I feel like I'm lucky in many ways. I can afford to live on my own, I make my own decisions, I have tons of friends who love me, I'm starting a career (no matter how annoying it is), I live in a country where I'm safe and sound every day.. but being lucky hasn't erased the pain I've been feeling lately. And I can't really even put it into words. At least I don't think I can.
Thanksgiving Day Freewrite. Twenty minutes starting now.
I'm sad. The pretty sunlight cascading through the window doesn't put a smile on my face anymore. I've let my two plants die. The curtains are closed in my bedroom, so when I enter it I feel like I'm entering a funeral home. Plenty of people offer to spend time with me to cheer me up, but I turn them down. I know, I just know that nothing they can say can make me genuinely happy. I don't want to let them down. I don't want to expose them to my contagious negativity.
So what's wrong in my life? I don't even think I can tell you. Yesterday someone who I care about very much told me that I'm the strongest person that she knows. She said that I "got guts." This is coming from someone who's husband murdered her son. I don't know, I told her that I don't feel strong. I feel weak.
I was strong to get where I am, but I'm coasting where I am pretty weakly. Something needs to change. Something is wrong in my life. Well, many things are wrong in my life. My mother will never be the mother that I need her to be. My father will never be the father that I wish he could be. My grandmother has her real family. My sisters gave up on having a relationship with me years ago. Haven't spoke to my brother in who knows how long. My uncle tries reaching out to me but frankly...
I don't want to intrude. They've built bonds and I don't want to intrude any bonds. I've been the missing cousin for many years and first of all, I wouldn't even know where to begin inviting myself back into their lives. I don't even want to try. I'm not even someone that they would like. I'm nothing like any of them.
It's just me here, by myself. I found a cure to this big black cloud that's hovering over my body, and the cure is to move. I need to pack my shit up and move out of this town. I look online every day for apartments that I can afford but nothing has sparked my interest as of yet.
I need to be strong again. Strong Nicole fucks shit up to make it perfect. I've been doing that for years, fucking shit up when things got too easy. Easy is boring to me. I don't want to live an easy life. Sitting here in my dark apartment being unhappy and having no family is easy. I want to move to a new town and throw some chaos into the equation. I need to be strong.
So what am I going to do this Thanksgiving? Hide, really. I lied to a lot of people to get out of going to their houses for Thanksgiving. Frankly, I don't want to intrude on anyone's family time. It's not their fault I have a fucked up family that doesn't really want to see me. And the family that does want to see me (i.e. my uncle), as I said, I don't want to intrude the bonds. I've been missing for many years. It wouldn't feel right.
I'm sitting here drinking coffee out of my pink "I love men in uniform" mug and thinking about how much I hate the world. I hate everything, really. I advised my mother yesterday that I'm crossing my fingers for the 21st. I hope the fucking Mayan calendar is right. I know it isn't, but as I told my mother, I have to have something to look forward to. My mom said she'd call me on the 22nd. I told her not to, that it's going to be an awful day for me if the world didn't end. She laughed at me and told me I'm twisted.
I'M twisted. Oh yes, I'm totally twisted. Because I'M the one who told my daughter "I hope you get AIDS and rot." Psht, I'm not even going to get into that. But I will say that my mother saying that to me was the most epic catalyst I've had in a long time. I went from being very minimally miserable to being fucking.. I don't know, Eeyore on downers in a matter of like ten seconds. And it fucked shit up. I was doing okay, but now I'm just always generally down.
I'm talking to my mom again, yes, but I'm just overall miserable. It doesn't help that my job is creating unrealistic deadlines for me. I go to work and I'm miserable, I come home and I'm miserable. I go to sleep and I dream miserable dreams. I'm miserable right now on a holiday where you're supposed to be thankful for what you have.
I am thankful for what I have. I guess. I'm thankful that I'm alive. I'm thankful that I still have a few small reasons to be alive.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Thursday, November 8, 2012
How things are.
Let me preface this by saying that my mother had an extremely bad head injury. Sixty-six stitches across her forehead. Eight below her left eye. I almost lost her. A few hours before it happened, a man said to me, "you love your mom don't you?" I looked over at her and she had a smile. I said "yes." He assured me that my mom loved me too.
Then when it happened I looked down at her face that was covered in blood. Red was bleeding into the whites of her eyes. She stared up at me in a daze and a smile slowly appeared on her face. I immediately laid down. If I wouldn't have, I would have passed out. I thought I was going to lose my mother.
In a way, I did, because she was never the same due to the brain damage that occurred.
I remember I made her cry when I criticized the big gashes her face. It hurt her but it hurt me just as much. I wish I could go back in time and erase what I said.
My dad said to me, shortly afterwards, "Nicole at some point you just start to realize that, you know, things just are the way that they are. And there is nothing you can do about it."
My mom has been emotionally abusive to me since it happened, as most people know. She's always been a provider, the bread winner in our family. But that's really that only thing she's got going for her as a parent. Part of me understands why though. She grew up in poverty, lived in an orphanage for a portion of her life, had a schizophrenic mother, had to steal food to eat, was sold into prostitution, had multiple abortions as a result, had a sister that was violently raped and disappeared...
My mom had a rough life. So rough that she never really got to develop parenting skills.
Yesterday, completely 100% unprovoked, she bashed me. She kept pushing and pushing. Harder and harder. But I refused to fight back. It's not in my nature. I don't like to fight. After about 40 minutes of it, I couldn't take it. I said one thing. ONE thing. And it ended in her telling me that she hopes I get AIDS and rot. She hung up on me. She's done this stuff to me before. Many times. Once I stopped talking to her for about six months.
This time was different though. I didn't cry. I didn't drink myself to near death. I handled it well. Going to bed was impossible though. All of the sad feelings crept up on me. In the dark I stared at the ceiling thinking about how glad I am that my father didn't buy me a gun, because death has been looking awfully more shiny here of late.
More shiny than it ever should.
Today my dad called me. I answered and he asked me what's wrong. I told him what happened and advised him that I did nothing wrong. He agreed with me. He begged my mom to take the phone but she refused. "Talk to your daughter" he kept saying but she refused the phone. After a good ten attempts, she grabbed the phone and said "what?" in a nasty tone. I said, "I just wanted to talk about work." She threw the phone at my dad. He begged her again. After nearly ten minutes, she finally talked to me. No apology of course, and she still things she's completely in the right. And she probably still wishes I get AIDS and rot...
But I'm glad we're talking. I can't take another holiday alone in my living room. I can't hurt my dad anymore because my mother is deteriorating mentally and saying things that a mother should never say to a daughter. My dad deserves a daughter who's always there during holidays. So does my grandmother. And I'm not going to let my mother ruin that.
I'll be civil.
Then when it happened I looked down at her face that was covered in blood. Red was bleeding into the whites of her eyes. She stared up at me in a daze and a smile slowly appeared on her face. I immediately laid down. If I wouldn't have, I would have passed out. I thought I was going to lose my mother.
In a way, I did, because she was never the same due to the brain damage that occurred.
I remember I made her cry when I criticized the big gashes her face. It hurt her but it hurt me just as much. I wish I could go back in time and erase what I said.
My dad said to me, shortly afterwards, "Nicole at some point you just start to realize that, you know, things just are the way that they are. And there is nothing you can do about it."
My mom has been emotionally abusive to me since it happened, as most people know. She's always been a provider, the bread winner in our family. But that's really that only thing she's got going for her as a parent. Part of me understands why though. She grew up in poverty, lived in an orphanage for a portion of her life, had a schizophrenic mother, had to steal food to eat, was sold into prostitution, had multiple abortions as a result, had a sister that was violently raped and disappeared...
My mom had a rough life. So rough that she never really got to develop parenting skills.
Yesterday, completely 100% unprovoked, she bashed me. She kept pushing and pushing. Harder and harder. But I refused to fight back. It's not in my nature. I don't like to fight. After about 40 minutes of it, I couldn't take it. I said one thing. ONE thing. And it ended in her telling me that she hopes I get AIDS and rot. She hung up on me. She's done this stuff to me before. Many times. Once I stopped talking to her for about six months.
This time was different though. I didn't cry. I didn't drink myself to near death. I handled it well. Going to bed was impossible though. All of the sad feelings crept up on me. In the dark I stared at the ceiling thinking about how glad I am that my father didn't buy me a gun, because death has been looking awfully more shiny here of late.
More shiny than it ever should.
Today my dad called me. I answered and he asked me what's wrong. I told him what happened and advised him that I did nothing wrong. He agreed with me. He begged my mom to take the phone but she refused. "Talk to your daughter" he kept saying but she refused the phone. After a good ten attempts, she grabbed the phone and said "what?" in a nasty tone. I said, "I just wanted to talk about work." She threw the phone at my dad. He begged her again. After nearly ten minutes, she finally talked to me. No apology of course, and she still things she's completely in the right. And she probably still wishes I get AIDS and rot...
But I'm glad we're talking. I can't take another holiday alone in my living room. I can't hurt my dad anymore because my mother is deteriorating mentally and saying things that a mother should never say to a daughter. My dad deserves a daughter who's always there during holidays. So does my grandmother. And I'm not going to let my mother ruin that.
I'll be civil.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Evaluating Religion Once Again
Religion has gained my interest recently. I've considered myself an atheist for many years and it's been so many years, in fact, that I never really think about it. I just know that there is no "creator" based off of things I've learned in geology class, chemistry class, history class, physics class, astronomy class, etc. Upon learning what I learned, I knew one hundred percent without a doubt in my mind that there is no fucking way that there is an omniscient being out there that made this universe, even in a way that a deist may believe.
The Higgs Boson came to light not that long ago and it made me think about religion again, solidifying my stance as an atheist even more, but also making me more interested in things such as Hinduism and Buddism just for the mental benefits.
I mean, religion is the opiate of the masses. And I'm all about sticking my hand in the cookie jar to get a taste of the sweetness. So I've looked into the non-religious traditions of Buddhist and Hindu culture and hold those to my heart as a way of feeling "one with the universe" in my ever-so-hippy way that my coworker teases me about. You know, doing the tree pose by candle light and listening to Krishna Das while meditating. And also, everyone appreciates a little nonattachment like Buddha preached.
However, I'm an intelligent being. I don't think that there's a god in my tree or that the Book of the Dead is true by any means. I collect Ganesh statutes (Remover of Obstacles) because it makes me happy in the same way that my unicorn pillow pet makes me happy, not because I think they're going to make my mom suddenly love the gays.
About five years ago I spent time researching various religions and in that period of time I even read the Book of Satanism. I thought to myself "holy shit that's a lot of animal sacrificing." But then I read the Bible and thought "holy shit this is even more animal sacrificing." It's all the same. Kill things to make some invisible person happy. And when it's not "kill things to make some invisible person happy," it's "cook vegetarian meals to make some invisible person happy" (for instance, in Hinduism).
I've had holy water squirted on me, I've kneeled in Catholic churches, I've done readings in front of hundreds of people in non-Catholic churches, I've meditated in a room full of devout Buddhists, I've had dinner with a monk on the dirty floor of an old building in Philadelphia and twitched when he pulled a cell phone out from between his crossed legs. It's all the same to me. People do this stuff because it makes them happy. They need something to cling to.
I'm a strong person but when I'm sad, I meditate because it brings out the existentialist side of me. It makes me realize how none of this really matters. It strips down all of the stupid layers of this world and makes me realize that work isn't important, family isn't important, friends aren't important... the only thing that is important is breathing really. Because that's what keeps you here. It does exactly what Buddha wants it to do; it detaches you from material things.
I'm lucky to be on this beautiful earth with the beautiful sunlight. And you know why? Because it's all by chance that I'm here. And I'm going to take advantage of it before I'm in the ground because I'm not naive enough to save my happiness for some sort of afterlife. That's just silly.
The Higgs Boson came to light not that long ago and it made me think about religion again, solidifying my stance as an atheist even more, but also making me more interested in things such as Hinduism and Buddism just for the mental benefits.
I mean, religion is the opiate of the masses. And I'm all about sticking my hand in the cookie jar to get a taste of the sweetness. So I've looked into the non-religious traditions of Buddhist and Hindu culture and hold those to my heart as a way of feeling "one with the universe" in my ever-so-hippy way that my coworker teases me about. You know, doing the tree pose by candle light and listening to Krishna Das while meditating. And also, everyone appreciates a little nonattachment like Buddha preached.
However, I'm an intelligent being. I don't think that there's a god in my tree or that the Book of the Dead is true by any means. I collect Ganesh statutes (Remover of Obstacles) because it makes me happy in the same way that my unicorn pillow pet makes me happy, not because I think they're going to make my mom suddenly love the gays.
About five years ago I spent time researching various religions and in that period of time I even read the Book of Satanism. I thought to myself "holy shit that's a lot of animal sacrificing." But then I read the Bible and thought "holy shit this is even more animal sacrificing." It's all the same. Kill things to make some invisible person happy. And when it's not "kill things to make some invisible person happy," it's "cook vegetarian meals to make some invisible person happy" (for instance, in Hinduism).
I've had holy water squirted on me, I've kneeled in Catholic churches, I've done readings in front of hundreds of people in non-Catholic churches, I've meditated in a room full of devout Buddhists, I've had dinner with a monk on the dirty floor of an old building in Philadelphia and twitched when he pulled a cell phone out from between his crossed legs. It's all the same to me. People do this stuff because it makes them happy. They need something to cling to.
I'm a strong person but when I'm sad, I meditate because it brings out the existentialist side of me. It makes me realize how none of this really matters. It strips down all of the stupid layers of this world and makes me realize that work isn't important, family isn't important, friends aren't important... the only thing that is important is breathing really. Because that's what keeps you here. It does exactly what Buddha wants it to do; it detaches you from material things.
I'm lucky to be on this beautiful earth with the beautiful sunlight. And you know why? Because it's all by chance that I'm here. And I'm going to take advantage of it before I'm in the ground because I'm not naive enough to save my happiness for some sort of afterlife. That's just silly.
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