Tag: bullies

Filling the Hole

Lisa4 Comments

babymotherdeathPerhaps “Filling the Hole” is not a wise choice of name preceding my last post, but what the hell.

I am fine physically, in spite of my lifelong belief otherwise. Now I need to know why I’m alive. After my mother’s death, my life’s purpose croaked too.   My organs were supposed to shut down, one after the other, in solidarity with my mother. Until the age of 33, I had one identity: daughter. My identity died September 13, 2011. My family was dead except for a few distant relatives. I called my mother’s first cousin, Charles, but he was still angry at my mother for distancing herself from the family after my grandmother died. Cold in the morgue or not,  them there mountain grudges die hard. He was nice in that he never said he was mad at my mom, but it was a “don’t call us, we’ll call you,” scenario. I wonder if sometimes he and his sister wonder whatever happened to me. Now I was no one’s daughter, no one’s family member. I didn’t belong anywhere. It made me even more certain that God overlooked me the day my mother died.

Now look at me. Almost 37, and once again reminded that for no particular reason, I’m still alive. I played the hand dealt, and I’m the only one holding my cards now. I did pretty well for myself considering all the blows that came that first year. My mother died and I gained the love of my life. Then the love of my life, gay man that he was, used my love for him against me. I’m still in love with the illusion he painted. The one person in the world who understood me, who saw me as brilliant, who shared the same interests as me, and the same ideals. He told me I got him on a level no one else did, that we would be friends forever. He’d hold me in bed at night, nothing overtly sexual, but he must have known the feelings he sparked within me. His abused past, how he got his disease, made him all the more mesmerizing to me. The one thing I’m certain we both shared, was low self-esteem. I only saw it once in a restaurant when he teared up because he thought the restaurant manager was staring him down. The rest of the puzzle came in the stories he told. Men who were also in love with him, friends he had that never materialized, stories I knew were lies.The stories may have been true in his past, but not now. One guy he spoke of was in a foreign country when he spoke of going to give him a hand job. Another guy was a cop. In fact he used the pretense of writing an email to Cop, but it went to me instead, and I think I was the target anyway. The email was titled, “Pig in a Blanket.”  The email told his lover that I was the pig who never did anything and freeloaded on them. It’s true I wasn’t good at chores (or doing them at all) and I did eat them out of house and home for just 250.00 in rent/ later 475.00 their pain and suffering rate after my botched suicide attempt. My bad.

But the point is, I do what I got to do now. I live alone and it’s such a blessing to have no one to tell me what to do, to not be fearful of being thrown out by one wrong step, to just be. I tend to my cats, I help out a friend, and I have my hobbies. I have internet friends. I read, occasionally write, I’m a gamer, I swim in season, and I go places, and I eat a lot of burgers. La dolce vita. And I dumpster dive. But that deserves a post of its own. 

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Fourth Blogoversary: March 25th

Lisa2 Comments

 

Strange fate. Why God, or the universe, or a great nothingness conspires or throws events at random to some and misses others. The Wheel of Fortune keeps spinning. Some folks buy a vowel while others go bankrupt.

There was a blurb on the news yesterday: A fire at my old apartment complex. Then it announced the address. My building. I asked my friend to drive me ‘round the hood. I wanted to see if it was their apartment since their apartment was in the same building as the apartment I shared with my mother. Ye Old Shitville Ghetto Apartment Complex looked the same as ever: dilapidated, half-assed put together, just all that charm of a coastal town sunk into hell. Home sweet home. Roachy, bedbuggy, home. Mom and I lived 9 relatively happy years here. Four Years ago yesterday, March 25, 2010 I started my blog there. In 2011 my mother was taken to the hospital from there never to return again.

It wasn’t their apartment that caught fire, that is, my ex-roommates. Not the man who I miss to this day. My mother’s cook book is still on their shelf, and whatever else I gave them or they kept as theirs did not catch alight in some Waiting to Exhale diva style fashion. I’m glad they’re safe, and I hear they’re moving far away in about a week. 

No, there was the apartment my mother and I shared gutted by fire. So far they say “cause undetermined,” but I’d bet the house (pun intended) that it was shitty wiring. First that wiring was older than I am, I’m pretty certain, secondly if I remember correctly, sometimes it did act funky.
If it was a malfunction in the wiring or appliances, and had my mother lived, I’m certain we would still live there and it would be us left with nothing. Did God deliberately spare us that fate? Why?

In my more philosophical mode, I think, “Did my mother die at 68 to be spared going downhill physically, possibly ending up an oxygen-bound invalid like her mother or near blind from macular degeneration like her father? Did God cut my mother a break, or was he being cruel? My mother’s illness was two weeks total, only one day of which was  in the hospital. Also God knew that as long as my mom lived, my OCD would’ve been at her side trying to keep her alive. I’d never have lived alone were she still alive. I’d be too afraid she’d die. And now our apartment is charred. My mother’s essence burned out of the walls it feels like to me. Would we have died in the fire? Did God kill my mother to protect us from a worse fate? Why didn’t He just stop the fire in the first place and spared whoever lived there.? Ugh, I just don’t get it. Maybe my not being there was just the luck of the draw, and numerous calamities are about to befall me. Stay tuned!

 

My Third Blogoversary!

Lisa13 Comments
A wake of turkey vultures, roosting in a tree ...
A wake of majestic turkey vultures, roosting in a tree in Mountain View, California, waiting for new blog posts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Strangely enough,
March 25th will mark my third blogoversary. Time flies when you type five words a minute. Picture it, I a callow youth of  32, rose in my cheeks  and tortured genius illuminating my eyes, typing my first words! Oh how the muses danced, the angels wept, and the majestic turkey vultures soared! Three years, still here. In case you missed those 3 years, let me summarize:

Lisa, the OCDbloggergirl, lives with her mother and 3 cats. Lisa has OCD and is getting into fights with her mom, mainly because Lisa cannot be the perfect person Lisa wants to be and this pisses her off. Poor mom. The years are swallowed up with Lisa writing, Lisa getting published by online journals ( reprints of blog entries, mainly). Lisa’s writing improves. She thinks “Hey why don’t I get my own website, maybe I’ll get rich or at least be able to have a meowing cat widget!” Life is swell. Then Fate says, “Hey why don’t I let your mom die of complications from pneumonia, that would be a plot twist!” Life sucks. Some social worker says Lisa might have to go to a group home if she can’t find somewhere to go on her SSI check.  Lisa would rather die than be separated from her cats now that there’s no one else. Neighbors step in and she and the cats go live there. Life is very good again and Lisa finds her Soul Mate in her gay neighbor (Dumb, OCDbloggergirl. You get what ‘gay’ means, right?) But gay friend and jealous partner are kinda messed up themselves and who was wrong? Who was right? Who was fucked over? I think Lisa was, but maybe they were, but maybe she was, but then …All the lies and uncertainty make Lisa do something to herself, she ends up in the hospital. Then she ends up in hell…er a nursing home for two months, until her roommates cave and let her dumb ass back in for a nominal hike in rent (475.00 instead of 240.00). Life is teetering from good to bad back and forth. The man she loves, Gay Romeo, likes to lie, and has stopped taking his medicines. He forgets he cares about  Lisa altogether, but she is saved from hell by a program. Lisa now has her own apartment for the first time in her life, and they all lived happily ever after maybe. She hopes that now her blog will stop being a total buzz kill.

I guess you could say I am at a good place now. Well, almost. Oscar, my grey and black tabby is missing now for over a month. I remain hopeful he will return, just as my Phillipe did 9 years ago when my mother and I moved into our old apartment. Phillipe was cooped up 2 weeks before we opened the door and let him go outside. He didn’t come home for 2 and a half months. Came home though, and no worse for wear. I suspect someone took him in and he finally got away, which I suppose happened to Oscar too. I think a good post would be to tell the stories of my 3 cats one day. For those of you who pray, please pray Oscar comes home. Thanks.

But yeah. Good place. Now. I am happy for the most part. There is a strange sort of freedom to being alone in the world. I find my life worth living, even if only for my cats, and the occasional ‘rescue mission’ for Bestie, who is a bit of an anxious lass. I don’t have to be useful to anyone anymore, and that’s freedom in a way. When I was with the roommates, my use was measured in my finances I guess. When I was with my friend I  knew from way back, all he wanted was a batch o’ my snatch. When I went to that ‘home,’ almost everyone wanted me for one reason or another. Eh God, vultures. I am better off on my own having my own adventures and my own  life. Hanging out with Bestie, my friend of 20 years, basically  fulfills my social life, that and my online life. Soul brothers are merely mythological creatures, unicorns. I miss my unicorn though (we even watched My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic together, sigh).

And now, not to be all Jodi Arias stalky or anything, but I did have someone drive me by ye olde home place, just to see if the members of the She-Male Lisa Haters Club had indeed left town as they said they would in March. Part of me prayed that they were gone, that seeing an empty apartment would cure me of my feelings for The Unicorn nee Soul Bro. But neighhhhhhhh, the signs that they were still there abounded. First, the plants that I gave him from my mother were still there. The chair that once was mine was still there, as no doubt the rest of the lawn furniture that he felt was his due (I would have left that chair for him anyway, the way I had left half of my hard candy for him). There is a yellow truck out in front. I wonder if it’s his. He always wanted a yellow vehicle. If it is, the straits they said they were in due to me must have eased into gentler waters.

But the doubts are ever present in my mind. Is it because of  me that they aren’t gone to fulfill his dream in DC? Is he sick? Or, like so many other things, was living there just another of his stories? Once, The Partner told me that I was a boil on his butt that he just can’t lance. Well, I was lanced wasn’t I? Shouldn’t they be happily ever after now, and shouldn’t I, like a normal person, stop giving a fuck about The Unicorn? Somewhere over the rainbowwwwwwww….

I am happy now. I am almost at peace. I must put them out of my mind. I am eternally grateful that he was there when my mother died, but that chapter of my life must close. That way I can truly be happy, That and finding Oscar. Where the hell are you, Oscar?

PS, other fun incidentals. Remember for a time I foolishly flirted with having a self-hosted site? Well when I hung up the towel there at ocdbloggergirl dot com and let my domain expire, guess what happened? I thought maybe some other blogger might buy it, but I doubted it. Nope. Ocdbloggergirl dot com didn’t even become a Canadian pharmacy. Cough. It became…cough…a porn site. A porn site boasting Polish lesbians. I’m not joking,  And as Paul Harvey used to say…”now you know the rest of the story.”

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The A to Z Blogging Challenge Condensed to the A to B Blogging Challenge

Lisa20 Comments
Cover of "The Diary of Anne Frank"
Not exactly a diarist of this caliber.Cover of The Diary of Anne Frank

 

I only got so far as B, so it’s going to be the A to B Blogging Challenge. For added grins I write it in “Melodramatic Victorian:”

My dear readers,

Given the task of writing a ‘B’ article for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, my mind turns to the idle days of youth. Those days, dear readers! Oh, those days! My pen quivers at the memory of budding life ‘ere the blossom bloomed and  old age withered the emerged flower! Do you remember, my most constant  friends, those days when our cheeks were cherry red with acne and life? I recall it as though it were yesterday…

It was the fall of my thirteenth year, and I had yet again given into the flights of fancy peculiar to me, the furies of fear, which set me apart from my schoolmates. The other children at the schoolhouse could not leave such a curiosity as me be. The privy, the dining area, out on the grounds, few places were safe from the little villains. I was afraid and yet part of me felt that negative attention was  better than no attention. Better not forgotten, but awful being remembered, I found that I despised educational pursuits altogether, so when I was installed in a safer place I still wanted to be done with the lot of it. In a way indeed I was.

This school, instead of being awash in Godless heathen, was awash and a dried   with God-fearing souls of a fundamentalist sect. I had been there, done that, and bought the appropriate apparel in the earliest of my formative years, and did not wish to do so again. Though the overwhelming majority were of the nicest sort of people, having been away from such beliefs for so long gave me a distaste for such ideas. I recall walking past a bulletin board against the candidate for the US senate who I supported because of abortion. Tsk, tsk. I also recall the campaign against Halloween, that evil Pagan holiday, where someone might sacrifice you to the devil if you were a virgin (a peril I’d still have to worry about today, sigh, as an aging spinster). I called “BS” on such fancies, having not recalled in all my 13 years hearing anyone in our town being sacrificed, but as you no doubt know, there’s a first for everything.

I wanted out of there, a place one could say was a liberal’s hell, and I feigned being ill so often they dismissed me from among them. I wish I could go back, give the proverbial rat’s derriere about learning, and propel myself through the middle grades. But I didn’t. I stayed home being homeschooled and developing agoraphobia, you know, the typical plights of adolescence.

I retired to home, schooled myself for two years in what I felt like learning and naught else, kept a diary, and remained agoraphobic except when with my mother.  The villains from the school before last and a crazy man who jumped out at me one night sealed my fearful state so much that only other fears brought me back into society two years later.

After my years à la Diary of Anne Frank, I resumed my education, my epistles in my diary became sporadic at best. Life lived outside the tiny expanse between my ears gave me other concerns than giving blow by blow dissertations on why my family ‘sucked,’ to use the vernacular common today, or what transpired on the television. Looking back on the juvenilia,  I am tempted to chuck those little books for the poor quality of the writing, but old sentimentality bade me stop.

We leave adolescence behind now and look beyond to the institution of higher learning ,The Community College, where one is given two year’s (or, in my case, five year’s ) instruction to go to higher-higher learning or to take up a trade. I was a wretched student for the most part, my inability to make deadlines one and for two there were diversions aplenty downtown. Secondary school had been easy for the most part. College was a whole other kettle of fish. I wonder at times, dear reader, if my days trudging the hallowed halls were worth it, that all my learning went for naught since I am pensioned by the government’s good will towards the mentally afflicted. Yet, one may postulate that knowledge, from the tiniest kernel of truth onward, is never a waste of time for anyone should it enhance the life of the pursuer –Eve excepted of course. The canvas of my mind was painted the hues of a liberal education, subtly infused with yellow flowers of reading and writing and a happy sun  of Windows 98. Oh, wonderous beauty, oh marvelous keyboard of life  (never mind I failed the word processing class. Moveable type wasn’t perfected in a day and the metaphor is effective just the same).

It was Creative Writing I that first propelled me forth in my illustrious pursuit of the written word, along with Creative Writing II, which had a few lesbians trying to find their Sapphic  muse as I tried to find my voice too. In class the first I learned and  listened in between the peculiar fits of panic I was dealt at that time of my life. From hearing my teacher lecture others and myself I learned:

  • Do not besmirch your paper with a preponderance of adjectives and adverbs  -a little goes a long way.
  • If you see something wrong with someone’s writing, tell him , that he might improve instead of gushing how wonderful his writing is (ah, but should I be bade  to tell someone EXACTLY what I saw wrong with something, I could pick out a few things. While my own writing  considerably lacked and I wasn’t able to discern just how bad it lacked, I could  see a  lot with the rather unexceptional lad with whom I was paired).
  • You need to work on the punctuation and spacing in your poems.
  • When writing a poem about your mother, don’t make it sound like a Hallmark moment (though said mother preferred the generic version as opposed to emo blood n’ guts version, thanks).
  • While you got a knack for pacing, this is the sort of story that’s been told 1000s of times, and your characters are archetypal (Lisa, cut out the gothic dramas, and what the hell is archetypal?.
  • If you’re writing a vintage style detective story, Oldest Guy in Class, don’t let the narrator call one of the characters “an old Jew.”
  • Young Guy, don’t use “ye olde English,” there’s enough of that from classic poets. To thyne own self be true… but only to  a point.

During Creative Writing the First, we were all expected to keep an “observation journal,” which was not to be a “How my boyfriend and I argue all the time journal” (not a problem for me, believe me). I was in the “wish I could disappear phase of my college education, so my journal became the friend I didn’t have. Rather, my teacher by proxy became my friend since she read the journal and left comments in the margins if I were lucky> I wrote about my observations and thoughts on things in what I flatter myself to be a humorous way. When class ended it was as though I lost a very dear friend. But this was another pre-cursor to my life as a blogger and horrid comment whore.

During Creative Writing the Second I began to realize my life was not meant to churn out fiction, rather my life was meant to chronicle my life, mundane as it was, and get a laugh or two. I remember I wrote a short story based on my life in high school and college and told of my one forray into the romantic world (humiliating myself for the grins of others, which pleased me. Better to laugh than cry…).  The teacher had us read excerpts from our writing at a bar that had a small stage, so perfect venue! I didn’t eat anything, lest I be sick, but I got up there, before the students and their friends, plus people who just came in to drink and didn’t care what else happened. I made a “Hi, mom” crack and began. I was a hit! It was one of the best moments of my obscure life.

I wish I could say after graduating, I became a celebrated writer or journalist or even went on to university, but it wasn’t to be. My anxiety, shyness, and inability to concentrate won in the end and I get paid by the government to exist and that’s my life.

But of course, my story doesn’t end there, my blogging story that is. Since graduating, my society with others, which was originally insignificant, almost went to nil. I have 3 friends I see regularly and other than that I keep to myself. Though I like people, I prefer it this way. In case you weren’t aware I’m terrified of rejection, plus I like being left to my own devices most of the time.

To supplement my lack of social life, I started conversing in a chat room for about 5 years or so. Now let me tell you something about chat rooms, lots of the brilliant conversationalists have problems bigger than yours, and no I wasn’t in a mental health room. It just seems like not many were “normal” insofar as my weak understanding of the word means and I don’t mean that as a slight. They say you don’t really know people online, but in 5 years, one does after a fashion, in a way some people  are more their true selves online than off I venture to say. Why I say this is you see how they deal with their fellows online and you know they are more flawed than you would see exhibited in polite society (not that I was a saint either to people who were rude to me).

In my chat room days I kept a couple of blogs. One I did a couple of posts and lost interest  in it, another I posted a few times until someone from the chat started pasting my musings into the chat to embarrass me.  Then I restarted blogging on that site, but my dearest mother sent me into fits of paranoia that the SOB gentleman down the way would find out I was writing about how he NEVER PAID ME BACK that $73.00  I loaned him to pay his light bill (what, me bitter? Not I, Christian charity, etc.). After a little while blogging almost privately I stopped writing there also.

Skipping on to the beginning of 2010, my best chat room friend and I had a falling out and suddenly I had nothing in my opinion. I stayed out of the chat room and the fellow who caused our quarrel began instant messaging me again. One day, as befitting his tastes and humor, he showed me a video of his favorite actress of the adult genre, Penny Flame. Who? What? Huh? “What makes her your favorite?” I asked, because watching said actress on said couch riding said man, she looked, well, like an actress of such moving pictures. A more everyday lass, less artificially rendered in make-up or enhancements of the bosom, but an actress none the less.

“She’s affectionate,” he said.

“Oh.”

Well, now, this wasn’t enough for me and my delicate sensibilities, so I researched her, and that brought up that infallible oracle  of truth, Wikipedia.

“Hey, did you know she retired, went on a Sex Rehab thing, and now keeps a blog as Jennie Ketcham?”

I became fascinated with not-Penny and was amazed by her goodness and how we seemed to have similar insecurities though she were endowed with more beauty and talents of letters than I ever should be gifted. I observed how her writing seemed to truly help people and a peculiar idea came to me, “Hey, maybe I could help folks while helping myself by writing too?” Misery loves company, right, I thought, and perhaps it would help other anxious people to know they aren’t alone or some such, etc. So I created this magnificent, magnanimous blog. Though I ramble something awful, can’t stay on topic to save my life, and worry all the time about losing my blogging friends, I must say this is my crowning achievement in life (I know, “winning” right?). I’ve met so many wonderful people through this blog and love you all. You give my life meaning and I hope to keep blogging as long as I live.

Adieu.

I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No Revisited; or, The Bitches and Pollyanna

Lisa25 Comments

images

Have I told you before that I’m a bit slow on the uptake? Perhaps I’ve just implied it, but yeah,  sometimes  I’m such a retard that I surprise even myself. So today I did the most retarded of mentally challenged things, and adding insult to injury, I was 75%  sure I was being taken the whole time. In my total ‘tard fashion, I watched myself being screwed sans word of protest. The 25% percent of me, the ‘what if they are telling the truth?’ part of me, kept my mouth shut; that and being timid as hell. But instead of  this long preamble, let me tell you about my day and you’ll see.

I spent the night at my best friend’s house, she feeling as though she needed more company than her cats last night. Returning home, it puts me in a good mood to see neither  the apartment building burned to the ground nor my mother  murdered while I was gone.  My mind always conjures up the worst case scenarios and it’s a relief every time nothing happens. Later I go for my afternoon swim.  A few people  greet me and I say hello in my timid way. I’m glad that I am a visible person one would want to say hello to instead of a ghost of some dead apartment dweller, but at the exact same time I wish I couldn’t be seen.

One of my more bizarre obsessions when I was a little girl, around age 8 or 9,  I imagined I was dead and a ghost, but no one bothered to inform me of my demise. What if it’s true, I thought. What if I AM dead  and invisible and no one can hear me and God hasn’t told me I’m dead yet? I felt so anxious I wanted to say something to prove to myself I’m alive and can be heard.  Ah, but the fun thing about being obsessive-compulsive is somewhere in the jangled nuts and bolts of my brain I was sane and not delusional. I knew I wasn’t dead, but the thought of being dead and unable to be seen or heard sent me into a little panic. I didn’t want to get into trouble by saying something out loud, so I knew to shut up until we were allowed to talk. You can tell how popular a kid is in daycare if she starts believing she is invisible  and not quite real.

Funny how things change. 23 years later and now my fear is that I’m altogether too viewable and I’m being sized up by everyone. I’m living proof you can like people very much and at the same time wish they would leave you alone, because if they aren’t judging me I’m going to mull over what I say and do enough for both of us.

I am at the edge of the pool about  to jump when a couple of girls, probably about 14 or so, talk to me.  “Come on in, the water is warm,” says one.

When I pop up from that peaceful place at the bottom  I say, “It’s as warm as bath water.”  It’s warm as pee-water, I think, but refrain from saying this.  Club Ghetto-Trailer Fabulous: Only 25% percent urine content per gallon of water! Guaranteed.

“I haven’t taken a bath in 2 years, says one girl. I take showers.”

Ok great. So I start swimming my laps, doing my best to  avoid bumping into the passel of kids in the pool. About my third lap,  the girls get  friendly again.

“What’s your name?”

“Lisa,” I answer. They don’t introduce themselves back, but being shy, I don’t ask. I probably should have asked, but one can counter that by pointing out they didn’t have the manners to tell either, so there!

“How old is you?”

“32.” I don’t care, though I do feel this one-sided Inquisition is pretty rude, but that it’s ruder to show that I feel it’s rude.

“Do you live with someone?” I take this to mean, “So who takes care of you, ‘Tard?”

“I live with my mother,” I answer. Girl Scout Nelly here feels it would be unconsciable to lie, but I feel totally embarrassed now.  (Would you like my social security number and my blood type, too?)

“Why don’t your mother come out here,?”

“She doesn’t know how to swim and doesn’t care for the water.” Sigh.

“That bathing suit…..It’s phenomenal. Where did you get it?”

Ok, so  the 75% percent of me is now calling bullshit. I think I detect that subtle “We’re-fucking-with-you” lilt in their voices. Remember, I told you about this bathing suit before? Has a hole in the back like it’s trying to become a two-piece. Motley. The straps stretched so much  that I have to tie them together to keep my breasts from popping out. Looks so worn out that you’d think it was employed everyday  since Esther Williams stopped making  movies. Remember?

But 25% percent of me, Pollyanna on steroids, says that they might still think the floral pattern is pretty.

“Oh this old thing is so worn out and I need to get a new one, but I may have got it at Wal-Mart.” Groan.

“Can you swim?”

“Yes.” No, I’ve been practicing to be a manatee.

“We can’t swim. Can you teach us?”  I call bullshit again.Y’a’ll are in the deep end.

“Um….well….I guess.”

“You can teach us EVERY day.” What the fuck?

“Um ok, I guess.” Just the thing I wanted to do when I’m trying to just come out here and swim and evade being jumped on, oh the fun. Now, Lisa, said 25% Pollyanna. You should be glad people want to talk to you and that if they need help, you should help. Yeah, but they’re fucking with me and I just want to swim my fucking laps! whined 75% me.

At a bit of a loss, I try to decide what I should show the girls first. Treading water seems most important since they aren’t good n’ fat n’ buoyant like me. I show them. They don’t laugh, but I know they’re getting guffaws in their heads as  I humiliate myself. Their voices retain a saccharine, full of shit quality as they say they’re too scared  to do it in the deep end and they’re going in the shallow to practice, thank God! Now I might be able to continue my laps in peace.

Sometime during my swim, however, they stop me to say the shallow end is too shallow. I think ‘tough,’ but say, “Ok, well sorry.”

I finish my laps, exit the pool thinking “I’m free!”

I’m finishing up reading Prozac Nation when I hear, “Hey, you got any chips you can share with us?”

“No, sorry,” I reply, returning to my book. But they are persistent beggars. “I know you got some snack you could give us,” says one in an indignant tone. The other says woefully, “Please, we haven’t eaten anything in 2 days.”

Once again, bullshit alert! Now what the hell are they doing outside swimming, looking healthy? If one hasn’t ate anything in 2 days wouldn’t you be a tad too weak to want to go swimming? I can remember having bouts of  depression where I barely ate anything for a week and I doubt I felt much like swimming at all. Unless they’re looking for nutrients in the pool water (I liked the taste of pool water as a little kid, that  blissfully clean scent of chlorine), I marvel at them.

St. Pollyanna 25% begins to chastise 75% me. What if it’s true and they really are hungry? You know that family who left that note in the laundry room last year asking for food was really hungry! Besides, Bitch, if someone asks you for something and you can give it, isn’t it wrong to deny  her? Even if she doesn’t need it? Well? Would Jesus like someone who didn’t give when asked? No, Bitch, he wouldn’t, and you’re a bad person for even hesitating.

“I’ll be right back,” I say to the girls and go back to my apartment to fulfill my compulsion. Hurray! My mother is outside messing with her plants so at least I won’t have to explain  why I’m being an idiot yet. So into the fridge goes my hand.  All that’s there of a remotely snackable quality are little plastic cups of peaches and pears. So I get each of them a can of peaches, then a can of pears. All the while fuming, I grab a couple cans of orange soda. I look for plastic spoons, but seeing none I decide the girls aren’t so starved that they cant take their asses home to eat the fruit.

Back I go. Talk about your cheerful giver, but as I’ve said before I’m just a girl who can’t say no. “Oh, you don’t know how much this means to us,” spoken saccharine-sweet.

“No problem,” I mutter. As I watch them perusing their booty, there’s a taste in my mouth that sure isn’t peaches or pears.

Finally, it came time for the girls to leave with their family: A couple women carrying a large thermos and I think a small cooler, a man, and the trifecta…..a toddler  holding a bag of chips about the size of her.

I’m pissed. I knew they were full of shit, but to be so blatantly full of shit?!


Now, before I end this chronicle, started  June 26, I will tell you why I begrudged those bitches so much. It was a week before payday, and due to the whole cat/vet debacle, we had no money left and if my friend hadn’t bought us some groceries we wouldn’t have had any food left. I usually am not so hesitant to give, give, give, but I hated to give those liars my hard gotten food. I’m not a mean person, I just play one on this blog.

Princess Rubenesque’s Adventures Downtown

Lisa2 Comments

(Started Apr 12, bothered to finish today. Yay, I’m caught up!)

I intended on going to the parade Saturday morning, but awoke flustered and despairing of getting there on time, so I fell back on the couch and watched the thing on TV.  I was angry at myself for not going…I always go. It was so cool that our local hero was the parade marshal. Such a small, normal looking woman and God only knows how many people she saved when she took that guy down. She once was a police officer at a local beach where nothing happens and now look at her…people around the world know what she did. I bet she wishes it never happened though since she can only walk a bit now. I will reiterate though she is mega cool.

Saturday evening my mother and I went downtown to see the fireworks. We walked 6 blocks to the river, but it was a lovely evening and a pleasant walk in the historic district.  At night sometimes one can see inside their lovely homes, the painted or wallpapered rooms with their  pretentious chandeliers and antique furnishings. The other joy is all the people observing one can  get in, like the actively hallucinating guy who walked past us giving consolation to someone we couldn’t see. With the advent of bluetooth technology it can be difficult to tell if someone is nuts, but this guy’s jerky movements made insanity  a certainty. “He wouldn’t give us any money,” he told his invisible friend, then said, “Don’t worry about him though, man.”

The fireworks were beautiful and I think we had the best view we ever had, sitting in our fold-out chairs in clear view of where they were  shot off.  Then we went to the Chinese take-out for some soup. This joint gave birth to the term “seedy.” There’s always interesting people there. Someone opened the door to yell to a patron that their mutual pal is in jail, but she already knew and was cross but seemed to not view it as being as newsworthy as her friends did.

Soup is a rather ritual-oriented meal, especially the robust hot and sour they serve at Seedy China.  The soup is spicy hot and would not do for the average Anglo to gulp down, but it is the best I’ve ever tasted. In case you aren’t fortunate enough to know how to eat a pint of soup the proper way, allow me to school you on the perfect and essential way. You can thank me later for this vital skill.

Please recall, gentle reader, we did not grow up in a sty and must act accordingly. Unfold your napkin and set it in your lap (if you are lucky like me your stomach is one  large flap and if utilized properly, can act as a ‘paperweight’ for the napkin in your lap).  Take your spoon and begin. Begin from the left and take  sips until you’ve taken a sip by dipping your spoon, working vertically until you’re at the right side of the bowl.  Then put a few of those crisp noodles, at least 3 of them since you really prefer things in 3’s.  Eat the noodles in your soup. Now repeat the entire ritual until you’re done, and if you’re good at it, people won’t even realize you have a ‘strategy’ for eating.

Downtown’s most prevalent establishments open at night are bars, bars, and then bars.  You have to be careful down there because girls have got into trouble, but if you aren’t alone you’re pretty safe, especially if it isn’t really late at night.  So when the drunk chaps rolled up to the red light, two cars of them, I wasn’t worried for my physical safety.

“HEY BITCH!  LOOK HERE! YOU’RE FAT!”

Oh. How. Original. I’m sensible enough not to reply or look at them. As they drive away, to preserve my dignity, I mutter, “Fucking assholes.” But I seriously felt very little. I wasn’t aware of being angry or sad. But then I had one of my bad thoughts, the kind that are very disturbing to someone with OCD. My mind conjured an image of  those guys in an awful car crash, the kind with glass everywhere  and the cars crushed like soda cans. Which immediately upset me because I didn’t want the little bastards to die or be injured and I hoped they got home okay. Then I started to worry. A thought is just a thought, but I don’t like the thought at all. I started worrying as though the thought of them being killed would come true, though I knew I was being stupid.

What if the thought means you want them to crash?  I asked myself. No, and you know you don’t want any harm worse than a hangover tomorrow to happen to them, Lisa, I replied in my mind. But the awful thought of those guys dying lodged into my mind, and I sought reassurance from my mom.

“I wish you could worry about something. No, you don’t want them to crash or die,” Mom said. I really exasperate her sometimes, but I eventually realized she was right. If I really wanted something to happen to them, I would not be worried about it or if I wished it I would know I wished it. Fair enough.

And far as I know, the two cars of  drunken idiots made it home safe and sound that night. All’s well that ends well.

Lisa vs. Ms. Pinkpig

Lisa4 Comments

“Amazing part is someone Like Steven Hawking does not let his Disability limit him yet Book let’s her fake disability limit her to live a complete and full life. Go figure(she makes excuses) and on that note, I’m off to bed.”  

Recall, gentle reader, that I have frequented a chatroom for 4 years or more, so we chatters know each other in some capacity, and during all that time I have known Ms. Pinkpig. I will call her Ms. Pinkpig because to say her  screen name or real name would be rude. Ms. Pinkpig has a rotten disposition, a disposition worthy of a sow or some other barnyard animal, and the Pepto Bismal color of her font mirrors the sweetness of her words. The above quote was directed at me tonight by her (people often call me “Book” in there, the beginning of my screen name).   

What did she mean you might ask? Why did the words make me burst into tears? Because her words are true to a point. But only to  a point. I have to remind myself that this is the same woman who finds tragedies that befall fellow chat members funny and diverting. I thank God I don’t dislike anyone that much. Once upon a time, she even wrote something poking fun at a fellow member’s son falling out of a second story window and being severely injured. So I’m talking about someone with a few glitches in her personality.   

And yet I cried. Not the first time. To be so well cushioned in body, my skin is remarkably thin. Anyway, what she meant is this:  

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is not a disability.  It is a fake reason to be on disability. My anxiety disorder is just an excuse and I’m just a lazy bum.   

First off, OCD is very real and for some people it can be debilitating. My anxiety disorder affects me in all sorts of ways she’ll never know and adding to it my social anxiety, it makes me into quite a mental midget cocktail.   

I did try to get a job a few times, went to the unemployment office, and went to vocational rehab. The man at the unemployment office said I needed to seem more confident, make eye contact. This just made me more anxious and made my wish to disappear all the more palatable.  

The woman at vocational rehab didn’t care. She wanted me to clean up elderly people for a living and I am really disgusted by bodily functions, though I do love older people. I decided perhaps I could will myself into it and was resigned to my would-be career. But the VR woman was so rude on the phone I ended up crying and never going back.  

You may think “excuses, excuses” but I did try.  

So I applied for Social Security. The psychologist was very kind who evaluated me, told my mother and I that I would be able to get disability, but might have to try more than once. He was right, but I got approved the second time I submitted the form because a paralegal helped us.   

And so here I am, 32 years-old, a virgin with no life. Of course, I have my diversions. I love swimming, walking, reading, writing, drawing, and doing a tiny bit of eBay. But on days like today when someone cuts me to the core, I get to thinking how little my life means. I might as well as taken my Associate in Arts (aka college transfer, aka “Would you like fries with that?”) degree and flushed it down the toilet. Buh-bye!  

The last time I saw my therapist, I mentioned  Ms. Pinkpig and a couple of the sowish things she said to me. Ms. Pinkpig had managed to type out with her cloven hooves a couple of things I mulled in my head for a while, such a dear swine she is. First, she said my mom wishes she could put me in a group home. Then the  worst thing Ms. Pinkpig said was she wouldn’t be sorry if I died, that I would be one less tax payer burden. And I thought and  thought and thought.  

I wondered why my life was spared when bad things happen everyday to people who might have done something that made a difference. All those people who died too young by accident, sickness, murder, or suicide. I even think back to highschool. There was this beautiful boy, 19 I think, and it was his senior year. From my observations, he seemed happy. He and some of the other guys would sing the theme from The Love Boat when the teacher wasn’t around just to make everyone laugh. Then one day he monoxided himself because his girlfriend was carrying another guy’s baby, from what I heard (I doubt it was just one thing, but no doubt that sure iced the cake).   

Then I think about another boy. I didn’t hear about him until a few years after highschool. This girl and I were talking in drawing class. Upon hearing what highschool I went to, she asked me if I knew one of her best friends, So-&-So.  “Yes, I knew So-&-So. He was the kid who smiled a lot and turned red when he laughed,” I said.   

And he died. I was totally shocked. Somehow he ran into a tractor-trailer. I hope it was an instant death. But man, how unfair is that! He was so happy all the time. Probably would have made something of himself, and if not, it wouldn’t matter much, because he had joi d’vivre. Shit.  

Why them? Why wasn’t it me who rammed into a tractor-trailer? Why when I was 7 and we got into that car accident in the Datsun my grandpa was in the passenger seat? If he hadn’t been visiting us I likely would have been in the passenger seat and not in the backseat just shaken. We never wore our seatbelts in those days. The impact of the other car caused my grandpa’s head  to go through the windshield, so that there was an indentation out of shattered glass. Imagine if it had been a little girl there. I’d have been dead or mangled.    

Before that, I am 4. I crawl around the Florida room and I see a capsule on the step down there. Blue and  clear with white pellets inside. I picked it up. “Do you eat the outside?” I thought. I pulled the capsule apart and the contents spilled into my hand. I ate them. It seems to me to taste a tad like mint, not strong.  

 I don’t remember the rest. I think I just fell asleep or passed out , either way I was none the worse for wear. My mom, years later, thinks it was probably one of my grandpa’s blood thinners and that I’m lucky. I guess I could have died then too, especially since no one knew what I had done.  

Maybe I am supposed to be here. Maybe there is a reason for my life and it will one day fall into my lap when I least expect it. As they say, where there’s life there’s hope.  

  

The Lesson