Always

I wrote this post on 20 July in my notebook, but I never got around to posting it because of reasons. Still, it's a good post, and I'm going to share it unchanged from then.

I read a lot. Everyone who knows me should know this. I generally don’t go anywhere without a book (except work, of course). Ironically enough, I couldn’t read until the end of second grade, just after I turned eight. That summer, though, I quickly graduated from Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears to Harry Potter and Redwall.

I’ve waxed poetic on Redwall before. I wrote an obituary of sorts last February on the one-year anniversary of Mr. Jacques’s death. I’ve mentioned that this series is the reason I write, that I’ve learned so much about writing just from reading these books. I could extol the virtues of these stories until I’m blue in the face and your ears fall off (no, really, I can).

The thing is, I can tell you all this, but never get my true feelings across. So instead of telling you why these books are brilliant, I will show you my reaction to them.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the bookstore. This was probably a bad idea, because no one could come with me, and I had to restrain myself from buying ALL THE BOOKS. (It didn’t work too well; I walked out with three in my hands and two more on order.)

Wandering the Science Fiction & Fantasy section, as I am prone to do, I found the Redwall books. This was the second section of them I had come across, because they are generally put in the “Young Readers” section (I mean, they are for ten-to-twelve-year-olds). At the end of the group of Brian Jacques’s books, there was a paperback copy of The Sable Quean, the last Redwall book published before the author’s death.

Now, it isn’t the very last one; The Rogue Crew was published post-mortem. Still, when I picked it up, I almost started crying. It felt like holding the end of my childhood in my hands. I fought back tears, told myself that I’d cry when I got The Rogue Crew, decided which other books to buy, purchased them, and left.

Fast forward to today. I was essentially on-call at work, just chilling in the building, waiting for people to need me. I had brought along The Bellmaker to continue my read-through of my whole shelf—for those of you who don’t know/couldn’t guess, The Bellmaker is part of the Redwall series. It was as I was finishing the book, reading through the epilogue, that I was it, and remembered.

At the end of practically every single Redwall book is some take on this message: Redwall’s gates will always be open to those who mean no harm, however young or old they are.

I used to smile at that line, knowing that it meant that however much I grew up, I’d always have the safety of Redwall Abbey and Mossflower Wood to return to when life got hard. Today, I broke down and cried, because of the word “always”.

The message doesn’t say “until you grow out of childish fantasies.” It doesn’t say “until you don’t need it anymore.” It doesn’t say “until the author dies.” It says “always.”

True, once I buy The Rogue Crew, I will never again feel the glee that a brand new Redwall book brings me. Once I finish reading it, I will know all the tales that will be told of this land. Once I turn its final page, I will have absorbed every single word the man wrote. But I will still have the books. I can still reread them whenever I want.

So now, whatever else changes, whoever leaves me, however old I grow, no matter what happens, I will always have the safety of these places, the companionship of these characters, the knowledge that something in this world is okay to keep me going.

Always.

Romance

So I broke up with my boyfriend last week.

Don’t get all weepy on me. I’m fine, it was my idea, I wanted it to happen, etc., etc. Honestly, I’m happy it’s over. The boy put way too much pressure on me. I was his only source of happiness~. He could see us together ~forever~. He practically had our headstones all ready. He’d talk about how we could get a house together and we’d garden in it and we couldn’t have cats.

See, here’s the thing. When he talked about that, I’d never see it. I’d look into my future, and I couldn’t see a house and a garden and no cats. All I ever saw was a London flat and my Speckle and my Neenie and ALL THE KITTIES. It seems to be a thing now. When I look, when I think about what might happen, I only ever see that. Just me and Speckle and Neenie in a flat with kittens named after superheroes.

It’s made me realize something. I’m not going to be one for commitment. Not romantic commitment, anyway. I mean, I’m incredibly loyal as a friend, and I will always stand by the people I love, but I’m getting off track…

If I look into my future, and all I can see is my two best friends, there has to be a reason for it. I’ve been saying recently that every single one of my significant others should, and probably will, be jealous of Emma Lee, and it’s true. She is my Speckle, and she is the most important person in my life. I care for and love her just as much as anyone would their One True Love, though not quite in the same way. Because I have that in Emma, I don’t need or want it in anyone else.

Maybe all this means that I wasn’t born to be a monogamous person, much the same as I wasn’t born to be a heterosexual person. I’m fine with that. The only real problem, though, is making other people fine with that. I don’t want every break-up of mine to be nasty, and I’m afraid that a lot of them will be. I just want clean, easy relationships where we don’t ask too much of each other, and both recognize when it’s over.

Maybe I’m asking too much of the world. Maybe I’m being selfish and lazy. I don’t know. I do know, though, that I’d be absolutely crazy to go out and look for another life partner when I already have one, and probably even two, despite the fact that they’re my sisters.

I Love My Parents

Honest to god, I do. If you heard me complaining about them on occasion, you might not be so sure, but let me tell you, I love them with all my heart.

That doesn't stop me from hating them at times, though.

When I was little, I used to say that my parents were the best parents ever. Granted, it wasn't too hard to think that, what with my limited worldview and all. I was sixteen before I even heard my parents disagree. They didn't argue, and they certainly didn't fight. Not in my hearing, anyway. They let me be interested in the things I wanted to be interested in. I mean, maybe it helped some that my parents are both minorly geeky, and I was interested in geeky things, but when I wanted to play with Pokemon cards and videogame systems instead of Barbies and Polly Pocket (for example), they let me.

(As an aside, it was damn hard to do it, really, because my big brothers didn't want a ~girl~ tagging along. I ended up playing by myself throughout most of my childhood. Until I met Kaila, anyway, but that's a different story entirely.)

So anyway, to Little SK, this was enough to make my parents the Best Parents Ever. But then I went out in the world, and realized how sheltered I'd been.

I do not understand the majority of pop culture references made by anyone.

I did not know what the modern connotations of the word "gay" were until eighth grade, nor did I even know of the word "bisexual" (ironically enough).

I could go on and on about all the instances when my parents tried to do the right thing, only to end up making the wrong choice and fucking me and my brothers up completely (fortunately for them, my sisters missed most of the blunders by the grace of being the fourth and fifth children), but that would take too long. Each instance really deserves its own separate post. So instead of doing that, I will grace you with a realization I have come to rather recently.

My parents never encouraged me.

Oh sure, they did the regular, parent-y things like coach my soccer team and lead my Girl Scout troop and try to get me to get good grades and whatever, but they never encouraged me in what I wanted to do.

I have been writing stories since I was ten. In eight years, eight years, my mother and father have collectively asked to see my work twice. My grandfather asks to see it more than they do. In the four years I have been writing poetry and one year I have been drawing, they have never asked to see any of it.

I don't expect them to be like some parents who are all, "Okay, my kid wants to do this, so I'll sign him up for classes and get him all this stuff for it and how-to books and I'll learn with him and it will be so much fun, dammit." I don't want them to be like that. My stuff is my stuff, and I'll learn how to do it on my own, thanks.

I just...I wanted encouragement, growing up. I wanted to know that when I was doing what I wanted to be doing, they were proud of me. I don't want the happy hugs and "I'm so proud of you" just when I brought home straight A's and Honor Society induction letters and 34's on my ACT. I want a "Congratulations!" when I tell them I finished another poetry journal. I want a "That's my girl!" when I tell them that I finished writing a book. I want them to brag about me, not because I'm smart, but because I'm creative and I make beautiful things and I'm going to be an author and I wrote a children's book that my bloody teacher wanted to publish!

Dearest readers, I haven't hurt myself in almost a year and a half now, and not once have my parents told me that they're proud of me for coming through it, or that I'm strong because I haven't slipped at all, or just held me because I looked like I needed it. I'd not have made it as far as I have if I only had them to lean on. The only reason I have made it is because I have wonderful friends and I'm fucking stubborn as hell.

I know nothing is perfect. I know that life isn't fair. But once, just once, I want my parents to take something of mine, something that they have asked to look at, go through the whole thing, then hug me and tell me that they are proud of me.

I'm going to keep going the way I am, no matter what they do. Still, it'd be nice to know.

Twilight, Chapter 10

Dammit, I want to be rereading Elegy.

There’s pretty Kate/Maggie things and sexy Batwoman awesomeosity and I was IN TEARS DAMMIT.

Also I want a Loki.

But I have to do this.

Chapter 10: Interrogations

I Used to Dye My Hair...

...but then I took an arrow to the knee.

...

...

I get nothing for that? Man, you have no sense of humor.

Granted, with it being me and all, that was probably the more obvious route I could have taken that.

On a more serious note (Serious? Me? Really?), I've stopped dying my hair. I tell people that it's expensive, and I'm probably just going to be playing with my tips (get your mind out the gutter!) from now on. For a while, at least.

That's not really true. I seem to be pretty good at that. Telling people the not-really-true stuff, I mean. I suppose I do it because it's easier, because it doesn't get me angry, doesn't make me shout, doesn't goad me into saying things that I'll regret later.

The truth? The honest-to-god, I'm-saying-this-because-this-is-my-blog-and-I-don't-really-care-anymore truth? I stopped because it was making me feel stifled.

Crazy, right? Free expression, stifling someone? Doesn't make any sense. But then, a lot of things in this world don't make sense.

The problem with expressing yourself is being the one who dares.

So many people look at you and think, "Damn, I wish I had her confidence! She is walking around with bright pink hair. She must be awesome and just not care what other people think!" And it's true. I dyed my hair blue and pink and purple and red and blonde because I didn't care what other people thought, and I wanted to show it. It was never a confidence thing, because god knows I have absolutely jack shit in the confidence department.

The problem is being one of the few who dare.

So many people see you, and wish that they could dare, too, but they think they can't, for some reason. So they want to live through you. I'd never be able to count to amount of times people have told me, "Oh, you should do this with your hair next," or "Maybe that tattoo would be cool."

They don't get it.

What I'm doing here, with my hair and my tattoos and wearing guys' clothes and staying up until sweet fuck all at night, isn't me trying to be different from most people or fit into another group of people. This is me expressing myself. Sure, having black hair with pink underneath would look cool (Romana Flowers, anyone?), but it isn't me. I am bright colors and positive words and comfort over looks and functioning better at night.

Yes, suggestions are nice. People can give me ideas that I might not have come up with on my own, but resonate with me in a way that makes me want to use them. But they have to stay suggestions. I'm not going to spring for every crazy idea, because that isn't me. Yeah, I do crazy things, but everything I do has a reason that makes sense to me, even if the reason is "Why the hell not?"

So if you think that your friend would look good with electric blue hair, by all means, tell her! But don't follow it up by asking every week, "So when are you going to dye your hair blue?" IT GETS FUCKING ANNOYING. We do what we do because we want to do it, not so that we'll look cool or be more popular, or just have people talk about us. If you're pushy about your ideas, what we do will stop being fun.

Let other people ruin our fun; there are enough assholes out there to do it for gits and shiggles, that we don't need our friends doing it, too.

</rant>

Twilight, Chapter 9

I’m writing this at work.

No, I’m not slacking. I’m sitting through the SAME GODDAMN ORIENTATION PRESENTATION for the THIRD TIME.

I’m nearly bored to tears.

Anger is probably a better option.

Chapter 9: Theory

Twilight, Chapter 8

This chapter is Hell on Earth.

There should a lot of facepalming going on.

But that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?

You people are sick…

Chapter 8: Port Angeles

Twilight, Chapter 7

I’m trying to get better at this. I really am.

It’s just… Packing… And college… And this is painful…

But that’s why you read this, isn’t it?

I hate you all…

Chapter 7: Nightmare

Twilight, Chapter 6

Well, these are getting closer together.  Maybe by the next book, I’ll be doing them every day!

The next book… Mithros forbid…

Chapter 6: Scary Stories

I Wrote A List This Week

This isn't all that uncommon a thing for me to do. I write lots of lists. Lists of books I want need to get. Lists of things I have to do. Lists of what my mom needs me to get at the store. I remember things better when I write them down, and I feel more accomplished when I check things off. Plus, I know that everything is done when the whole list is finished.

But this list is a special list. This list is a list of things I need to bring with me to college.

I'm sure some of you are thinking "Already? It's only the beginning of May!" I'm sure I'd be thinking that, too, if the person were anyone other than me. But only if I didn't know the reason. The reason I already wrote this list is that I'm leaving soon. Twenty-three days from now, actually.

See, I got a job this summer, working at my college. My big brother goes there, and he hooked me up at the theater he works at. I'll be working forty hours a week, and living with his awesome, geektastic girlfriend, Jordan. This is going to be a huge change for me; I know that it will be Fun and A Good Experience, but it could also be Frightening and Lonely, and it will definitely be New and Different. I have many complicated feels about this, and it will probably be a good thing for me to get them down and sort them out.

The first think I'd like to address is my house and homelife. In this aspect, things can only get better. Yes, I'll be providing for myself, living with someone who I have only met three or four times, and will have to manage everything on my own, but I honestly can only see this as an improvement. I currently live with my parents and two younger sisters; my oldest brother has moved out, and lives in Chicago, and I will be joining my other big brother in Wisconsin this summer. I love my family, don't get me wrong, but my baby sister (she's almost nine now, but she'll always be the baby) has an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and it can make life hell sometimes. She can be this sweet little girl, who loves to hug you and hang out with you and looks up to me and our other sister so much and wants to be just as cool as we are, but suddenly, with no visible cause, she can become unreasonable, throwing fits over the smallest thing; she won't respect our personal space, she has no filter between her brain and her mouth, and never thinks how hurtful the things she says can be, she doesn't get that sometimes, big girls are irritable and in so much pain they literally cannot move and just don't have the patience or the will to deal with anything stressful.

I don't want anyone getting the wrong idea. Like I said, I love her, with all my heart, and I will do anything to help her. I'm so grateful to the people at her school, to the staff, who know exactly how to handle her, and to the other students, who love her imagination and think she's the coolest and are almost always so nice to her and make her feel like the most popular girl in school and, really, I think she might be. I'm so happy that she can have that, because I know the hell that kids with mental disabilities can go through in school. I flew completely off the handle one day in Gym class because the teacher was being an ass to someone like my sister, and nobody said so much as a negative word about the kid in my hearing for the rest of the year. I hope that my baby sister doesn't ever have anything like that happen to her, but if she does, I hope that there is someone like me to stand up for her.

Now that I (hopefully) have convinced you of my love of my sister, I think it's safe to say that she is one of the things that make me cry the most often. The unreasonableness, the temper tantrums, the just not getting the fact that Neenie and I just need to be left alone sometimes, are so hard to reconcile with the sweet girl she can be. It's desperately difficult to deal with, and there are times when I have to babysit her, and once she's in bed, I just sit down and cry, and I'm damn certain that it will be so much easier when I don't have to deal with that sort of thing on a daily basis. But then I love her so much, it hurts to think that.

Also included in my homelife are my parents. I remember saying, when I was little, how my parents were probably the best parents in the world. I think back and remember that, and then remember how much they managed to screw up. Maybe Neenie and Grace have it best, because my parents had three kids to practice on before them, or maybe what they do is more noticeable. Or maybe my parents were so afraid of doing the wrong thing that they did it anyway.

When Neenie was in fourth grade, her teacher was a bitch of the highest degree. This was the final year in our elementary school before the students started switching classes; English, spelling, math, science, social studies, all were taught by the same teacher, so Neenie had to spend the whole day with the same woman. My sister would come home sobbing, because the teacher made fun of her, almost every single day. My parents went to see the principal, and I think I'm going to love that woman for my whole life because of what she did. She couldn't fire the teacher, because the pastor had the final say in those matters (don't get me started on him), but she told Neenie that she could come down to the office whenever she needed to, because the teacher was being mean, because another student was being mean, or just because Neenie was feeling down. So my parents did something about that. They don't seem too bad, do they?

Well, look at the other side of the story.

When Neenie was in fourth grade, I was in seventh. Now, I didn't have a teacher going after me, but I had most of my classmates on my back. Neenie has always exuded an aura of confidence (however much we both know she lacks it) that has made her a favorite among her classmates. I never had that. I was smart, geeky, and socially awkward from the ground up. I had been homeschooled until sixth grade, and I didn't have any idea how to interact with my peers until about eighth grade. I'm still kind of clueless. They teased me mercilessly because of this, and I came home crying almost as often as Neenie. My parents never did anything.

When I started to self-injure, I think it was kind of obvious. I'd show up in the morning in my pajamas--a tank top and pajama pants--with cuts criss-crossing my shoulders, but my mom took the cock-and-bull story about falling into bushes that I fed her for the longest time. She only ever did anything about it when my dad saw them, too.

My big brother thinks that she was afraid of making a mistake. Perhaps she was thinking that I was just clumsy and kept taking the same fall over and over, or maybe she was in denial. All that I know is that it made me feel even more alone.

But they did eventually get me help, and I got better.  I'm still better. You could almost say that I'm flourishing. Almost.

They got better, too. They helped me get through things, they did what they could to help me get better, and they were very, very gentle with me. For about five months.

Once those five months were up, though, I started seeming like I was okay again, the support and the gentleness and the care that they had been showing me faded slowly away, until they got to the point where they act like nothing is different from before. They have started, again, some of the behaviors that put me in the hospital in the first place. They yell at me for doing things wrong when I think I'm doing them right but I'm not because my parents have changed the rules again and forgot to tell me. They don't take what I do seriously. They tell me that I need to take time for myself, but get angry with me when I do. They make hurting, cutting remarks that undermine my self-esteem and confidence.

I have to deal with this sort of shit in my own home. And my friends wonder why I think so poorly of myself.

I never get out. I'm trapped in a house that isn't a home, with people who don't seem concerned about my welfare, and I'm dying to just leave. These are the reasons that I got the job at the theater in the first place, and why I'm so happy to be going. But there are reasons that I want to stay, too.

I'm a part of a wonderful youth group. I left St. Damian, the parish of my childhood, and the school where I spent three years learning, to go to a church twenty minutes from where I live, where my only connection is that it was the place my dad and his siblings went to school. Why did I do this, you ask? Because my three years at the school sucked. Because the pastor was a homophobe, and I couldn't sit through another damn sermon about how gays were bad and wrong and going to Hell because they didn't conform to the Bible. Because the place where I ended up had a group of loving, supporting people who let me be myself and stood by me through hell and high water. Because the sixty-something-year-old youth minister told one boy to get off another boy's lap because "that's so gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

They are wonderful human beings, the epitome of what the Catholic Church really should be, who take the real meaning of the word "catholic" to heart, and make it truly universal. I'm going to miss being a part of this group, all the friends I leave behind, the love and support they have given me, and the two hours of being open and honest and just having fun every week, and I know that they are going to miss me.

My social life has taken an upturn recently. Specifically, I actually got asked to prom by a friend of mine, and that's something that I never thought would happen. But this kid; he's a friend of mine, and I've sort of half-liked him ever since we met. He's cute and geeky, and he's one of the few guys I've met who are actually really nice (the total is, like, seven or something, and two of them are my blood brothers and another is like my little brother). I mean, I have quite a few guy friends, but most of them can be complete assholes sometimes.

But anyway, so there's this boy who has asked me to prom. Unfortunately for the both of us, I had to say no. No, I'm not doing anything the night of or whatever. I just really hate dances; I hate dancing and crowds and noise and really bad music, and that's pretty much the summary of a school dance. So we're currently treading those awkward waters frequented by two socially awkward people between a slight miscommunication (he thinks I was out-and-out rejecting him) and clearing it up, but hopefully this will work.

Except that I'm leaving soon, so God only knows where this will actually end up going.

Then there are my other friends. My best guy friend (and my "little brother") and I came up with this hilarious plan to build ourselves a little hut thing behind my house this summer, and it would have been so much fun to build it and paint it and hang out in it all summer before I left for college and he started classes (at a local community college) in the fall. Because I'm going away to work, that plan completely fell through.

This is just a little sample of what's going on. My friends and I had a bunch of plans (road trip, hanging out, swimming, and all sorts of other stuff) that won't happen now because I'm really only going to have ten days of summer break between my last day of school and when I leave to start work.

But the hardest part of leaving is definitely the fact that I don't get to take my little sister and my best friend with me.

These are two different people, but they can both share the same two roles. Neenie, my freshman (they make great pets), has been considered my best friend since sophomore year. I don't know how it happened, other than gradually, but suddenly we were super close and loving each other and still a little teasing but in a nice way now and sharing interests and all sorts of things, sort of like what happened with me and my big brother, Chris, but fortunately before my senior year. Emma Lee, my lovely co-host on our recently-conceived podcast (shameless!plug is shameless), has been my best friend since the first day we met in 2008. We are similar enough for it to be awesome and kind of freaky, but different enough that we fill in the gaps in the other's character. When a lot of people think about soulmates, they picture the perfect couple. Emma and I aren't in a romantic relationship--we never will be and the thought is pretty weird. We are soulmates, though, completing each other, best friends for forever and a day, and we know we'll make it through hard times because we have done before.

I'm going to miss these two desperately. Even though I don't get to see Emma every day like I do Neenie, it's still going to be hard being so much farther away from her. Nothing will change in our relationships because we are four hours apart, I know that, but it still hurts to leave.

So, when the day comes to go, I'm going to leave with mingled joy and sadness, because sometimes good-bye is a second chance, but the hardest part of this is leaving you.