Kacy

Today is the five year anniversary of my friend Alex's death and it's really shitty!!!!!!!!!!


I feel like I wanted to say something but I'm too exhausted, I don't know what to say. I looked up the 7k LJ entry I wrote about her funeral and considered x-posting it here but honestly it's so fucking disjointed and ~ IT'S BAd WRiTING!! ~~~ so I'm like, nah we're good on this.

I mean don't get me wrong, it's definitely like an appropriate journal entry that I wrote while I was bawling and sleep deprived and it jumps around a lot because I was like freshly torn open and just trying to get all my thoughts out. But I guess it's gratuitous to resurface it at this point. After I reread it I didn't feel the need.


Highlights include:

- How guilty I felt that she OD'd and how we'd grown apart after high school cause she'd started doing drugs and I couldn't deal with it.

- How I felt like she was trying to communicate with me through the radio lmfao because Rooster by Alice in Chains came on while I was sitting in my car outside the funeral home and it started the exact moment I saw the casket come through the doors.

- How the whole situation felt surreal and how when we were kids she'd been a pathological liar so I kept feeling like it wasn't real, it was another lie, and that her body looked so awful and so unlike herself that even standing there over her dead fucking body still didn't make it feel real.

- How her mom latched onto me and sobbed and it ruined me.

- How I was blocked in after the burial and had to wait for other people to pull out and I sat in my car just fucking completely losing it and I felt so stupid cause I was there all by myself and had no one who could be with me and I didn't want anyone to see me crying my eyes out all by myself cause it was really lame and pathetic.




Anyway I miss her lol.

I feel really dumb talking about the abusive relationship I was in cause I've been out for, what? Three years already? But it still affects me so much sometimes and I still think about it so much in the strangest ways, and it shaped so much of who I am now, and even though it ultimately was awful and traumatic, there were good times, too, and it's the longest relationship I was ever in (only relationship I was ever in LMAO) and blah blah. It's such an obvious point of reference for so many things in my life but I feel like such a broken record every time I talk about it to anyone and it's really embarrassing.


I say that to say: I'm moving in a couple weeks and I've been trying to pack, which means I inevitably reached the box under my bed where I have all my old journals. Which means I had to flip through a few of them and like, read through my old angst LOL.

But it's weird because some of them are more personal than others, some are intensely candid, some are performative. And I flipped through one that I had filled up while I was in that relationship and it's just amazing how honest I was being with myself about how shitty it was.

I know at the time that I would gloss over it to my friends so that no one knew how hurt I actually was all the time, and I know I made a lot of excuses. Even in this journal it's like, I won't say I was making excuses, per se? It's just crazy that I was so completely aware of how bad it was and my attitude was kinda like "*SHRUG* whateva let's see where it goes."

When it was going on I used to struggle a lot trying to decide if he was manipulating me. I usually came to the conclusion that he wasn't, not on purpose, and only because I didn't think he was smart enough to. I thought he was just dumb and selfish. But I read over some old entries and just, ugh. I know I had my eyes open at the time, I know I told myself he was too stupid to be manipulative and that it was just a coincidence and he was just being a dick, but fuck man. Being removed from it and reading over some of what happened as a timeline is really upsetting.

Like, I still can't say for sure if he was doing this shit on purpose, but. He could've been.

I think when we finally broke up, I was so heartbroken because I wanted him to be better. So much. So, so much. And I had this idea in my head of how good it would've been if he'd gotten his shit together. I was so heartbroken over the loss of potential more than anything else. And it was really hard to finally give up on him and really accept that he wasn't going to change.

That's the thing that still gets to me sometimes when I think about him. And fuck, it's just really exhausting to sit here and read journal entries from almost five years ago that were written by a person who still had faith in him.




Anyway.

I have some big life changes coming up in a few weeks (corresponding to aforementioned move) and I think I'll probably be using DW more to check in like this, longform. Hopefully it's not all about my shitty ex.

I swear like, it's not the only thing I think about! I swear I'm like. ALMOST COMPLETELY OVER HIM LOL. But I know several of the entries in this journal have been about him already and it's just that like, this is one of the only places I felt safe talking about it, because I'm so self conscious about how often it comes up with my friends and it just makes me feel really fucking stupid. It's not just that I'm still talking about it three years later, but it always makes me feel so stupid for getting myself into that situation in the first place.

As per tradition on LJ, I would disappear for months and then update like 4 times in a week. SO DON'T BE ALARMED, THIS IS NORMAL SO FAR LOL.

But anyway.

For the past eight months I've been working two jobs, which means I was usually working seven days a week. I was generally getting 1-2 days off a month. But today was my last day at my weekend job, and..... it's one of those things like, I'm burnt out and I want more time to myself to do things I want to do creatively? But at the same time I'm always worried that depression will get a foothold if I don't keep myself busy. SO !! Going into it with my eyes open, hopefully I can keep it at bay.

So the weekend job I had was newborn photography in the hospital. It was okay. It was shit money but I liked the work. I'm not super into babies. I don't want kids. This job didn't kick in some dormant maternal instinct or anything. But they were okay. I liked working with them. There's something very humbling about meeting people on the first few days of their lives. They're these precious blank slates and I felt like I loved each of them. I would have to cuddle them and rock them to get them to calm down sometimes and it was such an overwhelming feeling of trust to hold these vulnerable little creatures.


I wanted to post a thing I wrote back in May, since it's just been collecting dust in my hard drive and we're in here now. It's about a baby I had at work.

The thing about this job that never occurs to anybody is that sometimes the babies die. And sometimes the family still wants photos, because it's the only opportunity they'll have. I personally made it through my eight months only getting two, but it happens more often than most people realize. No one wants to talk about babies dying, no one wants to admit it. It's something so awful that we don't know how to. I was only working weekends, so getting two makes sense. I would say on average I noticed a couple a month, and that's only accounting for families who wanted pictures. Sometimes they don't, and they make it in and out of the hospital totally off our radar.



The two I had didn't necessarily upset me, I wouldn't say. For some reason I'm a mess about the weirdest anxiety bullshit but then Actual Things don't phase me at all. Thanks, brain. I know some of my coworkers would get really upset by doing them and they'd cry after. I didn't feel emotional at all, but I couldn't get them out of my head for days after. It didn't feel like trauma, though, it felt more like reverence. Just thoughtfulness. Looking death in the face just makes you a little deeper for a while. And holding a dead baby is such an intense tactile experience that I could still feel them in my hands for days after. I'd stare at my palms and think about how cold the skin was, and how delicate they were. How their little faces could rip like paper if you weren't careful.



It feels weird that I was able to experience this and see behind this curtain that most people don't. I'm not sure why life works like this, like what gave me the right. I can't know. Most people go through their whole lives without ever meeting a dead baby, you know? But I had that one weekend job the year I was 29 where I photographed demises and met freshly bereaved mothers and had to take deep breaths so that my hands wouldn't shake because their bodies were so delicate and I didn't want to break them.



So that said. I had to write it down both times just to get it out of my head. I might as well share it. It's kind of messy stream of consciousness stuff. I've considered revising it and making it neat but I haven't figure out a good reason to, so whatever. Anyway. Here we go.


( this was about the first one, her name was Sophie )

So oh god. I do this survey every year on my LJ for like, the past. 10 years or something. BUT I'VE DEFECTED FROM LJ FINALLY SO HERE IT IS, IN HERE. Let's see what happens.


Post the first sentence of the first entry each month this year.

(I just started here on DW so none of these entries exist here, they're all from my LJ haha)

January: I finally gave up on LJ but I'm like beside myself with bullshit and nonsense so I needed to stop by and unload my feelings for a few minutes.

February: So anyway Sam found us a house in Burbank and signed the lease yesterday.

March: So like. I was hoping to leave this week. I finished working last Thursday, and Friday I drove to Newark to ship my stuff out via Amtrak, and my parents original closing date was today (Tuesday), so my original plan was to finish packing over the weekend at gtfo as soon as I could so that I wasn't in the house while my parents' moving company was here cause that sounded like a terrible experience that I didn't want to be a part of. (This is more than one sentence but they were fragments and would've been out of context lol)

April: Figured I'd pop in and update now that I'm here and mostly settled in.

NO ENTRIES FOR MONTHS

July: So I've settled in pretty well in Burbank, nothing to really complain about thus far.

AND THAT WAS IT LOL WHOOPS SORRY I DITCHED YOU LJ, IT WAS FUN FOR LIKE 15 YEARS.



And then here's a survey that I do every year. I copied it from the one I did in 2015, let's see if I met my goals and how depressing it will be.


1. What did you do in 2016 that you'd never done before?
I drove from New York to California ALL BY MYSELF and it was pretty fucking fun. Hung out backstage at the Whisky (twice!). Visited Los Angeles, which was good because I fucking like MOVED THERE without having ever actually been there. Fucking bold right? Got my first legit full time job, instead of having 2-3 jobs at once. OMG I MET ANNE RICE LOL. And Christopher Rice was there too and we fangirled together. I got my wisdom teeth removed. Had a one night stand. THEN ANOTHER LIKE. 6 DAYS LATER. BECAUSE I AM WILD.

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions for 2016? Will you make more for 2017?
I don't think I made any solid ones cause this time last year I was just really focused on getting my shit together to move. BUT I DID MOVE. So there's that. And I don't think I wanna make like legit resolutions for 2017 BUT!!! BUT! I am gonna try to do NaNo in January, because in November I was busy blitz re-reading the Vampire Chronicles lmao.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My old supervisor from my job in New York did, like, 3 days ago. Adorable.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
I mean if David Bowie counts, but no.

( Read more... )

Jk.


So the ongoing theme in my life, forever, is that no matter what I do, and how good I try to be, it's never enough for anyone, and there's some weird social anxiety/potentially aspergersy barrier between me and every person around me, where I'm never communicating effectively that I'm a Decent Human Being, and everyone thinks I'm a douchebag, and I think I'm a douchebag as well, so. What're ya gonna do.


And it's so natural for me to always modify myself, and my behavior, and my expectations to lessen the blunt force of everything that happens to me. I'd like to pretend it's out of resilience, but it's really just me being a doormat. It doesn't make anything feel better, it just allows me to curl up with all my feelings and never admit to anyone how things actually are.


So Christmas has been a touchy subject the past few weeks. To be honest, it's been touchy since August. I spend all summer panicking leading up to the Birthday Phone Call to my nephews, and then once I get that out of the way I can start worrying about Christmas. Should I go to Christmas? Can I even afford to go to Christmas? If I don't go, will the whole family judge me? If I don't go, will I drink myself to death because spending Christmas alone is so goddamn depressing? Why am I even complaining because I hate Christmas anyway and think it's stupid? Was I ever known to be one of tremendous Christmas cheer? Doesn't my family think I'm a grumpy asshole anyway? I've never been an amazing daughter and it's just as well that I don't come. Last Christmas I spent with my parents was when Alex died and I was so checked out and depressed all day and they must think I'm the most ungrateful brat.

For general backstory: I got in a fight with my brother's wife two years ago, she didn't think my apology was sincere, so she excommunicated me from the family, and now I don't get to hang out with them at holidays LOL GREAT. Pretty painful. Excruciatingly so.

My roommates put up lights and a tree. I came with them to get the tree, just to feel like I was being social. Even when I lived at home my parents always had a fake tree. I don't have any memories of Christmas tree shopping. So I kind of fluttered around the sides while they looked through all the trees, and I had no idea what they were looking for or how to help. I was going to chip in for it but they never asked me to, and I've spent the past two weeks feeling panicky, like I should've. At the same time, I'm not the one who wanted a tree. Maybe it's not my problem. Maybe it isn't fair to ask me to pay for it, because I haven't spent any time in the living room since they put the tree up, because looking at it cuts me deep in my soul. I don't turn it on when they aren't home. I haven't turned on the Christmas lights outside, either.

They're going away for the week. I don't imagine I'll be putting any of the lights on. I don't see why. I don't really want to look at them.



Maybe four or five years ago I "came out" to my mom about how I didn't want to celebrate Christmas anymore. Not to say that I wouldn't participate, but I told her I didn't believe in commercialism bullshit and that I would rather contribute wine and food and crafts, stuff like that, and I wasn't going to be Christmas shopping anymore. I think it's an unneeded financial burden that always stressed me out every year, plus, when I really started dissecting it, I couldn't come up with a single Christmas time value that I felt like I wanted to celebrate. My parents are atheists and just go along with it, regardless, so I didn't think my mom would be so offended. Except, of course, that she's offended by everything. I had said I'd get presents for the kids but I wasn't going to go broke trying to buy her random bullshit that she didn't want, just for the sake of going with the crowd.

She cried and said "But it's for the children!" and I went "...okay, but I'm not a child." I mean, I TOLD her I'd still get things for the kids, I'm not sure where the disconnect is except that my mom makes everything into a crisis.


And that's what's so. Disarming. About all of this. Part of me wants the "go see your family in a completely non-denominational way because it feels good and you haven't seen any of them since you moved" and I'm also still so deeply wounded by the fact that most of the family hates me and doesn't want me there? And at the end of the day, it's so confusing to feel this hurt and left out when my family have never really been such prizes to begin with. I could beat myself up all day about not being more grateful, and I could sit here and call myself a brat for complaining despite the GOOD things that my parents have done for me. But at the end of the day, my family has always been toxic as fuck, and I'm only mourning it because it's familiar, and I don't know what to do without them.


My roommates kept asking me if I was going to go home for Christmas. I don't know how many times I had to tell them no. They like to oversimplify the situation and go "Oh just go, you should." Cool, thanks. I mean, sure. But I wasn't going to spend $700 on a plane ticket, anyway. And, while I'm feeling sorry for myself, I'll also obsess over the fact that no one even invited me.


So apparently my mom mailed me presents, and they arrived yesterday. The mailman left them on the back porch, so none of us saw the package until this morning. So it sat in the rain all day and night. My roommate texted me "You might want to get up and have Christmas come early because the gifts are soaked." Which. I appreciate the gesture, but A) I was not awake, and I leave myself enough time in the morning to get ready and leave, so seeing this when I woke up didn't help me at all. B) I'm glad she's still acting like there's any Christmas cheer to be had at all lmao.

But they had opened the package and laid the presents all around the kitchen to dry, but I didn't have time to deal with it before I left for work. So I'll have to do it when I get home. But I thought this was the perfect allegory of my holiday season. Love it.



Last year my mom left a bunch of gifts. I think she felt really guilty that they were leaving me by myself. In fact, I know she felt guilty, cause she cried about it later when we talked about it after they came home. And I remember pacing the house all day, wailing, crying so hard that I kept having to lay down to take naps, and I kept drinking so that it would stop, and every time I looked at the gifts I just couldn't even touch them. And. I don't want to open these ones either. I might ask my roommates to open them for me. I just feel like it's such a visceral ritual, the paper and all that shit, and I just don't even want to look at it. And I hate myself for feeling that way, I feel so guilty because my mom tried to do something nice for me and I can't even accept it.


And I keep thinking about them all on Christmas. And the part of me that has social anxiety always takes the "no one would notice if I was not here" attitude, and I want to think that. I'm not sure if they notice. But I keep thinking about my brother, and how rude and insensitive he was about my social anxiety, and I keep thinking about how he made it like I was a horrible person for not calling, instead of understanding that it's hard for me, and I keep thinking: When he thinks about me on Christmas, does he think I'm partying, and being a hedonist, and celebrating with reckless abandon because I'm a wild and terrible beast? Or can he comprehend that I'll be under my blankets, crying, in the dark, hurting all over because no one likes me, and because I miss my family so much that I want to die?

I know I fuck up sometimes, but I'm not a terrible person, and I don't understand why they all treat me like I am.

I'm not at all ready to actually do this (at least, I don't think I am?!) but for the past couple days I can't stop thinking about what would happen if there were some type of scuffle between a vampire and a tyrant. Instinctively I feel like the way to work out a headcanon would be to write it all down and iron the details out BUT THAT'S LIKE TOO RIDICULOUS FOR WORDS.

But THIS ALL STARTED because I was talking on FB about how people tear Marius down for being "problematic", and that my opinion is "you are correct, however calling him problematic is a little dramatic because he's a fictitious character and has no bearing on the real world and people use various types of evil and sketchiness to explore abstract ideas within the confines of fiction" and also "I love villains anyway so I really don't care because in case no one noticed, Wesker is my other fandom hero and idgaf".

So of course the idea of Marius and Wesker being in close proximity within my brain at that moment had me like WOAH JEEZ.


My mind is like on fire thinking about the possibilities. I feel like those two would probably have a begrudging respect for each other and stay out of each other's ways. But I'm curious to know if vampires would be able to drink the T-Virus blood, because it isn't a regular disease that the Blood would be able to purge, and under enough duress the T-Virus could trigger a mutation, and if the mutation is on some molecular level does it then make the T-blood not really enough like human blood anymore?!


I have like a deep, cavernous and labyrinthian Wesker headcanon that, at this point, has a mind of its own and is so fucking out there and barely hanging onto real canon by a thread but. THIS IS WHAT I THINK ABOUT TO PASS THE HOURS AT WORK. It's my new dilemma. I mean. It's amusing me but I'm not literally going to write it. Probably. >> IT'S LIKE TOO MANY STOIC BLONDE DUDES FOR ONE SPACE, IT WILL NEVER WORK. TOO CARTOONY FOR WORDS.

This is my third time starting this entry, because my thoughts are so convoluted and tangled and I can't make sense of any of it.


The short version is this: I don't know how to be compassionate without being a doormat.


I was ready to make a quick sketch of My History With Damaged People, but it was turning into somewhat of a novella, and if we're telling the truth I could probably publish an entire book on the subject. Everyone could get their own chapter. The Liar, The Whore, The Maniac, The Suicidal Boyfriend. It's as if I have a tractor-beam in my heart that draws these people to me.

A lot of it has to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a small town and went to a small school. Pre-Hot Topic boom all the weirdos were basically winging it; there wasn't a cookie-cutter approach to being a weird kid the way there came to be in the post-Avril world. I myself looked like I had just crawled out from under Les Innocents, lots of pieced-together thrifted black articles, the occasional pathetic nu-metal tshirt. There wasn't a standard uniform. Even today, as an adult, it's easy to spot a metalhead and give the nod, but at that time it was just. The few of us who were weird. And along with being "weird" came the fact that we were all fucking crazy.

So, without getting into it like I'd originally planned, I'll just keep it as: All of my best friends as an adolescent ultimately wound up being toxic and abusive and broke so many little pieces from me that I'm still trying to find.

Then, as an adult, we can gloss over the experience of being ex-communicated from my family because they didn't appreciate the burden of my social anxiety, and couldn't muster up the empathy to meet me halfway on issues like The Phone, in which I don't call as often as I should because I am paralyzed with fear, and they chalk it up to me not caring about them and generally being a Terrible Person. Now it's me that's the damaged one.



And my point in all of this is that it's carved a very narrow path in which to live. My family disowning me has been, to date, the most painful experience in my life, and one that I haven't fully learned to cope with yet. So, feeling this rejection so keenly, all the time, makes me strive to be patient and empathetic and compassionate. It makes me look back on the old imperfect friendships with shame, because, although they were toxic and unhealthy, I try to make myself believe that I could've salvaged them somehow, I could've helped these people, and if I'd been more patient to the fact that they were mentally ill instead of writing it off as them being assholes, it would've been different, and maybe I'd sleep better at night.






I'm setting the stage here to discuss the recent events involving The Suicidal Boyfriend. Who's now the ex-boyfriend. And the reason that I've started the entry up multiple times now is because when I get to this part I wilt. It's bothering me, and I keep thinking I want to talk about it, and write it down so that I can organize my thoughts, but. When it's actually time, when it's in front of my face, I think it just still hurts too much.

Everything involving him always opens up a floodgate. There's a thread going back the whole time I've known him, just past seven years now, and if I get upset about one thing I always wind up getting drawn into the next thing and the next thing. And in the end I'm always emotionally maimed, and past the end, I wind up blaming myself. Because I haven't learned how to stick up for myself, because cutting him out of my life always conflicted with my need to be compassionate and empathetic, and I so desperately tried to undo the mistakes I'd made with the other fucking lunatics who've come through my life.

It's so hard to talk about because whenever I bring up the bad things about him, I feel so deeply ashamed that I put up with it for so long. There's another side to the coin, of course, and I have to keep telling myself that. Things weren't always bad. He's sick but he's not a bad person. I'm strong enough to bear the brunt of his illness if that's what it takes to get him through. I love him and that's something I'm willing to do for him. But when I talk about the bad things. They just seem so overpowering. And my friends would judge me, and give me irrelevant advice, and after a while I knew I couldn't keep coming to them about it, over and over like a broken record. I kept so much of it to myself and it makes me feel so suffocated.


So it's a lot to talk about. I don't have a coherent way to get it out yet. But it's here, it's in me. I need to chip away it a little at a time until I can come up with something cohesive to say.




It's okay with me that damaged people are drawn to me. I think it's something I'm even proud of. It fits with my goal of being compassionate and patient and saintly, and all this experience has probably made me a good listener and a good friend. But I've seen how it can be. I know it can get abusive. I know there are lines to draw when it's not worth it, when it isn't reciprocated in some way. And as much as I wish I could be a saint for everyone in my life, sometimes I just don't have the energy anymore.