it seems like a less drastic approach than going to the ghetto Target (tar-jay) by my house and buying a hoey dress with which to get me a man. Hey, it's always a possibility. (Please note: If you are an impressionable Muslim, or follower of any moral code, or person vested in your own self-esteem and you read this.... It is not really a worthwhile option to go out and lure men with hoey dresses. Nor does it work, apparently. Read Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both before you try it. Oh, and consider whether or not you want that on your conscience.)

Anyhow, I'm getting quietly more crazed as the time passes, so without further ado:

Me, unabridged, in vignettes (because I like that word).

May 1981
Baby girl, black eyes, black hair, no forehead, born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 2 weeks premature to a couple of well-meaning insane people (not their fault). Based on retroactive study of baby passport photos, she got to be pudgy and foreheaded fairly quickly. Two months later, the 'rents moved her and her 2-year old brother to New York to stay with their grandmother. The decision had a lot to do with the fact that Saudi Arabian culture featured small children spitting the word 'Abid (slave) at the father and Saudi television featured Black Samba cartoons. The parents decided their children would grow up in the US.


Nov. 1985
It's a late November morning in Baltimore. There are three kids now, the first boy and girl and another boy, ages 2, 4, and 6. The kids are around the corner at their cousins' house experimenting with mixers: apple juice and orange juice. Puking ensues. Their father picks them up and late that night, the girl goes downstairs. Her father is awake is in the living room. "You have a baby sister" he says and the next day they all go and get Mom and the baby from the hospital. The kids get to name the baby, which is probably momentarily frightening for her. (She picked her head up and looked around shortly after birth, so she probably gets it.) The kids pick a good name though, so it's okay.


December 1986
There is a party. The little girl and her family go. The baby sister is there on the mother's lap. The brothers are somewhere. There are cupcakes for the kids after they eat their dinner. The little girl eats too slowly and when she is finished, the girl supervising the kids is gone and so are the cupcakes. The other kids have all finished eating and disappeared off to somewhere. The little girl stays in the room by herself, singing to herself, and tracing patterns in the carpet. It never occurs to her that she could get up and go downstairs and find somebody else. When they come to get her, it's time to leave, and she sees that everyone else was in the kitchen eating chocolate cake. She cries herself to sleep in the living room that night. All the kids share a room with a loft bed with shelves under it and a slide. They sleep side by side on the floor in sleeping bags and her crying was keeping her brothers awake. (For the rest of her life, she will fold the blankets like a sleeping bag.) The baby still sleeps in the parents' room. She will eventually be moved to the kids' room in a hail of her own tears.


May 1987
The house in Baltimore is full of kids and moms. It's a typical school day and there is an auction today. All the kids have been given tokens that they can use to buy coloring books and marker sets. They're supposed to be learning the value of money. The little girl is 7 now and won't know the value of money for another year or two, when she sends away for a copy of "Ump's Fwat" and a bunch of other "Free Stuff for Kids."

Today though, she buys a Red Riding Hood coloring book. The oldest two (she and her brother) will go to their Science Center classes tomorrow and dissect a frog. (They never make it. The car gets a flat and the neighbor comes over to jack it up and put on the spare, but by then the class is over. She does get to dissect a frog, but not until 4 years later, in college, which will have to wait until next installment.)

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Once more

Aww, I missed my 100th post. I was going to do something special. It will have to wait for 200, I guess. Today is a poem anyway, so that's something a little different.

Once more

One more time,
I will pinup the corners of my mouth,
think pretty.

One more time,
store acorns
give us something to talk about.

One more time,
sit down at a table,
cross my legs at the ankles just so,
worry about my clothes.

One more time.
And then done with
and never again.

Once more and then
invest in horses and
take in the cats that find the lonely ones.

Cats know where to eat,
where to find a good scratch.

Once more.
Then done.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

views and practice and more of the happy

My angry rant post was unbelievably well-read for this blog. I was very pleasantly surprised and a little amazed. It also did its purpose and made me feel a lot better about the whole thing. I hope it wasn't too strongly worded or offensive. It was meant more to make me feel better and to be honest and forthright than to hurt anyone. Also, thanks to everyone who commented on that post and also on my older ones. I do read comments on old posts. :)

What's new? Gymnastics practice was amazing yesterday and tonight. I can almost say I have my cartwheel! I say almost because I want to have it a little better and for a little more time before I say that I HAVE it. It feels good though and the coach noticed and commented on it, which made me feel really, really, really good. That was yesterday, and then tonight, we had a long practice and I'm not really good enough to work skills for all of a 3 hour practice. I'm also not strong enough to do a lot of what I would like to do. I wound up working out for about 30 or 45 minutes and then going to the strength gym downstairs and doing my full body workout for the 45 or so minutes that that takes and then going back up to the gymnastics gym and doing another 45 minutes on the beam and the trampoline and stretching. I feel so tired heading home right now.

It's a good tired though, like the sort of tired that happens when you know you did a lot and now you're done. It's a happy tired, even though I still have Calc homework to do when I get home.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Listen, you stupid idiots who won't stop staring at me.

Note: If I have any faithful readers, this is probably not geared towards you. Please forgive me for this, but it needs to be said. There's profanity, because right now I don't want to be the nice person I'm usually trying to be and because when you don't curse much, sometimes it's effective when you do. Unedited and without further ado:

Background: This weekend was beautiful in my neck of the woods, so I went skating on my usual fav trail...in a skirt, with a picnic lunch, and my usual backpack.

Dear racist/religionist/discriminatory/whatever the fuck you call yourselves idiots,

Stop staring at me. When I go skating, or running, or walking, or to the gym, or whatever, I'm out making myself a better person. I'm safeguarding my body against cholesterol and heart disease and diabetes (it's common in my people). I'm protecting my mind from stagnation and from insanity and from wasting itself. Do you honestly think it's easy on the mind to be this lonely and to have these prospects for future loneliness?? Even you cannot possibly be that stupid. I'm breathing the fresh air. I'm watching the deer on the trail. ...The last thing on my mind is you...until, that is, you fearfully watch me pass. "OMG", your face says "!!!" "WHAT IS IT???!!" "When will it hurt me?" "I shall stare at it because I have never seen one and I can't handle it." Your race doesn't even matter.


Well, here is your answer: It's a Weird, Lonely, sometimes Broke Muslim chick using endorphins (those are the chemicals that give a natural high from exercise) to stave off another day. Odds are beneath my headscarf, I have a headphone in one ear and I'm listening to acapella or some story podcast (EscapePod and PodCastle are awesome, PseudoPod is very, very weird. Like, what the?? weird.)

Here's the deal: You don't have to worry about me pulling a gun out of my skirt and shooting you. Why? Because I am too tough for that. Because not even 28 years of loneliness and outcastedness (or whatever the word is) and betrayal by the very people to whom I was supposed to matter and the promise of 30 or 50 or 70 lonely years to come is enough to make me blow your stupid head off, even if your head is really, really stupid. You think of that when you're staring at me like I'm some sort of apparition.

Oh and check this out: I don't even own a fucking gun. I have once. I grew up partially on a farm in rural CA and we had a shotgun. We shot a deer in the butt with it once. It was trying to eat my mother's garden. We don't have the shotgun anymore. We have books and yoga mats and prayer mats. But, you wouldn't know that, would you? Would you even care?

I am a living, breathing human being. I have feelings. If you treated me like a human being, maybe I could stop muttering "bite me! BITE ME!" under my breath at you. Maybe I could actually smile at you and gaily trail a "hi!" behind me like I would like to do. (I'm highly susceptible to the endorphins.) It's up to you. I'm not going anywhere, unless one of you pulls the gun that I'm not willing to and makes me go away.

Until and Unless, here I fucking be.
Peace,

WBL

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

they start to win

The problem isn't so much the stupid people. It isn't the idiot girl who decides you've already moved in with her and she's just going to browbeat you ("we'll move you this Saturday") until you give in, despite the fact that she's always seemed afraid to talk to you and you watched her ask somebody else to move in with her not five minutes before she found out that you have the ability to pay rent. It's not the dude with a crush and a huge personality disorder. It's the ones you thought were ok. It's the ones about whom you thought "ok, you don't like me, but you don't mess with me either. We're not friends, friends would be too much to ask of anyone, but I don't have to watch my back around you."

If I did meet somebody nice, as a friend, for a relationship, w/e, it wouldn't even matter, because after a while, all you see is stupid, hateful, nasty people and you can't recognize anything else anyway.

The other post - whee

For a real webcomic, go read xkcd.

Oddballs no. 1

I'm trying my hand at a webcomic, because I don't like the sound of my emo voice, even if it isn't "very emo". :)

Monday, March 2, 2009

The one that's not about me. :)

This blog is usually pretty serious, being my something-or-other serious and emotionally beneficial, so I'm going to try to write more posts that are not about me. I'm back on track with the original goal of the blog: getting unbroke, and unlonely, despite the permanent (hopefully) inherent weirdness. So, now, I'm going to try branching out. It's not all about me anymore! Enjoy. :)

Site of the day:

Che55.com


This site lets you play chess games with people all over the world. It's basically correspondence chess, with certain amounts of time between moves (2 days, 5 days, etc...). Most importantly, the site is well-used. I have 6 or 7 games after a day of being a member. The chess interface is soft and homey and easy to use. All in all, I find this a worthwhile site if you're a chess fan, or if you are just looking for a fun game to play with another human being on your own time. Check it out.

I get it.

I understand now why I am lonely. It's because I'm too friendly and too friendly while being too different. I'm having issues, guy issues with a guy that I feel nothing romantic for who I think (I'm pretty sure) likes me, but who annoys me, a lot, at the same time. And I don't really want to be friends with him or have a relationship with him.

The annoyingness is just him being him, I think. But, it's incredibly annoying. I really don't want to be around him, which would be difficult, unfortunately.

Trying to be nice to him while not wanting to be around him is interesting though. Most of me wants to spend my time in my room and have nothing to do with him. I might just do that. But part of me figures I shouldn't do that. I kind of want that part to lose. Just because you don't want to be mean doesn't mean you have to let someone get on your nerves.

There's something of a parallel to be drawn between my own friendlessness and me not wanting to be friends with him though. To the rest of the world, I am as he is to me. And there's not much (or nothing) I can do about it.

So here's the conclusion I've finally come to: You have to be yourself and accept yourself, because there isn't anything else. Nobody will validate you for free. You either like yourself or you become a follower, subscribe to somebody, follow their rules, and let them give you a flock. (Not an option for me. Followers have uniforms and my clothes don't qualify. Also, I have never been one of those or that accepted, so I don't know if that is a bad thing or not. I would welcome comments.)

People don't like me because they fear me, fear being indebted to me. It's the same as my natural wariness warring with my need not to be part of the problem in the case of this guy. If it were just up to the wariness, I would have nothing at all, nada, zip to do with him. But, I have been in his shoes, sort of. Although, I don't think I was ever the type to try to make people feel stupid or invade their space. But, I don't want to owe him anything.

The people I know don't want me to feel like their friend because then there is a relationship, an obligation, and being obliged to me is frightening, because they don't get anything out of it, no matter how scintillating my personality. ^^ If I were the possesor of great physical beauty, it might be different, because enough beauty makes the normal rules not apply, but again I wouldn't know for sure. I could see problems with exploiting that, also.

I like my face. I like my body. I like the way I am, generally, and when I don't, I take note and try to change that, I think. I try not to make the world a worse place than it would be without me. But in the end, none of that matters to most of everybody else.

I am lucky to have found my old warcraft guild, because they accepted me, more than I have been before, or ever, even after I "came out" to them as me. Why not just masquerade as normal? Blegh. It seemed dishonest under the circumstances. I would rather not be liked as myself than be loved as a figment of the imagination. Besides, they liked me. As me. So, lucky me. :)

Anyway, basically, I'm probably screwed, or not, since the apparent likelihood of me dying a virgin is the inverse of the likelihood of me being feared or whatever it is. Heh.