this week: worked monday when i usually don't; got my driver's license remade, finally, when my old one expired in 2007; put the new car registration sticker on my license plate finally; hunted through papers and found the new insurance card and registration card; scheduled a car inspection (last one expired in october 2008), and was supposed to go today, but... got a stomach virus or food poisoning or something, and had to stay home lying in bed all day. which is where i am now. canceled the car inspection but will try again next week.
so i am exhausted, haven't had any coffee yet today, and have finally started eating and drinking a little bit again. but i am in an 'everything feels hopeless' mood because of how sick i am.
i forgot to mention i also started looking for a storage building for my stuff, so i can get ready to move. i didn't finish that project either because of being sick today.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
finally I can get some photos moved onto the PC
After some struggle I got my friend's zip drive working for the laptop, and I deleted some temporary files from the hard drive so that I had enough space. So, I was able to upload photos, and put some onto zip disks and I can now move them from laptop to PC without burning CDs. (I can't upload pictures directly to my PC - wrong Windows version. And I WON'T connect the laptop to the internet - I don't want viruses and stuff on it. So I move photos from the laptop to the PC.) I hate burning CDs because they screw up really frequently, and it's so unreliable and inconsistent. Anyway, there will gradually be more photos now. I will start by taking some boring pictures of trees and flowers, since it's springtime. I also took pictures of the mold on the shelf and in the ceiling.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The Green Wigs Ruckus
By the way, people really are getting paid to cause a ruckus. There is a Lane Bryant store closing, and people are standing by the road on College Avenue wearing bright green wigs and holding signs and dancing around, or at least they were yesterday. I don't know if they're still out there. But they have an excuse.
Malinvestment
This is part of the idea of scrip/IOUs, written records of a job done or a thing traded. If I have any mistakes in the logic behind this, at least I'm not controlling the money system of an entire country (or world) and making mistakes, and making it illegal for people to operate their own local money systems. So whatever mistakes I make, they will be small-scale and temporary (or imaginary, since I'm not even doing this yet). This is a work in progress.
This idea is kind of hard to explain and it's vague as of right now. So, 'suspend disbelief' and play along for a bit. As Edward de Bono would say, put on the green hat.
I imagine an informal IOU written on paper. Jane Smith swept the floor in Ann Jones' house. Ann says, 'Thanks for sweeping the floor,' and gives Jane the IOU saying 'Jane Smith swept floor at 100 Oak Street, for Ann Jones.' Jane Smith then has this piece of paper and can trade it for something.
She gives it to somebody to buy a couple of eggs for breakfast (or whatever). The recipient agrees: 'Floor sweeping is a valuable activity.' They agree that somebody somewhere really does need to have the floor swept. The egg seller calls Ann Jones on the phone and says, 'Did Jane Smith really sweep your floor?' She says, 'yes,' and cancels her own record of the floor sweeping.
But it has to be used by the egg seller again. The egg seller now has a piece of paper talking about a floor he didn't sweep. Somebody else did that. Jane Smith could give the egg person an IOU that says, 'eggs sold by John Taylor to Jane Smith.' (This is getting confusing.) John Taylor then takes that to someone and says, 'I want someone to wash my dishes for me. I really did sell these eggs to Jane Smith. Call her and find out.' So they do. They all agree: You did something useful, and we have a record of it. It really happened.
The idea is: keeping records of what was bought and sold, whether it's a product or service, and each person judges whether that was a valuable activity.
Again, with the green hat still on...
The eccentric neighbor, Zachary Ferguson, asks Jane Smith to stand in front of his house spinning in circles, running around, jumping up and down, singing and shouting and annoying everybody, for ten hours. For some reason, she agrees to do it. He then hands her the IOU: 'Jane Smith caused ten hours of ruckus for Zachary Ferguson.' Jane Smith has been 'paid' her fee for doing that. She now has this piece of paper with a record of having caused a ruckus.
But everyone knows Zach Ferguson around town. Nobody wants to take the piece of paper with his name on it. Zach is well known for wasting people's time and energy on silly activities, and not giving them anything valuable in return. Jane goes back to Zach and says, 'Nobody will take this IOU with your name on it. *YOU* have to give me something valuable for the time I spent causing a ruckus in front of your house.' Nothing useful was created anywhere by Zach Ferguson (I sure hope there aren't any real people out there with that name. Maybe I'll write another story where Zach gets to play the good guy.). He refuses to do anything helpful for Jane Smith, or give her anything in exchange.
Ann Jones, and Zach Smith, both asked somebody to do a job for them. But one person was viewed as more trustworthy and productive and the other person was known to be wasteful and unproductive in the things they did.
So this is partly the idea of 'good reputation.' But I'm focused on not just reputation, but whether the activity created something valuable or not. I agree that it has to do with someone's good reputation. But I want to distinguish this idea from 'reputation,' because it's a slightly different idea. I want to emphasize the idea of 'valuable activities' and not just 'good reputation.'
Here is the real world example. An entrepreneur borrows a million dollars to start a company. So all of his employees have enough money that their business can survive for a year or so, just goofing around, surfing the net while at work, playing nerf football in the office, and having parties. They take home their paychecks, and spend them on REAL, valuable products, like food. They make a pretense of doing some kind of work, but it's not a useful activity. Maybe an occasional customer buys their product or service. But not many people do. And those who do, are also using borrowed money, themselves. This isn't imaginary, it really happens. It's called 'malinvestment.' Spending money on businesses that are not doing anything useful, in the big scheme of things. Just because somebody was willing to lend money to you doesn't guarantee that you're actually producing something useful with that money you borrowed. This is how business is done in the real world.
Yet their paychecks are just as valuable as mine! A dollar in their paycheck will buy as much as a dollar in my paycheck.
They lend people money with no strings attached. You can SAY that your business is going to do whatever, but then, not actually do it, or not do it very well, or the marketplace doesn't want that product or service.
Somebody could have a great reputation and be trusted around town, but they can tell you to cause a ruckus in front of the house, and gradually, they'll waste their wealth and have nothing to show for it. (This is one of the times when I wish I could think clearly and not have my 'mental experiences.' One of my 'mental experiences' is that the thoughts and phrases and sentences seem to be 'canned' or premade, like things I've already read in books, or things other people have said, instead of my own ideas. I want to say a new idea in an original way, and instead I get the same stuff I've read other people writing in the past. I don't want to just repeat the same stuff in the same words that everybody else is saying.)
Ann Jones tells everybody to just cause a ruckus and have fun. Gradually, the IOUs come back to her and people are saying, 'Give us something valuable in return.' But nobody was tending the farm animals or sewing new clothes or picking the apples in the orchard. Nothing got done. So Ann Jones can't give them anything in return for all the stuff they did.
In the real world, a business might just declare bankruptcy. They can't pay anyone back for what was done. Defaulting, people not paying back. It can happen with credit cards, too. Millions of people everywhere getting something for nothing.
Precious metals are supposed to prevent that from happening, because you can't print a piece of gold or silver. However, it's possible to loan gold and silver. You can lend huge amounts of gold and silver and not get paid back. You can lend it to somebody to do something useless. If anybody anywhere is able to collect large amounts of gold and silver (using whatever methods, honest or dishonest), then they can freely lend it out again, quickly, with no strings attached, carelessly, to anyone. Sure, they'll lose all their gold and silver that way. But someone else will collect it again a few years from now, and do the same dumb thing again.
In the past few years, I've become so opposed to the idea of borrowing and lending AT ALL that I can hardly imagine a system that would work well and not cause malinvestment. But I'm still interested in Antal Fekete talking about Adam Smith's Real Bills of Exchange (I didn't read Adam Smith's version, I just read Fekete's description of it). That's very similar to what I'm talking about - somebody keeps a record of whether a valuable product or service actually was produced or done, and they get paid back for it whenever the customers buy the product or service. You give someone a bunch of apples and tell them to make apple pies. You wait until the apple pies are sold, and the money comes back to you. It's more complicated than that, and I don't have enough time today to write it all.
I was focused on the idea of 'the IOU is judged as valuable or not valuable by everyone who receives it.' At a glance, most ordinary people can judge whether the activity or product described is likely to be valuable. Within reason, you can tell at a glance, with regard to ordinary, non-technical products and services. The daily activites (produce food, cook food, live in a house, etc) are judged more easily than the very technical or obscure or esoteric activities (what Ludwig von Mises would call 'higher order economic goods.') It's hard to judge the value of 'My company is an advertiser who advertises the advertising services of other advertising companies.' ('Advertising' is another thing that is really wasteful nowadays.)
more later...
This idea is kind of hard to explain and it's vague as of right now. So, 'suspend disbelief' and play along for a bit. As Edward de Bono would say, put on the green hat.
I imagine an informal IOU written on paper. Jane Smith swept the floor in Ann Jones' house. Ann says, 'Thanks for sweeping the floor,' and gives Jane the IOU saying 'Jane Smith swept floor at 100 Oak Street, for Ann Jones.' Jane Smith then has this piece of paper and can trade it for something.
She gives it to somebody to buy a couple of eggs for breakfast (or whatever). The recipient agrees: 'Floor sweeping is a valuable activity.' They agree that somebody somewhere really does need to have the floor swept. The egg seller calls Ann Jones on the phone and says, 'Did Jane Smith really sweep your floor?' She says, 'yes,' and cancels her own record of the floor sweeping.
But it has to be used by the egg seller again. The egg seller now has a piece of paper talking about a floor he didn't sweep. Somebody else did that. Jane Smith could give the egg person an IOU that says, 'eggs sold by John Taylor to Jane Smith.' (This is getting confusing.) John Taylor then takes that to someone and says, 'I want someone to wash my dishes for me. I really did sell these eggs to Jane Smith. Call her and find out.' So they do. They all agree: You did something useful, and we have a record of it. It really happened.
The idea is: keeping records of what was bought and sold, whether it's a product or service, and each person judges whether that was a valuable activity.
Again, with the green hat still on...
The eccentric neighbor, Zachary Ferguson, asks Jane Smith to stand in front of his house spinning in circles, running around, jumping up and down, singing and shouting and annoying everybody, for ten hours. For some reason, she agrees to do it. He then hands her the IOU: 'Jane Smith caused ten hours of ruckus for Zachary Ferguson.' Jane Smith has been 'paid' her fee for doing that. She now has this piece of paper with a record of having caused a ruckus.
But everyone knows Zach Ferguson around town. Nobody wants to take the piece of paper with his name on it. Zach is well known for wasting people's time and energy on silly activities, and not giving them anything valuable in return. Jane goes back to Zach and says, 'Nobody will take this IOU with your name on it. *YOU* have to give me something valuable for the time I spent causing a ruckus in front of your house.' Nothing useful was created anywhere by Zach Ferguson (I sure hope there aren't any real people out there with that name. Maybe I'll write another story where Zach gets to play the good guy.). He refuses to do anything helpful for Jane Smith, or give her anything in exchange.
Ann Jones, and Zach Smith, both asked somebody to do a job for them. But one person was viewed as more trustworthy and productive and the other person was known to be wasteful and unproductive in the things they did.
So this is partly the idea of 'good reputation.' But I'm focused on not just reputation, but whether the activity created something valuable or not. I agree that it has to do with someone's good reputation. But I want to distinguish this idea from 'reputation,' because it's a slightly different idea. I want to emphasize the idea of 'valuable activities' and not just 'good reputation.'
Here is the real world example. An entrepreneur borrows a million dollars to start a company. So all of his employees have enough money that their business can survive for a year or so, just goofing around, surfing the net while at work, playing nerf football in the office, and having parties. They take home their paychecks, and spend them on REAL, valuable products, like food. They make a pretense of doing some kind of work, but it's not a useful activity. Maybe an occasional customer buys their product or service. But not many people do. And those who do, are also using borrowed money, themselves. This isn't imaginary, it really happens. It's called 'malinvestment.' Spending money on businesses that are not doing anything useful, in the big scheme of things. Just because somebody was willing to lend money to you doesn't guarantee that you're actually producing something useful with that money you borrowed. This is how business is done in the real world.
Yet their paychecks are just as valuable as mine! A dollar in their paycheck will buy as much as a dollar in my paycheck.
They lend people money with no strings attached. You can SAY that your business is going to do whatever, but then, not actually do it, or not do it very well, or the marketplace doesn't want that product or service.
Somebody could have a great reputation and be trusted around town, but they can tell you to cause a ruckus in front of the house, and gradually, they'll waste their wealth and have nothing to show for it. (This is one of the times when I wish I could think clearly and not have my 'mental experiences.' One of my 'mental experiences' is that the thoughts and phrases and sentences seem to be 'canned' or premade, like things I've already read in books, or things other people have said, instead of my own ideas. I want to say a new idea in an original way, and instead I get the same stuff I've read other people writing in the past. I don't want to just repeat the same stuff in the same words that everybody else is saying.)
Ann Jones tells everybody to just cause a ruckus and have fun. Gradually, the IOUs come back to her and people are saying, 'Give us something valuable in return.' But nobody was tending the farm animals or sewing new clothes or picking the apples in the orchard. Nothing got done. So Ann Jones can't give them anything in return for all the stuff they did.
In the real world, a business might just declare bankruptcy. They can't pay anyone back for what was done. Defaulting, people not paying back. It can happen with credit cards, too. Millions of people everywhere getting something for nothing.
Precious metals are supposed to prevent that from happening, because you can't print a piece of gold or silver. However, it's possible to loan gold and silver. You can lend huge amounts of gold and silver and not get paid back. You can lend it to somebody to do something useless. If anybody anywhere is able to collect large amounts of gold and silver (using whatever methods, honest or dishonest), then they can freely lend it out again, quickly, with no strings attached, carelessly, to anyone. Sure, they'll lose all their gold and silver that way. But someone else will collect it again a few years from now, and do the same dumb thing again.
In the past few years, I've become so opposed to the idea of borrowing and lending AT ALL that I can hardly imagine a system that would work well and not cause malinvestment. But I'm still interested in Antal Fekete talking about Adam Smith's Real Bills of Exchange (I didn't read Adam Smith's version, I just read Fekete's description of it). That's very similar to what I'm talking about - somebody keeps a record of whether a valuable product or service actually was produced or done, and they get paid back for it whenever the customers buy the product or service. You give someone a bunch of apples and tell them to make apple pies. You wait until the apple pies are sold, and the money comes back to you. It's more complicated than that, and I don't have enough time today to write it all.
I was focused on the idea of 'the IOU is judged as valuable or not valuable by everyone who receives it.' At a glance, most ordinary people can judge whether the activity or product described is likely to be valuable. Within reason, you can tell at a glance, with regard to ordinary, non-technical products and services. The daily activites (produce food, cook food, live in a house, etc) are judged more easily than the very technical or obscure or esoteric activities (what Ludwig von Mises would call 'higher order economic goods.') It's hard to judge the value of 'My company is an advertiser who advertises the advertising services of other advertising companies.' ('Advertising' is another thing that is really wasteful nowadays.)
more later...
disclaimer
oh, and by the way, whatever was going on last night, in case anyone thinks i'm a misguided idiot who attacks the wrong people, i know martin had nothing to do with whatever was going on, because HE HAS A LIFE and PEOPLE ACTUALLY *LIKE* HIM. whatever was going on, it was some scumbag who has no life. and i was hearing prerecorded voices, so, whoever actually *said* the words i was hearing, it probably had nothing to do with that person, even if they actually said those words at some point.
so anyway, even though they are constantly brainwashing me to believe things about martin, this has nothing to do with him. there is a certain style or type or category of false beliefs that they are trying to encourage (force) me to believe, and they are all 'positive' things, like 'he loves you, he needs you, he wants to hear from you, martin says hello,' etc. they aren't brainwashing me to believe stuff like 'he's an evil monster who's ruining your life,' or anything like that. i don't want anyone thinking that he's in danger from me thinking that he's the person attacking me or something.
'misguided idiots who attack the wrong people' is a better description of the criminals who attack and ruin the lives of innocent people for no reason other than because they were told to.
so anyway, even though they are constantly brainwashing me to believe things about martin, this has nothing to do with him. there is a certain style or type or category of false beliefs that they are trying to encourage (force) me to believe, and they are all 'positive' things, like 'he loves you, he needs you, he wants to hear from you, martin says hello,' etc. they aren't brainwashing me to believe stuff like 'he's an evil monster who's ruining your life,' or anything like that. i don't want anyone thinking that he's in danger from me thinking that he's the person attacking me or something.
'misguided idiots who attack the wrong people' is a better description of the criminals who attack and ruin the lives of innocent people for no reason other than because they were told to.
Friday, April 24, 2009
forced hypnosis while sleeping and seeming to be awake
i was attacked by a criminal while sleeping. i woke up at 3 AM and was then urged to get something to eat. while taking the food from the fridge, the voices whispered, 'i don't believe this, i don't believe this, she's taking my suggestion?' i didn't know anything was wrong until i took a couple bites of food and then felt like i was going to throw up. the voices were constant, worse than usual, and somebody kept saying 'are you serious? she really doesn't remember?' apparently something had been done to me only minutes before, and i didn't remember it, and it involved eating something disgusting that made me sick. and i didn't know that i was sick, until i tried eating real food a minute later.
i used to have a videocamera going all night long while i slept, but they forced me to get the idea that i would be able to recover some money, and pay off my debts, if i sold the camera and vcr back to the guy who sold it to me. i was going to sell a bunch of stuff during that time period, trying to get some money back, but instead, i contaminated the whole apartment with ephedra and have been recovering from that disaster ever since.
whoever did this while i was asleep, if they did not know it, i was not awake and i was not consenting. i was hypnotized and i only appeared to be awake. but i was not awake. i don't remember who it was. i don't know who hypnotizes me, or where they are located when they do it. whoever enters the apartment, apparently they're not being told that i am hypnotized when it happens.
i wish that i could say how i really feel, and what i think should happen to the people who did this to me. because i do, indeed, think that something should happen to them. however, i don't know which police officers are reading my blog, and it could be construed as a 'threat' against unknown persons. i don't know who they are.
i used to have a videocamera going all night long while i slept, but they forced me to get the idea that i would be able to recover some money, and pay off my debts, if i sold the camera and vcr back to the guy who sold it to me. i was going to sell a bunch of stuff during that time period, trying to get some money back, but instead, i contaminated the whole apartment with ephedra and have been recovering from that disaster ever since.
whoever did this while i was asleep, if they did not know it, i was not awake and i was not consenting. i was hypnotized and i only appeared to be awake. but i was not awake. i don't remember who it was. i don't know who hypnotizes me, or where they are located when they do it. whoever enters the apartment, apparently they're not being told that i am hypnotized when it happens.
i wish that i could say how i really feel, and what i think should happen to the people who did this to me. because i do, indeed, think that something should happen to them. however, i don't know which police officers are reading my blog, and it could be construed as a 'threat' against unknown persons. i don't know who they are.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
another long obsessive blog about guys
By the way, trimming eyelashes was just a joke. I don't want anybody to go out and do that. It was meant to make a point, that we hardly ever express disgust about how long somebody's eyelashes are (even on men), but instead, people usually like them, or envy them (again, even on men). And no, I don't know any particular people who have long eyelashes, either, so I wasn't trying to secretly say that in a roundabout way... but I think it accidentally became a 'puppet' incident, because if I recall, I think I did notice long eyelashes on someone once and admired them; and since the joke was a voice's comment, it could have been directed at a particular person.
I really was laughing out loud at the joke. That is how 'the voices' often are with me. I do not condone or approve of putting voices in people's heads; if I had a choice about it, I would choose to shut it off or block it out; however, when I hear them, they often say funny or interesting things, and I laugh. Or we have 'discussions' that are actually enjoyable conversations. Or they sometimes encourage me to do fun things that I would have wanted to do anyway, like the time when they encouraged me to go to Six Flags last summer.
Other times, it is VERY negative, especially if I have used my antidepressant (St. John's Wort) and am having intense rebellion against them during my drug withdrawal, and (mentally) yelling and cursing at them and telling them to stop. When that is going on, the things they say are usually not at all nice or amusing.
I don't want to give people the impression that the voices are my friends, or that I want them to be there. They are a poor substitute for real friendship and real conversations. They are a poor substitute for real, independent thought and privacy. But whatever they are, I still sometimes laugh with them or agree with them or enjoy the discussion.
***********
Well, Dennis and I are talking - we're not avoiding each other - I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He wants me to go look at his family tree chart because he is proofreading the final version.
However, I discovered that I absolutely won't be going into the trailer. I 'discovered' this because yesterday I tried putting on the same clothing I had worn there, and within a couple of minutes, I was getting nauseated and having 'bad brain.' The clothing still smelled like kerosene.
I told Dennis on the phone that my reaction to his house was very severe. He asked if I was able to stay there for very brief periods at a time? On the phone I said yes, but after I tried on the worn clothing, I decided, no. I don't know if it will wash out of my clothes. I will have to stay outdoors, on the front step, and if he wants to show me the family tree chart, I will have to ask him to open the door of his truck and open it up inside the truck (because it's been raining so much and probably will be raining again when I go over there today).
This will be a very strict boundary. If I break this rule, I know (from previous contamination experiences) that I will ruin whatever clothes I have on, and will get sick for hours or days, every time I go in there.
He told me he's not chemical sensitive. But I think: he's just not observant. Chemical sensitivity has several components: 1. actually being more sensitive or more easily sickened than most people, and 2. learning to observe and recognize symptoms caused by chemicals, so that you recognize the phenomena more quickly the next time it happens.
So, it is partially a learned SKILL - the skill of noticing, recognizing, and identifying symptoms, and knowing what causes them. In that way, chemical sensitivity is actually viewed as a positive thing, something that everybody could benefit from knowing how to do. In other words, everybody ought to be observant and knowledgeable about which chemicals they're exposed to and which symptoms result from them; however, most people never learn how to observe that, because the 'best' or most effective way to learn it is to have a SEVERE or EXTREME incident, which you absolutely cannot avoid noticing, which is so obvious that it is jumping up and down and shouting at you, 'YOU TOUCHED THIS OBJECT AND GOT SICK!' Or you get sick in a particular location, or whatever. Most people are exposed to only mild levels of things that are less dangerous, in the everyday world. Or they're stuck in a location which is so constantly, severely contaminated that they cannot imagine a healthy life outside of that place, because it's been so long since they were healthy, they can't imagine the contrast. I think that last one applies to Dennis. His trailer is THAT badly toxic.
I can clearly see that Dennis has health/brain problems, and he doesn't see it, because he hasn't been through the horrible, extreme, traumatic chemical contamination and environmental illness problems that I have. It took a LOT to teach me about chemical contamination. I didn't learn it from the mild stuff. I learned it from EPHEDRA, one of the most dangerous drugs in the world. After that, I was paying attention, and I noticed ALL drugs and chemicals because I had learned how to recognize the phenomena.
When I say Dennis has problems, I mean: he walks around slowly, staring, and has no ambition (seems to show no desire for anything), and cannot respond to the severe problems in his life (such as this job loss), and cannot manage time (doesn't know how to quit doing something at a particular minute or particular hour). I know that those are very general things and they can apply to almost anybody. But I mean, with him, it's really noticeable. (This is one of those times where I can see both sides: I am genuinely irritated, annoyed, and frustrated by his behavior, but at the same time, I am convinced that it's not really his fault, and that there is a reason for it, some kind of physical sickness or poisoning that makes all of those problems worse. That's because I am the same way: my own brain/behavior problems are real, they annoy others, but they have a physical cause which isn't entirely my fault.)
After I left his house, wearing my contaminated clothing, I felt severely sick for HOURS, including my brain - the whole way of thinking felt messed up. And I FELT those same symptoms myself, in my own way - my brain was too messed up to think about time, to think about my personal goals and desires and ambitions, to take action - everything I see about Dennis, I was experiencing.
I don't know if fossil fuels (kerosene and propane) are the ONLY contaminant in his house. He also told me that he, and his family, used colloidal silver for treating infections. And he actually DRANK it when he had an unexplained tooth/mouth infection a while ago. This is something I don't like. I've read about colloidal silver, I've read it on survivalist web pages, I've read it on a lot of websites that I respect, and I know it's seen as an alternative medicine that can help people avoid antibiotics and avoid going to doctors. And I agree with the desire to do those things - I would also prefer to avoid doctors, antibiotics, and mainstream medicine most of the time. A lot of people view it as something that the mainstream medicine people want to suppress because it competes against them.
However, my feeling about it is that I have such bad reactions to ALL metals, I cannot imagine that it would EVER be safe to drink silver, even if it was processed in a way to supposedly make it safer. This is one particular 'alternative medicine' that I am going to disagree with. And I really am interested in holistic/alternative medicine, and a lot of it is good. But I'm not happy about drinking silver. So I have often wondered if his belongings, or his body, have a buildup of colloidal silver. I just remember having bad reactions from touching my silver coins - I think that at least one of the coins is a counterfeit one that contains lead (it's a large, two-ounce coin that looks like a copy of a buffalo, like the buffalo nickel, I think, but there is nothing printed anywhere about WHO minted the coin) - but even the real silver ones give me a funny sensation in my skin, and a dopey feeling in my head, and I start writing poetry. (Writing poetry? That's very specific. But yes, I noticed THAT PARTICULAR symptom seemed associated with touching heavy metals. However, during the time period when I first met Martin, I was getting a lot of poetry lines in my head, and that was part of the brainwashing telling me 'Getting you and Martin together is a BIG DEAL.' So it wasn't only metals, it was also the voices and other things associated with him. And during the beginning of the Martin phase, I also think I was drugged with something other than my OWN drugs, and I remember that other antidepressants also caused me to write poetry and limericks.)
Well, anyway, so I am not comfortable with the idea of colloidal silver. And I wonder what other chemicals, drugs, or anything might be there.
So I will have to stay out of his house for reasons that have nothing to do with 'setting boundaries on physical contact.' It might serve that purpose, but in reality, I actually am avoiding the trailer because of the chemical sickness.
**************
Yesterday, I drove Peter to Altoona again (I took him there a couple weeks ago, but never told the story) for a doctor's appointment. He is diabetic, and has kidney failure, and is getting hemodialysis. For dialysis, he has had surgery on his arm to change the blood vessels so that they can more easily take out the blood and put it back in. He has what's called a fistula. So he went back to the doctor to get his stitches taken out.
Well, this is the odd thing. His wife and I worked together at McDonald's, which is where I met Peter in the first place. We liked each other well enough, and she knows that I have talked on the phone with Peter. She and I have had conversations about Peter. She knows or suspects about my relationship with him, but it is a topic that is at the gray area of things that we would rather avoid talking about or thinking about, but we will be tolerant about. I am as sympathetic as I know how to be with her situation, because she is a slave at her job because she has to keep her health insurance, for Peter, and that is caused by the healthcare system being a mess, which is not her fault. What I mean is, I am not sitting here making fun of her, or being disrespectful to her, or criticizing her, or saying that I am 'entitled' to be with her husband, or saying that she has failed him in some way. She works very long hours and is afraid of losing her job. Meanwhile, she has her own very serious health problems.
So, yesterday when I went to pick him up, I actually knocked on the door and was talking to her in person - I haven't seen her in quite a while because I'm no longer at McDonald's. They had a car problem for several weeks, and they had no car at all, which is the reason why I was taking him to Altoona. So we were talking and she thanked me for taking him. I said that I understood the surgery was very important and the car problem was a huge crisis for them and it was a difficult situation. They have a lot of money problems too and are barely able to pay their bills, which is what happened with the car: they couldn't pay the insurance and the car's license plate got taken away and they were not allowed to drive it.
So, it was strange talking to her, and also being there when her son was in the room lying on the couch, and he commented about something once in the conversation, but he didn't know me - he could have only seen me briefly at McDonald's but we were never introduced. (When he spoke, I grinned, I was delighted. I was like, 'Wow, you can talk?' He's nine years old. We've never interacted directly with each other.) The feeling between me and her, I would describe like this: gratitude, understanding, sympathy, both of us knowing the importance of taking care of Peter, knowing what a huge financial and emotional burden this is, being overwhelmed... We have in common this love for Peter, although her love is different from mine - hers is much more strongly committed, and mine is a little more distanced or detached, like a friendship with physical attraction instead of a marriage. She is overwhelmed with a problem so huge and expensive and emotionally painful that she needs help very badly. So I felt that we are not talking about my relationship with Peter, but instead, grateful for help in this crisis.
*******
Martin: Brainwashing again. I had emailed him a couple days ago, and got a 'leave me alone' response. Well, of course, immediately after that, I got voices and images and hypnosis over the past couple days since that email. They keep telling me that he is hoping and wishing I would send another email, and that he is disappointed to see that I haven't sent anything. They sent me several visual images of Martin walking quickly past me and waving hello, then continuing on past (while I was in bed with my eyes closed). They are telling me something to the effect of 'no means yes,' (or 'no means maybe'). They are telling me that he is extremely restricted and inhibited in a lot of things that he is 'not allowed' to do, to look at, to ask about, etc.
The whole thing seems believable, so as usual, I'm going along with it and agreeing, and I'm like, 'that poor boy,' which is what the voices were saying, and they meant it sarcastically on the one hand, but sincerely on the other. I am supposed to understand it in the sincere way, to see him as a victim in a terrible situation, trapped in a mind control system where he is prevented from doing things, and deprived of the things he wants and needs. Ongoing severe deprivation, to control him and force him to do whatever they want. That is the way that they are portraying him to me.
I am VERY cautious about this, because I know how easy it would be to get a knock on my door and open the door to see two police officers standing there, which is what happened the LAST time I kept writing letters to somebody who was avoiding me. However, THAT guy didn't give me any responses at all, not even a 'leave me alone' response. And that situation was different in a lot of ways.
So every day is a battle against the brainwashing and the hypnosis. I am in terror that the police will be at my door, and in terror that I will forget 'no means no,' terrified that I will just ignore his 'leave me alone' responses and that I'll do the same thing again. And this is even more difficult because I really DO know that the mind control attacks REALLY EXIST, and all of the idea is plausible. It could really be happening. I can't rule it out. It really COULD be true that he is physically forced to be unable to talk openly with me, forcibly prevented from emailing, from calling, from looking at me or approaching me, etc. Everything they're brainwashing me to believe really is believable, because I know my own experiences with being forced to do things or prevented from doing things.
And it happens every time I get hit with certain drugs that are in my house.
In the past, I sent him a large number of emails (over three dozen) and lots of them were very long letters. Being long-winded is connected with the drugs, and also, with being forced to say things and prevented from thinking my own thoughts. He stopped answering, as my long-winded letters started being sent every day or every few days. And how CAN somebody answer dozens and dozens of very long emails? It is time consuming to read and write very long letters. He is in college, is taking classes, doing homework, and going out with his friends. These emails are like adding another homework assignment to the homework he already has.
So I started to blog, partly as a way of avoiding emailing him. Instead of sending letters, I would write blogs. That way, he could choose to visit the blog, or choose to avoid it, or postpone it until a more convenient time. (If anybody can 'choose' ANYTHING.) It would be less direct and less like harassment. He would have no 'obligation' to reply. With a blog, you can read it, but nobody expects you to answer. People sometimes comment on blogs, but the comments can be very short and they don't have to reply to everything that was said, but instead they can talk about only one small subject of interest, or be random and irrelevant, or people can talk back and forth between comments. It's different from 'answering letters.' That was why I started to blog instead of emailing.
So... daily brainwashing, fighting against 'no means yes/maybe', and trying to avoid doing anything that will bring the cops to my door, and not knowing what would be the last straw to make him call the police on me, because he doesn't want to set an official boundary of 'When you do X, I am going to do Y,' in a very direct way. As in, 'If I receive one more email from you about anything at all, I am going to call the police, and I have their phone number here, and that number is XXX-XXXX, and I am going to talk to a particular police officer, and his name is Fred Smith, and I am going to tell him X and ask him to do X.' As specific as possible a plan of action in the real world. So since he won't TELL me what that plan of action IS, I have no idea what to expect, and I have no idea when the last straw would occur. And yet I can foresee several possible things that could happen, and would like to ask him about those scenarios, but can't get him to talk with me about it.
And no, 'talking to the police' is not what I want, either. I would prefer a discussion of what is okay and what is not okay, and no police officers being involved at all. The police are not to be used to mediate disagreement and conflicts - they're not diplomats, they're not mediators, they're not interested in negotiating, but instead, they have 'laws' which come from government, and the 'laws' (quote unquote) are not designed in the best interests of people trying to negotiate or solve problems, but instead ... it's just 'arrest somebody and throw them in a mental hospital, who cares if the problem can be solved in a much better way.'
I can foresee a bunch of things that could happen involving Martin. It would usually be triggered by a drug incident that would make me lose my inhibitions. I could write another letter to one of his friends. I could leave a comment on his facebook page - although I don't know whether strangers can comment, or if only friends can - I haven't tried it and I am not intending to try it. But it could happen if I had another drug incident. I could find his blogs again - miraculously restored instead of deleted - and leave another comment there. I could try giving another handwritten note to one of his friends. I could try using a different friend instead of Caitlin. I could ask another friend questions about him. There are other foreseeable things that I could do to try to contact him if I had a drug incident.
I could be drugged enough to overcome my fear of talking to him, and say something directly to him - although that now seems unlikely, because of the months and months of pain, from him avoiding me, and the terror of him calling the police. In the beginning, I was still able to approach him and say something directly, because I had never suffered any trauma from him. Now there is a terrible trauma going on for months and months, and a terrible fear, which wasn't there yet in the beginning when we first started talking. I don't even know if I could talk directly to him even if I were on drugs. I know I am going to be upset when he graduates and leaves school, or at least leaves for the summer, since I can't talk to him and don't know if he's coming back, and don't know if he's finishing school this semester, or later. I don't know anything about what he's doing or where he will go, whether he is staying in State College or going to some other place to live. So sooner or later I will want to say goodbye to him for the summer or goodbye permanently, and I am going to be very anxious and very sad about it, but also knowing that he keeps saying 'leave me alone' and I cannot talk to him. And he doesn't answer direct questions. He avoids all questions.
I just noticed that I haven't eaten much for breakfast except coffee. When I haven't eaten, I write very long obsessive blogs. (That's what retmeishka is for - the 'negative emotions, gross or sexual topics, and long-winded obsessions' blog.)
Anyway, I wanted to talk to him about what we would do if any of the foreseeable incidents would happen, but he doesn't want to be confronted or answer any questions about that.
I think I will go eat breakfast instead of writing.
I really was laughing out loud at the joke. That is how 'the voices' often are with me. I do not condone or approve of putting voices in people's heads; if I had a choice about it, I would choose to shut it off or block it out; however, when I hear them, they often say funny or interesting things, and I laugh. Or we have 'discussions' that are actually enjoyable conversations. Or they sometimes encourage me to do fun things that I would have wanted to do anyway, like the time when they encouraged me to go to Six Flags last summer.
Other times, it is VERY negative, especially if I have used my antidepressant (St. John's Wort) and am having intense rebellion against them during my drug withdrawal, and (mentally) yelling and cursing at them and telling them to stop. When that is going on, the things they say are usually not at all nice or amusing.
I don't want to give people the impression that the voices are my friends, or that I want them to be there. They are a poor substitute for real friendship and real conversations. They are a poor substitute for real, independent thought and privacy. But whatever they are, I still sometimes laugh with them or agree with them or enjoy the discussion.
***********
Well, Dennis and I are talking - we're not avoiding each other - I spoke to him on the phone yesterday. He wants me to go look at his family tree chart because he is proofreading the final version.
However, I discovered that I absolutely won't be going into the trailer. I 'discovered' this because yesterday I tried putting on the same clothing I had worn there, and within a couple of minutes, I was getting nauseated and having 'bad brain.' The clothing still smelled like kerosene.
I told Dennis on the phone that my reaction to his house was very severe. He asked if I was able to stay there for very brief periods at a time? On the phone I said yes, but after I tried on the worn clothing, I decided, no. I don't know if it will wash out of my clothes. I will have to stay outdoors, on the front step, and if he wants to show me the family tree chart, I will have to ask him to open the door of his truck and open it up inside the truck (because it's been raining so much and probably will be raining again when I go over there today).
This will be a very strict boundary. If I break this rule, I know (from previous contamination experiences) that I will ruin whatever clothes I have on, and will get sick for hours or days, every time I go in there.
He told me he's not chemical sensitive. But I think: he's just not observant. Chemical sensitivity has several components: 1. actually being more sensitive or more easily sickened than most people, and 2. learning to observe and recognize symptoms caused by chemicals, so that you recognize the phenomena more quickly the next time it happens.
So, it is partially a learned SKILL - the skill of noticing, recognizing, and identifying symptoms, and knowing what causes them. In that way, chemical sensitivity is actually viewed as a positive thing, something that everybody could benefit from knowing how to do. In other words, everybody ought to be observant and knowledgeable about which chemicals they're exposed to and which symptoms result from them; however, most people never learn how to observe that, because the 'best' or most effective way to learn it is to have a SEVERE or EXTREME incident, which you absolutely cannot avoid noticing, which is so obvious that it is jumping up and down and shouting at you, 'YOU TOUCHED THIS OBJECT AND GOT SICK!' Or you get sick in a particular location, or whatever. Most people are exposed to only mild levels of things that are less dangerous, in the everyday world. Or they're stuck in a location which is so constantly, severely contaminated that they cannot imagine a healthy life outside of that place, because it's been so long since they were healthy, they can't imagine the contrast. I think that last one applies to Dennis. His trailer is THAT badly toxic.
I can clearly see that Dennis has health/brain problems, and he doesn't see it, because he hasn't been through the horrible, extreme, traumatic chemical contamination and environmental illness problems that I have. It took a LOT to teach me about chemical contamination. I didn't learn it from the mild stuff. I learned it from EPHEDRA, one of the most dangerous drugs in the world. After that, I was paying attention, and I noticed ALL drugs and chemicals because I had learned how to recognize the phenomena.
When I say Dennis has problems, I mean: he walks around slowly, staring, and has no ambition (seems to show no desire for anything), and cannot respond to the severe problems in his life (such as this job loss), and cannot manage time (doesn't know how to quit doing something at a particular minute or particular hour). I know that those are very general things and they can apply to almost anybody. But I mean, with him, it's really noticeable. (This is one of those times where I can see both sides: I am genuinely irritated, annoyed, and frustrated by his behavior, but at the same time, I am convinced that it's not really his fault, and that there is a reason for it, some kind of physical sickness or poisoning that makes all of those problems worse. That's because I am the same way: my own brain/behavior problems are real, they annoy others, but they have a physical cause which isn't entirely my fault.)
After I left his house, wearing my contaminated clothing, I felt severely sick for HOURS, including my brain - the whole way of thinking felt messed up. And I FELT those same symptoms myself, in my own way - my brain was too messed up to think about time, to think about my personal goals and desires and ambitions, to take action - everything I see about Dennis, I was experiencing.
I don't know if fossil fuels (kerosene and propane) are the ONLY contaminant in his house. He also told me that he, and his family, used colloidal silver for treating infections. And he actually DRANK it when he had an unexplained tooth/mouth infection a while ago. This is something I don't like. I've read about colloidal silver, I've read it on survivalist web pages, I've read it on a lot of websites that I respect, and I know it's seen as an alternative medicine that can help people avoid antibiotics and avoid going to doctors. And I agree with the desire to do those things - I would also prefer to avoid doctors, antibiotics, and mainstream medicine most of the time. A lot of people view it as something that the mainstream medicine people want to suppress because it competes against them.
However, my feeling about it is that I have such bad reactions to ALL metals, I cannot imagine that it would EVER be safe to drink silver, even if it was processed in a way to supposedly make it safer. This is one particular 'alternative medicine' that I am going to disagree with. And I really am interested in holistic/alternative medicine, and a lot of it is good. But I'm not happy about drinking silver. So I have often wondered if his belongings, or his body, have a buildup of colloidal silver. I just remember having bad reactions from touching my silver coins - I think that at least one of the coins is a counterfeit one that contains lead (it's a large, two-ounce coin that looks like a copy of a buffalo, like the buffalo nickel, I think, but there is nothing printed anywhere about WHO minted the coin) - but even the real silver ones give me a funny sensation in my skin, and a dopey feeling in my head, and I start writing poetry. (Writing poetry? That's very specific. But yes, I noticed THAT PARTICULAR symptom seemed associated with touching heavy metals. However, during the time period when I first met Martin, I was getting a lot of poetry lines in my head, and that was part of the brainwashing telling me 'Getting you and Martin together is a BIG DEAL.' So it wasn't only metals, it was also the voices and other things associated with him. And during the beginning of the Martin phase, I also think I was drugged with something other than my OWN drugs, and I remember that other antidepressants also caused me to write poetry and limericks.)
Well, anyway, so I am not comfortable with the idea of colloidal silver. And I wonder what other chemicals, drugs, or anything might be there.
So I will have to stay out of his house for reasons that have nothing to do with 'setting boundaries on physical contact.' It might serve that purpose, but in reality, I actually am avoiding the trailer because of the chemical sickness.
**************
Yesterday, I drove Peter to Altoona again (I took him there a couple weeks ago, but never told the story) for a doctor's appointment. He is diabetic, and has kidney failure, and is getting hemodialysis. For dialysis, he has had surgery on his arm to change the blood vessels so that they can more easily take out the blood and put it back in. He has what's called a fistula. So he went back to the doctor to get his stitches taken out.
Well, this is the odd thing. His wife and I worked together at McDonald's, which is where I met Peter in the first place. We liked each other well enough, and she knows that I have talked on the phone with Peter. She and I have had conversations about Peter. She knows or suspects about my relationship with him, but it is a topic that is at the gray area of things that we would rather avoid talking about or thinking about, but we will be tolerant about. I am as sympathetic as I know how to be with her situation, because she is a slave at her job because she has to keep her health insurance, for Peter, and that is caused by the healthcare system being a mess, which is not her fault. What I mean is, I am not sitting here making fun of her, or being disrespectful to her, or criticizing her, or saying that I am 'entitled' to be with her husband, or saying that she has failed him in some way. She works very long hours and is afraid of losing her job. Meanwhile, she has her own very serious health problems.
So, yesterday when I went to pick him up, I actually knocked on the door and was talking to her in person - I haven't seen her in quite a while because I'm no longer at McDonald's. They had a car problem for several weeks, and they had no car at all, which is the reason why I was taking him to Altoona. So we were talking and she thanked me for taking him. I said that I understood the surgery was very important and the car problem was a huge crisis for them and it was a difficult situation. They have a lot of money problems too and are barely able to pay their bills, which is what happened with the car: they couldn't pay the insurance and the car's license plate got taken away and they were not allowed to drive it.
So, it was strange talking to her, and also being there when her son was in the room lying on the couch, and he commented about something once in the conversation, but he didn't know me - he could have only seen me briefly at McDonald's but we were never introduced. (When he spoke, I grinned, I was delighted. I was like, 'Wow, you can talk?' He's nine years old. We've never interacted directly with each other.) The feeling between me and her, I would describe like this: gratitude, understanding, sympathy, both of us knowing the importance of taking care of Peter, knowing what a huge financial and emotional burden this is, being overwhelmed... We have in common this love for Peter, although her love is different from mine - hers is much more strongly committed, and mine is a little more distanced or detached, like a friendship with physical attraction instead of a marriage. She is overwhelmed with a problem so huge and expensive and emotionally painful that she needs help very badly. So I felt that we are not talking about my relationship with Peter, but instead, grateful for help in this crisis.
*******
Martin: Brainwashing again. I had emailed him a couple days ago, and got a 'leave me alone' response. Well, of course, immediately after that, I got voices and images and hypnosis over the past couple days since that email. They keep telling me that he is hoping and wishing I would send another email, and that he is disappointed to see that I haven't sent anything. They sent me several visual images of Martin walking quickly past me and waving hello, then continuing on past (while I was in bed with my eyes closed). They are telling me something to the effect of 'no means yes,' (or 'no means maybe'). They are telling me that he is extremely restricted and inhibited in a lot of things that he is 'not allowed' to do, to look at, to ask about, etc.
The whole thing seems believable, so as usual, I'm going along with it and agreeing, and I'm like, 'that poor boy,' which is what the voices were saying, and they meant it sarcastically on the one hand, but sincerely on the other. I am supposed to understand it in the sincere way, to see him as a victim in a terrible situation, trapped in a mind control system where he is prevented from doing things, and deprived of the things he wants and needs. Ongoing severe deprivation, to control him and force him to do whatever they want. That is the way that they are portraying him to me.
I am VERY cautious about this, because I know how easy it would be to get a knock on my door and open the door to see two police officers standing there, which is what happened the LAST time I kept writing letters to somebody who was avoiding me. However, THAT guy didn't give me any responses at all, not even a 'leave me alone' response. And that situation was different in a lot of ways.
So every day is a battle against the brainwashing and the hypnosis. I am in terror that the police will be at my door, and in terror that I will forget 'no means no,' terrified that I will just ignore his 'leave me alone' responses and that I'll do the same thing again. And this is even more difficult because I really DO know that the mind control attacks REALLY EXIST, and all of the idea is plausible. It could really be happening. I can't rule it out. It really COULD be true that he is physically forced to be unable to talk openly with me, forcibly prevented from emailing, from calling, from looking at me or approaching me, etc. Everything they're brainwashing me to believe really is believable, because I know my own experiences with being forced to do things or prevented from doing things.
And it happens every time I get hit with certain drugs that are in my house.
In the past, I sent him a large number of emails (over three dozen) and lots of them were very long letters. Being long-winded is connected with the drugs, and also, with being forced to say things and prevented from thinking my own thoughts. He stopped answering, as my long-winded letters started being sent every day or every few days. And how CAN somebody answer dozens and dozens of very long emails? It is time consuming to read and write very long letters. He is in college, is taking classes, doing homework, and going out with his friends. These emails are like adding another homework assignment to the homework he already has.
So I started to blog, partly as a way of avoiding emailing him. Instead of sending letters, I would write blogs. That way, he could choose to visit the blog, or choose to avoid it, or postpone it until a more convenient time. (If anybody can 'choose' ANYTHING.) It would be less direct and less like harassment. He would have no 'obligation' to reply. With a blog, you can read it, but nobody expects you to answer. People sometimes comment on blogs, but the comments can be very short and they don't have to reply to everything that was said, but instead they can talk about only one small subject of interest, or be random and irrelevant, or people can talk back and forth between comments. It's different from 'answering letters.' That was why I started to blog instead of emailing.
So... daily brainwashing, fighting against 'no means yes/maybe', and trying to avoid doing anything that will bring the cops to my door, and not knowing what would be the last straw to make him call the police on me, because he doesn't want to set an official boundary of 'When you do X, I am going to do Y,' in a very direct way. As in, 'If I receive one more email from you about anything at all, I am going to call the police, and I have their phone number here, and that number is XXX-XXXX, and I am going to talk to a particular police officer, and his name is Fred Smith, and I am going to tell him X and ask him to do X.' As specific as possible a plan of action in the real world. So since he won't TELL me what that plan of action IS, I have no idea what to expect, and I have no idea when the last straw would occur. And yet I can foresee several possible things that could happen, and would like to ask him about those scenarios, but can't get him to talk with me about it.
And no, 'talking to the police' is not what I want, either. I would prefer a discussion of what is okay and what is not okay, and no police officers being involved at all. The police are not to be used to mediate disagreement and conflicts - they're not diplomats, they're not mediators, they're not interested in negotiating, but instead, they have 'laws' which come from government, and the 'laws' (quote unquote) are not designed in the best interests of people trying to negotiate or solve problems, but instead ... it's just 'arrest somebody and throw them in a mental hospital, who cares if the problem can be solved in a much better way.'
I can foresee a bunch of things that could happen involving Martin. It would usually be triggered by a drug incident that would make me lose my inhibitions. I could write another letter to one of his friends. I could leave a comment on his facebook page - although I don't know whether strangers can comment, or if only friends can - I haven't tried it and I am not intending to try it. But it could happen if I had another drug incident. I could find his blogs again - miraculously restored instead of deleted - and leave another comment there. I could try giving another handwritten note to one of his friends. I could try using a different friend instead of Caitlin. I could ask another friend questions about him. There are other foreseeable things that I could do to try to contact him if I had a drug incident.
I could be drugged enough to overcome my fear of talking to him, and say something directly to him - although that now seems unlikely, because of the months and months of pain, from him avoiding me, and the terror of him calling the police. In the beginning, I was still able to approach him and say something directly, because I had never suffered any trauma from him. Now there is a terrible trauma going on for months and months, and a terrible fear, which wasn't there yet in the beginning when we first started talking. I don't even know if I could talk directly to him even if I were on drugs. I know I am going to be upset when he graduates and leaves school, or at least leaves for the summer, since I can't talk to him and don't know if he's coming back, and don't know if he's finishing school this semester, or later. I don't know anything about what he's doing or where he will go, whether he is staying in State College or going to some other place to live. So sooner or later I will want to say goodbye to him for the summer or goodbye permanently, and I am going to be very anxious and very sad about it, but also knowing that he keeps saying 'leave me alone' and I cannot talk to him. And he doesn't answer direct questions. He avoids all questions.
I just noticed that I haven't eaten much for breakfast except coffee. When I haven't eaten, I write very long obsessive blogs. (That's what retmeishka is for - the 'negative emotions, gross or sexual topics, and long-winded obsessions' blog.)
Anyway, I wanted to talk to him about what we would do if any of the foreseeable incidents would happen, but he doesn't want to be confronted or answer any questions about that.
I think I will go eat breakfast instead of writing.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
armpit hair
'dude, cut your fucking eyelashes, man. that's disgusting. you can't even see through those things.'
there were two voices talking today - one of them said 'shave your pits!' and the other gave that joking reply. i know they weren't telling me to shave - they were just quoting some people's responses to my photo.
the concept is: with regard to hair, no specific part of the body is better or worse than any other part. why is pit hair disgusting, but eyelashes aren't?
it's disgusting because it probably triggers an involuntary, instinctive, automatic response, and they know they are 'not supposed' to feel that way.
i think it is 'intended' ('intention' implies intelligent design - i won't get into that argument) to tell the infant how to locate the breast for nursing. the armpits are close to the breasts, and if the baby can find the general area by smell, it helps them locate the nipple.
there were two voices talking today - one of them said 'shave your pits!' and the other gave that joking reply. i know they weren't telling me to shave - they were just quoting some people's responses to my photo.
the concept is: with regard to hair, no specific part of the body is better or worse than any other part. why is pit hair disgusting, but eyelashes aren't?
it's disgusting because it probably triggers an involuntary, instinctive, automatic response, and they know they are 'not supposed' to feel that way.
i think it is 'intended' ('intention' implies intelligent design - i won't get into that argument) to tell the infant how to locate the breast for nursing. the armpits are close to the breasts, and if the baby can find the general area by smell, it helps them locate the nipple.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Cleaning the car - the work exchange
Well, the first meeting of the work exchange community (total real members: two) happened today. It was a success. Diane understands the idea of 'I help you, you help me.' She helped to vacuum and shampoo the car, and afterwards, we talked about some work that I could help her with at her house. We are not formally counting the hours or the calories of energy expended in performing the labor. The bookkeeping is very casual right now.
The car floors aren't perfect, and we didn't get rid of all the contamination, but I feel better for having done a little bit of work on it. It's impossible to get rid of it when it's in the carpets. (To catch up on the story, the brief version: 2007, I handled medicinal herbs and seeds in my apartment; they contaminated some of my belongings with their essential oils; I started having reactions when I touched these oils and absorbed them through the skin; it's been an ongoing disaster over the past two years, as I found out that the oils remain active instead of biodegrading and becoming inactive. So I've been cleaning it up, but it doesn't come out of carpets. And several of the cleaning chemicals I used, like Borax, were so toxic that it made the situation much worse. Short version.)
I had someone else who I was TRYING to get into the 'I help you, you help me' concept, but he was operating in a slightly different paradigm, of 'I give you lots of gifts, and you give me sex' paradigm, which isn't what I'm trying to do at this time. I kept trying to pay him back in non-sexual ways and he kept refusing. As of right now, I still have in my possession the 'bunch of gifts,' and I am still deciding whether I will start giving things back to him, or pay him cash, and it hasn't been settled yet. He gave them to me during the winter, when I was on my deathbed and desperately needed help, and I don't necessarily want to give it all back, because a lot of it is useful, but I don't have a cash value estimate on it. (some computer equipment, an air filter, miscellaneous computer stuff.)
So, this is what would be called a mission-and-values conflict according to Diana Leafe Christian, or structural conflict, where people aren't trying to accomplish the same goals in a community. I'm a little annoyed about that today. I see it as community building and finding ways to make lasting improvements in our lives; he sees it as 'paying for a prostitute.' As a libertarian/anarchist, I don't have anything against prostitution (victimless crime), but there's a time and place for it, and I'm not working as a prostitute at this particular moment in my life. (In reality, he probably would describe it as 'traditional dating,' which is the same thing as paying for a prostitute. The guy buys stuff for the girl and she's expected to give sex in return. Usually they're horrified at the suggestion that it has any resemblance to prostitution.)
I can't imagine how anybody would NOT have a huge, complicated, impossibly long to-do list of unfinished projects and plans and chores and work that needs to be done and daily routines and wishes and dreams... I ask people what work they need to have done, I try to explain the idea, and the response I sometimes get is 'Duhhhhhhh....' The world is infinitely complicated. There are infinity tasks that need to be done. When one task is achieved, there are infinity more tasks beneath it. It is physically impossible NOT to have work that needs to be done. So again, I'm annoyed. (By the way, much of my annoyance is intensified because I'm reacting to the contamination in the carpets we were cleaning. I will probably be in a rotten mood for several hours.)
But, the car shampooing job went well. We had to figure out how to use the shampooer. The instructions aren't very detailed. When it starts up, the scrub brush starts pouring out foam, and you can't stop it. So you have to start scrubbing, ready or not, because the time starts counting down, and you only have a few minutes. On the first round, we were trying to figure out how to switch it to the vacuum, where you suction up the shampoo. The instructions do not say how to switch to the vacuum. I thought it would happen automatically after a certain number of minutes, but instead, the shampooer eventually just shut off. We did another round of it, and it turns out that you push the button next to the 'vacuum only' selection to get the vacuum. But I thought that that button only controlled it in the very beginning when you were putting quarters in. It doesn't, it still controls it while it's running.
So we got better at it, and I stood on one side of the car, and she stood on the other, and she handed the scrubber over to me when she was done, and we had to hurry the whole time to make sure we didn't run out of minutes, and the foam just kept pouring out, so you had to pass it really quickly over the gearshift and parking brake so they wouldn't get covered in foam. It was awkward, and fun, and we were laughing.
It was sunny outside, and we talked, and I vented my feelings about chemical sensitivity. She was sympathetic because she knew two different people who were chemical sensitive. I am not 'chemical sensitive' in the traditional way where you have a life-threatening asthma attack every time somebody with perfume walks into the room - nowhere near that. I just react to very specific things, including the low levels of herbal drugs and cleaning chemicals and mold in my house. My 'area of specialization' is the phenomenon of transdermally absorbed drugs and chemicals, and also, the problem of clothing and surface contamination. Those ideas are important and not very well known. For instance, stimulant drugs can contaminate clothing, go through the skin, remain in the laundry even after several washes, and cause weeks and weeks of persistent insomnia. I know this from firsthand experience, and this is important information. But I haven't found it mentioned in other websites, although it's hard to know what search terms to use to look for that.
I have a notepad, and I am writing down dates and times of things that I have planned and need to do. This is unfamiliar to me. It's very disorganized and informal - when I started writing it down, I got harassed by voices pushing me to be all perfectionistic about it, and set up some uber-technical system showing everybody's names and all the things we would be doing. But I know all about that from the past - it will waste time, if you try to make a complicated, perfectionistic system, when all you need is an informal scrawl. I am now thinking of the enneagram, that the Seven shouldn't disintegrate towards type One (perfectionistic) and should, instead, integrate towards Five (I read a little quote showing the spirit of the Five: 'Life is short - don't expect too much.' That isn't meant in a bitter, cynical way, but rather, it just means, don't overload yourself with infinity impossible things to do because you have to focus on doing whatever you are already involved in.)
Anyway, when I'm here at home, and I have to think about what time it is, and feel an obligation to do something for somebody at a particular hour, on some particular day, it's strange to feel that while I'm at home. That's a 'workplace feeling,' not a 'home feeling.' Right now, it's all just emailing or calling various people, meeting people, and getting to know them, and it's mostly in the future instead of actually happening right now.
I am learning as I go about what the rules will be, and how to express them. Being very annoyed about the 'I give you gifts, you give me sex' model of 'traditional dating,' I will have to set strong rules and boundaries saying, 'THAT IS *NOT* WHAT I'M DOING!' I am telling people from the beginning that it is Exchange Work For Work, and not Exchange Gifts For Sex. (Yes, the 'I'm annoyed' feeling just goes on and on. Very bad day for a variety of reasons, other than the successful job done on the car, which I am pleased about.)
The car floors aren't perfect, and we didn't get rid of all the contamination, but I feel better for having done a little bit of work on it. It's impossible to get rid of it when it's in the carpets. (To catch up on the story, the brief version: 2007, I handled medicinal herbs and seeds in my apartment; they contaminated some of my belongings with their essential oils; I started having reactions when I touched these oils and absorbed them through the skin; it's been an ongoing disaster over the past two years, as I found out that the oils remain active instead of biodegrading and becoming inactive. So I've been cleaning it up, but it doesn't come out of carpets. And several of the cleaning chemicals I used, like Borax, were so toxic that it made the situation much worse. Short version.)
I had someone else who I was TRYING to get into the 'I help you, you help me' concept, but he was operating in a slightly different paradigm, of 'I give you lots of gifts, and you give me sex' paradigm, which isn't what I'm trying to do at this time. I kept trying to pay him back in non-sexual ways and he kept refusing. As of right now, I still have in my possession the 'bunch of gifts,' and I am still deciding whether I will start giving things back to him, or pay him cash, and it hasn't been settled yet. He gave them to me during the winter, when I was on my deathbed and desperately needed help, and I don't necessarily want to give it all back, because a lot of it is useful, but I don't have a cash value estimate on it. (some computer equipment, an air filter, miscellaneous computer stuff.)
So, this is what would be called a mission-and-values conflict according to Diana Leafe Christian, or structural conflict, where people aren't trying to accomplish the same goals in a community. I'm a little annoyed about that today. I see it as community building and finding ways to make lasting improvements in our lives; he sees it as 'paying for a prostitute.' As a libertarian/anarchist, I don't have anything against prostitution (victimless crime), but there's a time and place for it, and I'm not working as a prostitute at this particular moment in my life. (In reality, he probably would describe it as 'traditional dating,' which is the same thing as paying for a prostitute. The guy buys stuff for the girl and she's expected to give sex in return. Usually they're horrified at the suggestion that it has any resemblance to prostitution.)
I can't imagine how anybody would NOT have a huge, complicated, impossibly long to-do list of unfinished projects and plans and chores and work that needs to be done and daily routines and wishes and dreams... I ask people what work they need to have done, I try to explain the idea, and the response I sometimes get is 'Duhhhhhhh....' The world is infinitely complicated. There are infinity tasks that need to be done. When one task is achieved, there are infinity more tasks beneath it. It is physically impossible NOT to have work that needs to be done. So again, I'm annoyed. (By the way, much of my annoyance is intensified because I'm reacting to the contamination in the carpets we were cleaning. I will probably be in a rotten mood for several hours.)
But, the car shampooing job went well. We had to figure out how to use the shampooer. The instructions aren't very detailed. When it starts up, the scrub brush starts pouring out foam, and you can't stop it. So you have to start scrubbing, ready or not, because the time starts counting down, and you only have a few minutes. On the first round, we were trying to figure out how to switch it to the vacuum, where you suction up the shampoo. The instructions do not say how to switch to the vacuum. I thought it would happen automatically after a certain number of minutes, but instead, the shampooer eventually just shut off. We did another round of it, and it turns out that you push the button next to the 'vacuum only' selection to get the vacuum. But I thought that that button only controlled it in the very beginning when you were putting quarters in. It doesn't, it still controls it while it's running.
So we got better at it, and I stood on one side of the car, and she stood on the other, and she handed the scrubber over to me when she was done, and we had to hurry the whole time to make sure we didn't run out of minutes, and the foam just kept pouring out, so you had to pass it really quickly over the gearshift and parking brake so they wouldn't get covered in foam. It was awkward, and fun, and we were laughing.
It was sunny outside, and we talked, and I vented my feelings about chemical sensitivity. She was sympathetic because she knew two different people who were chemical sensitive. I am not 'chemical sensitive' in the traditional way where you have a life-threatening asthma attack every time somebody with perfume walks into the room - nowhere near that. I just react to very specific things, including the low levels of herbal drugs and cleaning chemicals and mold in my house. My 'area of specialization' is the phenomenon of transdermally absorbed drugs and chemicals, and also, the problem of clothing and surface contamination. Those ideas are important and not very well known. For instance, stimulant drugs can contaminate clothing, go through the skin, remain in the laundry even after several washes, and cause weeks and weeks of persistent insomnia. I know this from firsthand experience, and this is important information. But I haven't found it mentioned in other websites, although it's hard to know what search terms to use to look for that.
I have a notepad, and I am writing down dates and times of things that I have planned and need to do. This is unfamiliar to me. It's very disorganized and informal - when I started writing it down, I got harassed by voices pushing me to be all perfectionistic about it, and set up some uber-technical system showing everybody's names and all the things we would be doing. But I know all about that from the past - it will waste time, if you try to make a complicated, perfectionistic system, when all you need is an informal scrawl. I am now thinking of the enneagram, that the Seven shouldn't disintegrate towards type One (perfectionistic) and should, instead, integrate towards Five (I read a little quote showing the spirit of the Five: 'Life is short - don't expect too much.' That isn't meant in a bitter, cynical way, but rather, it just means, don't overload yourself with infinity impossible things to do because you have to focus on doing whatever you are already involved in.)
Anyway, when I'm here at home, and I have to think about what time it is, and feel an obligation to do something for somebody at a particular hour, on some particular day, it's strange to feel that while I'm at home. That's a 'workplace feeling,' not a 'home feeling.' Right now, it's all just emailing or calling various people, meeting people, and getting to know them, and it's mostly in the future instead of actually happening right now.
I am learning as I go about what the rules will be, and how to express them. Being very annoyed about the 'I give you gifts, you give me sex' model of 'traditional dating,' I will have to set strong rules and boundaries saying, 'THAT IS *NOT* WHAT I'M DOING!' I am telling people from the beginning that it is Exchange Work For Work, and not Exchange Gifts For Sex. (Yes, the 'I'm annoyed' feeling just goes on and on. Very bad day for a variety of reasons, other than the successful job done on the car, which I am pleased about.)
an awful 24 hours
okay. i'm back from the car thing, and i wrote it in my other blog. now i am going to vent, and there are LOTS of bad feelings to vent today, since I got hit with some drug while cleaning the car, and several bad things have happened in the past 24 hours or so.
in the previous blog i started with something like an 'everybody stay calm' message. i should have also said, 'nobody is getting committed to a mental hospital either.' i forgot to say that.
well, i will tell about dennis first, but i am not going into long detail about it (actually, never mind that - i went into long detail anyway). i had asked myself many times what type of physical contact would be permitted between me and dennis. i really did want to have SOME kind of touch permitted, like brief hugging which would only last a second or two, not long. i believe that all human beings are entitled to a minimal level of platonic touch, that it is healthy, that it should be okay to hug anybody no matter what, if only briefly.
i have also wondered about difficult questions, like why is it that i can so strongly want to touch one particular person, but someone else i can hardly stand the touch of? the couple of times whenever i was physically close to martin, it might have been an artificially induced sensation, i don't know, since it's possible to induce feelings like that - i can't say. but he really was a 'chick magnet' to me, as in i felt an almost irresistible urge to touch him if we were standing close to each other, so i always tried to put some object in between us, like the desk. i can't explain why i would have that feeling towards him, whereas touching dennis was very unpleasant, and i have touched other people who also felt very unpleasant and i cannot explain why.
i do understand a couple of problems that happened with dennis. this was all foreseeable, and yet, i didn't foresee the exact details of how it would happen.
maybe i should tell the whole dennis story of why we started talking in the first place. he was always shopping at the place where i work. one time i had to make a pizza for him, and afterwards, i griped and complained about something to the effect of 'i'm surrounded by morons and everybody i work with is incompetent and i hate this place, blah blah,' because i couldn't find the ingredients i needed to make his pizza, and he complained to me that he had had a couple of bad experiences with trying to buy pizzas before and somebody doesn't have the ingredients and it takes three times as long, and the end result is still done badly anyhow. so we started chatting just because i was complaining about my job. so, chatting with him, i noticed he was pretty intelligent and we were able to talk about some subjects with each other.
however, from the beginning, i noticed that he was very focused on talking about computers, and i'm not all that interested in talking about nothing but computers for the sheer joy of talking about nothing but computers. in others words, after a few minutes, i get bored. it's not something i really like. i happen to know a little bit about computers, and i took an online course to learn how to fix them, and i've done computer cleanups many times, so i have enough knowledge that i can struggle through a conversation about computers, and look as though i slightly have a clue about them. so i did that with dennis. but it isn't enjoyable to me. it's a strain and i would rather talk about other subjects besides that.
dennis also doesn't understand the idea of: i am paid by the hour, i am on the clock right now, there are videocameras watching us, my manager is standing right over there, i have been fired from jobs before, i get in trouble for leaving work later than 9:00 because it took me too long to finish cleaning, i am not supposed to just stop what i'm doing and have a conversation about computers for twenty minutes with a guy who talks *SO QUIETLY* that i have to lean over the counter and say 'What? What? What? What? What?' fifty times in each conversation, so that i can't continue talking and working at the same time while i walk a distance away, because i have to be a foot away from him in order to hear him.
for whatever reason, this is a weak boundary that i have. and that's something else i need to vent my annoyance about. a suppressed rage, actually, about the phenomenon of hearing voices and being zapped while i meditate or do any thinking at all. a long time ago, i used to read books about communication skills, psychology, self-esteem, and relationships, and i actually practiced the techniques they taught me, and i was always learning to question why i did something or why i failed to do some other thing. i used to be able to change my own behavior as needed.
in the old days, i would have simply sat down and questioned myself while meditating about dennis. that makes me very angry to think of, because i KNOW that it's impossible now, while being the victim of this attack. but i would have sat down, asked some questions, resolved to change my behavior, and boom, magical change would occur instantly. it used to be that easy. i could quickly and easily control my own behavior merely by meditating a little bit and questioning why i did something. i don't mean i could change EVERYTHING, but i mean, i could easily find a long-term, lasting, effective solution for anything i needed within reason. i would have sat down, asked myself 'why can't you say no to dennis?' and figured out exactly what i needed to do to fix the whole situation between me and him.
however, if i try to do that now, i will get voices telling me wrong answers to all of my questions, and zaps, and twitches, and painful clenches in my stomach, and noises, and change of subject so that i forget what i was thinking, and/or forced falling asleep and forced hypnosis, which leads to dreaming, and visual images. that is what happens nowadays if i try to sit down and troubleshoot a relationship/behavior/communication problem that i'm having. in the old days, i could sit down and fix the problem in a couple of minutes merely by thinking about it and planning a solution to the problem. but now, that is totally impossible. and it makes *ME* look like i'm a crazy stalker (to martin, who OUGHT to have been EASILY RESOLVED a *long* time ago - and all of those bullshit emails should have NEVER BEEN WRITTEN to him after he started avoiding me) or a boundary-less prostitute who can't say no to anybody (to dennis). again, it makes me FURIOUS to remember what life used to be like before the overt attacks began. i was a CLEAR THINKER who was capable of changing my own behavior merely by sitting down for a few minutes, asking myself some questions, noticing my own thoughts and feelings, and planning a new action to take the next time the problem happened. IT WAS EASY.
so, dennis SHOULD be easy to fix, but instead, it's impossible.
so anyhow. this thing happened with matt, a guy who used to work in the deli. one day, dennis was talking to me, and i was feeling the usual irritation about how much time he was taking up while i needed to be working. for whatever reason, matt came up to me and interrupted. he asked me to walk someplace else with him because he needed to show me something, and i forget what it was. but i felt so grateful for that interruption. this enormous gratitude for being dragged away from dennis made it very clear to me: i need to stop talking to this person - he is causing too many problems for me. the relief at being interrupted was that obvious.
so i spontaneously started avoiding dennis. it should have been done much more nicely, because i ought to have been meditating and making decisions the way i used to, but instead, the action was taken suddenly, ruthlessly, and cruelly. i suddenly stopped talking to dennis, avoided eye contact, and walked away whenever i saw him walking around the store, and i gave him NO EXPLANATION for why i suddenly started avoiding him.
and when i say that i did that to dennis, i think about how martin did that to me, and how horrible it is, and how the voices have kept pushing me and pushing me, and how THEY (not me) DON'T UNDERSTAND that *no means no* and that you DO NOT just keep bothering somebody to talk to you if he avoids you. it hurts a lot that martin stopped answering my emails, but then, i was being FORCED to write emails and i was given word-for-word dictation of the things i would say to him. so it is a combination of real feelings (physical attraction, interest, loneliness, friendship - the normal positive feelings you have towards somebody you like) mixed with lots and lots of bullshit (the particular words and topics that i wrote to him in the emails).
so there's a 'how can you complain about what martin did to you, you hypocrite, because you did the same thing to dennis.' but it happened because I AM NOT ABLE TO THINK. i should have been able to sit down and find a better way to say no to dennis, so that maybe we could have had brief chats, but then i would signal the end of the conversation, because there's nothing wrong with having a brief chat or a brief hello with somebody - it shouldn't be a 'give them an inch, they take a mile' situation. you should be able to give them an inch, and they take an inch, and it stays that way, because it is a STRONG BOUNDARY, and you teach yourself how to talk to that person and say no to them. that is the type of communication skill that i used to teach myself in the old days.
well, anyway. i jokingly say that my life is following the jim carrey movies, and that over the past year, i was doing 'yes man' along with jim carrey. because i did something very similar. sometime last year, i suddenly decided that it was my duty to say yes to dennis somehow, and give him my contact information. the martin hypocrisy accusation - 'martin did that to you, and it hurts you, therefore you shouldn't do that to people' - was used against me. so i suddenly gave dennis my email and phone number. (*note, martin is not to blame for what happened with me and him. i apologized previously for not being strong enough to fight back against the criminals brainwashing and controlling me.*)
i was kind of hoping dennis would get the idea: TALK TO ME *OUTSIDE* WORK - do not walk up and pass by my department five times to catch me in another conversation only minutes after we just finished up a previous conversation. i was hoping that i could salvage some kind of a friendship, but only in email, because again, i did not think he was a 'bad person' who i absolutely shouldn't be friends with under any circumstances, but instead, he was a decent person, and i could have a friendship outside work with some limitations. i preferred to talk online and in email, and reduce the amount of time spent saying 'what? what? what? what? what?' over the counter at work while my managers watch me to see if i'm keeping busy.
well, so this winter, the mold poisoning incapacitated me, and i was totally helpless to do anything. i started asking other people for help out of desperation. i slept in my car when it was, like, 2 degrees outside, with two sleeping bags, a coat, and multiple layers of clothing, because the mold was so bad i felt like i was going to literally DIE in my apartment, and that's no exaggeration. i kept PASSING OUT, as in fainting. i thought i would not wake up. i thought it was carbon monoxide, but we don't have anything that can produce CO here. it was the mold.
i don't have any female friends in state college. all my friends are male. i couldn't sleep at eric's house, because eric is my ex-boyfriend, and he still gets aroused whenever we hug each other, and we had fights in the past, big fights, whenever i had to briefly move in with him because i got evicted from my apartment, because he wanted me to have sex with him whenever i was living with him. so i slept in my car in 2 degrees to avoid going to eric's house. peter is wonderful (in meeting new people, i am beginning to really appreciate the miracle that peter is)... which is the reason why he is also married already... so i can't stay at his house. and i knew it would not be right to go sleep at dennis's house, even in 2 degree weather. (i hope i'm not exaggerating when i say 2 degrees. i remember it was only one night when the temperature was down extremely low and i looked it up on the internet and it was some ridiculously low number. it was so cold, i was completely closed within the TWO sleeping bags, and i had on like three pairs of socks and several layers of clothes, and i was so stuffed in the sleeping bag that i couldn't move. and only my nose was sticking out, but my nose was freezing, and i had to have the window open a tiny crack or else the carbon dioxide buildup would use up all the air in the car - i had it happen a couple times and figured out that opening the window was necessary - so it was even more freezing with the window cracked open.)
oh shit. it is POURING RAIN and i left my trunk open to dry out the shampoo. and all the rugs are lying in the parking lot. oh well. i just now went down and shut the trunk. i will let it dry later.
so... this winter disaster... i asked for help. dennis gave me an air filter. it might be a placebo, but i appreciated it. i don't know if it helped or not, but it reassured me. he also gave me some computer stuff, and i DO need it. but i was 'on my deathbed' as i have said, so i couldn't do anything.
finally when it got warmer, and i was able to open the windows, and the mold got a little better, i offered to try helping dennis in return for his favors and gifts. i had been forming the concept of 'give help, get help' with work and chores and projects. i wanted to repay dennis for the things he had given me.
so i talked to him about this concept. i asked him if he would come over and help me clean my house because the landlord was going to have some people look at my apartment. so, he did, and it was very helpful to have someone there while i was cleaning. and i tried to offer to help him in exchange, and to get some momentum going of 'you help me, i help you.' an ongoing trade.
however, he kept on giving more than he was receiving. it would happen again and again. i would help him with something, but it would be trivial, and he'd end up using it as an opportunity to buy me more stuff. for instance: i went to help him look around a graveyard because he has been doing family tree research, and he is looking for the names of certain people, and taking pictures of the graves and he's printing out the whole family tree. so we went out driving. i told him i wanted to be back at a particular time, but it wasn't absolute - there was a LITTLE flexibility, and it wasn't like i had an appointment that very instant so that i had to be home at exactly 1:00 PM. i told him, bring me home around 1:00 with a little leeway. well, to him that meant: bring me home at 4:00. i was there with him for like three hours of leeway. and guess what, HE BOUGHT ME DINNER, even though i was 'helping him' by being a second pair of eyes as we walked around looking for names. we were at the restaurant and i started getting the cash out of my wallet to pay for both of us. i was actually going to pay the meal for *BOTH* of us as part of my way to return the favors. however, dennis jumped up and went to the counter and handed them the money while i was still going through my cash and arguing with him about paying for it. that made me angry. that gave me the 'paying for a prostitute' red flag and i knew right away that 'repaying dennis for the help' was going to be a problem. dennis was in the 'traditional dating/paying for a prostitute' behavior pattern, while i was in the 'paying someone back for a favor, and trading favors back and forth over a long period of time, helping each other improve both of our lives' approach. i did not want sex to be involved.
as i said, i asked myself what type of touch would be okay with him, and i decided that a brief hug was fine. but we had never been comfortable enough with each other to actually do a friendly hug or a casual arm around someone. and i am cautious and shy with touch, so i tend to wait a while even for platonic, friendly, casual contact.
however, as usual, there was the 'can't say no to dennis' phenomenon. so, i went over to his house to eat and watch a movie. this was the part where i did not foresee the exact details of how the inevitable, foreseeable conflict would happen. i knew nothing about the inside of his house, so i didn't know that we would be sitting together on a small couch and that he would want to have his arm around me the whole time we were watching the movie. i decided to try that, for whatever reason, and i leaned against him while watching the movie.
well, a couple things were already causing a problem. he always smells like kerosene. now i know why. his trailer is full of kerosene fumes. i knew that i would be getting sick after being there a while, and i was right. i could not live in eric's trailer with the oil heater and the propane stove - it gave me a LOT of problems. i have to stay away from all fossil fuels - oil, gas, kerosene, coal stoves, whatever. so while we sat on the couch, my heart started pounding, and it had nothing to do with the 'excitement' of the situation - i knew it was because there was something bad in the air. so i asked to open the door. we opened the small window at first, but that wasn't enough, and i opened the door a crack. it got better after i opened the door - i was right, it was definitely because of bad air. my heart felt better. but i could still smell the fumes, and i still felt sick. it was uncomfortable and sickening and i couldn't relax.
meanwhile, dennis did not want to merely have his arm around me, but wanted to also stroke my hipbone with his fingers, because of the way that i was curled up sideways. i decided to find out what this was like, and i tolerated it. but i was sick with fumes already and somewhat nauseated from the food, too, because something in it was the 'bad fat' that i can't eat, it was butter or something, which makes me sick at my stomach. my stomach was sick for hours and hours afterwards.
meanwhile, dennis kept making cynical jokes during a serious drama movie. i thought he would have lots of movies that i liked, but it turns out that there was almost nothing on his shelf that i would even consider watching. he had lots of movies and i couldn't stand any of them. the only two that looked at all tolerable were 'dances with wolves' and 'pirates of the caribbean.' we tried 'pirates,' but the dvd was messed up, and it kept making lines all over the screen, so we did 'wolves' instead.
he also showed me a movie which i instantly knew to say 'no' to. i think it was 'maxwell smart' or something, and it was supposed to be a comedy, and i was vaguely familiar with it and had heard of it, but i usually *hate* comedies, and when i read the cover of the dvd, i knew right away that this was a problem and that we would *NOT* be watching this movie. it was called 'the nude bomb,' and again, it was supposed to be a comedy, where somebody was going to destroy all the fabric on earth, leaving everybody naked. the very idea of the movie irritates me right away, because i am a nudist, and i believe nudity should be *no big deal*. so, in my universe, we do not make comedy movies about what would happen if all the fabric disappeared, because this should be no big deal anyway. it shouldn't be something that we're getting all excited over, and we shouldn't be getting all nervous about it, and laughing and giggling and making it into a comedy, while secretly (or not secretly) being aroused by it. in my world, NAKED PEOPLE ARE *NOT* AROUSING. they merely exist. sexual activity has *no connection* with nudity.
and yes, i know all about the bonobo apes, and i know about their sexual behavior, and if naked people tended to behave that way, i am saying that would be fine, and the bonobo apes aren't overpopulating the world with infinite numbers of children - they express their social, sexual, and physical needs all the time without the inhibitions that humans have, yet they don't always get pregnant. if that is how humans tended to behave, that is fine. but again, 'no big deal' is what sex is to a bonobo. it isn't this secret, giggly, comedy-movie type of thing. 'taken for granted,' 'an everyday fact of life,' etc, is how bonobo apes view sex.
so, right away, i knew i would be disgusted with this movie. i politely said something like 'hmm, that sounds like it would be funny,' or something, and then i went and looked on the shelf for something else.
so we got dances with wolves, after finding out that pirates of the caribbean wouldn't work. and dennis kept making cynical jokes, once again, it often involved nudity and being anxious about nudity. 'he grabbed the wrong gun' (as in, his penis) was one such joke when kevin costner chased away the indian when he was naked. meanwhile, i'm sitting there taking it for granted that kevin costner is naked, and i'm not saying anything or going 'oooh, he's so hot,' or anything dumb like that, i'm just quietly watching the movie. but dennis can't handle seeing kevin costner naked and just quietly shut up and watch the movie. and there were other annoying jokes throughout the movie but i don't remember what they were.
you can feel sympathy for someone and at the same time, i'm not a saint. i can't help liking one person and disliking another. i can understand that dennis is anxious about sex, anxious about relaxing and watching a drama movie, and that he feels deprived of human contact, and just wants to touch somebody. i know how it feels to be starved of human contact, and touch-deprived. i know how it feels to be very badly isolated and alone. so in spite of that, i couldn't help being annoyed with him. this is one reason why i go after married men: they do not give the 'i'm desperate' vibes. 'desperate' behavior is very annoying, while you feel sorry for them at the same time, and i *do* know what it's like to suffer isolation for years and years.
also, again, he had his arm around me and was occasionally touching my hipbone (it's hard to describe, but i was lying kind of sideways). it felt pleasant for about one second, and then after that, felt sickening. i sat quietly and tolerated this. meanwhile, i am suffocating on fossil fuel fumes, and trying to focus on a good movie that i haven't seen in almost a decade.
so about maybe 1/4 of the way into the movie, i suddenly said that i had to leave. i thanked him for dinner, emphasized for about the third or fourth time that i wanted to know more (non-sexual) ways that i could repay him for his help, in an exchange of work. and he gave me the 'duhhhhh... there isn't any work to do' response, even though his life is in the middle of a crisis (he got laid off work and needs to find a new source of income, and to me, that's a pretty important problem that needs to be fixed, and he could use moral support for job hunting, or even just to go file a claim at the unemployment office, because i know from experience that job-hunting is very discouraging) and i KNOW that he has important tasks that need to be done, and urgently. anyway i told him that i wasn't really comfortable in the fumes, which was *true*, and that i needed to go home and get some fresh air, and that i was expecting a phone call too.
so i did leave. i gave him a quick hug, but then he wanted to give me a kiss. i bent my head down so that he would kiss my forehead, for two reasons: 1. i didn't want to kiss him, and 2. i have herpes, which will be passed through kissing.
i really was expecting a phone call. earlier that day i had gone out to get some food. an immigrant named alex approached me. this was most likely a puppet incident, because i was talking about my cat named alex in the blog, and i have talked about immigrants. but i said yes to him and we shook hands. i emphasized immediately that i am doing a 'new' way of meeting people: i help you, you help me. we do work for each other, and get to know each other by working together. and i asked if he could think of anything he needed or work that needed to be done. he said that he did and that we could talk about it. however, i know that i must emphasize repeatedly from the beginning that this is not sexual dating, but is focused on work and friendship, and that i will say so from the beginning. so i was expecting alex to call, or maybe i was supposed to call him - i wasn't sure.
well, that didn't happen. instead, i got in my car, still very sick from the kerosene, and i drove very, very, very far away, for several hours, and i was so far away that it was hard to get back home. i was getting very tired and had to buy some coffee, but my stomach was very sick, and also, i started getting attacked by 'new' voices on the way home. some new guy supposedly noticed me in the territory. i don't know if he actually was new, or if he was just one of the usual voices pretending to be new. so i tried drinking the coffee but then felt like i was going to vomit and couldn't drink any more coffee. it took hours to get home, and i never talked on the phone to alex, and also, i missed a phone call from peter. and i can't call peter back in the middle of the night, because it will wake up his wife and kids, so i always have to wait till the next night.
and the rest of that night, a criminal was 'buzzing' the air bubbles in my stomach and intestines, trying to make me throw up. i was lying in a position where the burps could not come up easily, so they kept buzzing the bubbles and making noises while i was trying to sleep. they would not just leave the air bubbles alone, they had to buzz them and try to make me get sick.
while i was driving far away, i knew i was leaving behind all of the people i know in state college. they want me to view martin (oh, i forgot to even tell about the new incident in the martin disaster) as a special, long-term bond, that i am supposed to keep in contact with him and help protect him and make sure that he is happy and safe. and i knew peter would be trying to reach me, too. and i knew dennis still had all of his problems, and, as i said, he's not a 'bad person,' but he is desperate and his behavior annoys me. so i felt like i had to leave behind all of the people that i was 'taking care of.' like they were my children.
and that is when i formed the apology to martin: that i am sorry for not being strong enough to fight back against the attackers, who brainwash me, control me, and force me to believe lies about him.
well, i still want to mention martin again and what happened with him. first, every time that martin sends me an email saying any kind of 'no,' they are brainwashing me to believe the opposite of everything he says. they are lying to me and trying to force me to believe that no means yes. this is very, very, very dangerous for somebody in my situation to believe that 'no means yes.' i can be thrown in a mental hospital, or get convicted of stalking, if i hear the word 'no' and believe that he's saying 'yes.'
it is a lie which is based on a tiny fragment of truth. martin *did* express a few brief milliseconds of physical attraction and interest in me, through his overall behavior and body language and nonverbals. still, that does NOT indicate that 'therefore no means yes, forever and for all eternity.' it merely means that he experienced a few milliseconds of physical attraction or interest towards me.
so, they are giving me the extremely dangerous 'no means yes' brainwashing every day and encouraging me to write more emails to him, telling me that he needs to hear from me. and, surprise surprise, he DID send me another 'no' email telling me to leave him alone. and surprise surprise, this afternoon they started up the bombardment on me *again* after all that, telling me that in reality, martin needs me and that i have to keep trying to communicate with him. and i can't help believing it, because it *is* based on tiny fragments of truth. the electronic mind control system is real, and martin and i are both victims and puppets under this system, and it is really true that victims need to support each other. based on that tiny fragment of truth, they are telling me to keep trying, and keep trying, and don't separate from martin, and all that, because he understands and he sympathizes with me and he believes me. it all seems plausible because i've seen his nonverbal behavior and his emotions, and there is a lot of conflict. i am *well aware* that he has *reasons* for saying no.
that's my bad day.
in the previous blog i started with something like an 'everybody stay calm' message. i should have also said, 'nobody is getting committed to a mental hospital either.' i forgot to say that.
well, i will tell about dennis first, but i am not going into long detail about it (actually, never mind that - i went into long detail anyway). i had asked myself many times what type of physical contact would be permitted between me and dennis. i really did want to have SOME kind of touch permitted, like brief hugging which would only last a second or two, not long. i believe that all human beings are entitled to a minimal level of platonic touch, that it is healthy, that it should be okay to hug anybody no matter what, if only briefly.
i have also wondered about difficult questions, like why is it that i can so strongly want to touch one particular person, but someone else i can hardly stand the touch of? the couple of times whenever i was physically close to martin, it might have been an artificially induced sensation, i don't know, since it's possible to induce feelings like that - i can't say. but he really was a 'chick magnet' to me, as in i felt an almost irresistible urge to touch him if we were standing close to each other, so i always tried to put some object in between us, like the desk. i can't explain why i would have that feeling towards him, whereas touching dennis was very unpleasant, and i have touched other people who also felt very unpleasant and i cannot explain why.
i do understand a couple of problems that happened with dennis. this was all foreseeable, and yet, i didn't foresee the exact details of how it would happen.
maybe i should tell the whole dennis story of why we started talking in the first place. he was always shopping at the place where i work. one time i had to make a pizza for him, and afterwards, i griped and complained about something to the effect of 'i'm surrounded by morons and everybody i work with is incompetent and i hate this place, blah blah,' because i couldn't find the ingredients i needed to make his pizza, and he complained to me that he had had a couple of bad experiences with trying to buy pizzas before and somebody doesn't have the ingredients and it takes three times as long, and the end result is still done badly anyhow. so we started chatting just because i was complaining about my job. so, chatting with him, i noticed he was pretty intelligent and we were able to talk about some subjects with each other.
however, from the beginning, i noticed that he was very focused on talking about computers, and i'm not all that interested in talking about nothing but computers for the sheer joy of talking about nothing but computers. in others words, after a few minutes, i get bored. it's not something i really like. i happen to know a little bit about computers, and i took an online course to learn how to fix them, and i've done computer cleanups many times, so i have enough knowledge that i can struggle through a conversation about computers, and look as though i slightly have a clue about them. so i did that with dennis. but it isn't enjoyable to me. it's a strain and i would rather talk about other subjects besides that.
dennis also doesn't understand the idea of: i am paid by the hour, i am on the clock right now, there are videocameras watching us, my manager is standing right over there, i have been fired from jobs before, i get in trouble for leaving work later than 9:00 because it took me too long to finish cleaning, i am not supposed to just stop what i'm doing and have a conversation about computers for twenty minutes with a guy who talks *SO QUIETLY* that i have to lean over the counter and say 'What? What? What? What? What?' fifty times in each conversation, so that i can't continue talking and working at the same time while i walk a distance away, because i have to be a foot away from him in order to hear him.
for whatever reason, this is a weak boundary that i have. and that's something else i need to vent my annoyance about. a suppressed rage, actually, about the phenomenon of hearing voices and being zapped while i meditate or do any thinking at all. a long time ago, i used to read books about communication skills, psychology, self-esteem, and relationships, and i actually practiced the techniques they taught me, and i was always learning to question why i did something or why i failed to do some other thing. i used to be able to change my own behavior as needed.
in the old days, i would have simply sat down and questioned myself while meditating about dennis. that makes me very angry to think of, because i KNOW that it's impossible now, while being the victim of this attack. but i would have sat down, asked some questions, resolved to change my behavior, and boom, magical change would occur instantly. it used to be that easy. i could quickly and easily control my own behavior merely by meditating a little bit and questioning why i did something. i don't mean i could change EVERYTHING, but i mean, i could easily find a long-term, lasting, effective solution for anything i needed within reason. i would have sat down, asked myself 'why can't you say no to dennis?' and figured out exactly what i needed to do to fix the whole situation between me and him.
however, if i try to do that now, i will get voices telling me wrong answers to all of my questions, and zaps, and twitches, and painful clenches in my stomach, and noises, and change of subject so that i forget what i was thinking, and/or forced falling asleep and forced hypnosis, which leads to dreaming, and visual images. that is what happens nowadays if i try to sit down and troubleshoot a relationship/behavior/communication problem that i'm having. in the old days, i could sit down and fix the problem in a couple of minutes merely by thinking about it and planning a solution to the problem. but now, that is totally impossible. and it makes *ME* look like i'm a crazy stalker (to martin, who OUGHT to have been EASILY RESOLVED a *long* time ago - and all of those bullshit emails should have NEVER BEEN WRITTEN to him after he started avoiding me) or a boundary-less prostitute who can't say no to anybody (to dennis). again, it makes me FURIOUS to remember what life used to be like before the overt attacks began. i was a CLEAR THINKER who was capable of changing my own behavior merely by sitting down for a few minutes, asking myself some questions, noticing my own thoughts and feelings, and planning a new action to take the next time the problem happened. IT WAS EASY.
so, dennis SHOULD be easy to fix, but instead, it's impossible.
so anyhow. this thing happened with matt, a guy who used to work in the deli. one day, dennis was talking to me, and i was feeling the usual irritation about how much time he was taking up while i needed to be working. for whatever reason, matt came up to me and interrupted. he asked me to walk someplace else with him because he needed to show me something, and i forget what it was. but i felt so grateful for that interruption. this enormous gratitude for being dragged away from dennis made it very clear to me: i need to stop talking to this person - he is causing too many problems for me. the relief at being interrupted was that obvious.
so i spontaneously started avoiding dennis. it should have been done much more nicely, because i ought to have been meditating and making decisions the way i used to, but instead, the action was taken suddenly, ruthlessly, and cruelly. i suddenly stopped talking to dennis, avoided eye contact, and walked away whenever i saw him walking around the store, and i gave him NO EXPLANATION for why i suddenly started avoiding him.
and when i say that i did that to dennis, i think about how martin did that to me, and how horrible it is, and how the voices have kept pushing me and pushing me, and how THEY (not me) DON'T UNDERSTAND that *no means no* and that you DO NOT just keep bothering somebody to talk to you if he avoids you. it hurts a lot that martin stopped answering my emails, but then, i was being FORCED to write emails and i was given word-for-word dictation of the things i would say to him. so it is a combination of real feelings (physical attraction, interest, loneliness, friendship - the normal positive feelings you have towards somebody you like) mixed with lots and lots of bullshit (the particular words and topics that i wrote to him in the emails).
so there's a 'how can you complain about what martin did to you, you hypocrite, because you did the same thing to dennis.' but it happened because I AM NOT ABLE TO THINK. i should have been able to sit down and find a better way to say no to dennis, so that maybe we could have had brief chats, but then i would signal the end of the conversation, because there's nothing wrong with having a brief chat or a brief hello with somebody - it shouldn't be a 'give them an inch, they take a mile' situation. you should be able to give them an inch, and they take an inch, and it stays that way, because it is a STRONG BOUNDARY, and you teach yourself how to talk to that person and say no to them. that is the type of communication skill that i used to teach myself in the old days.
well, anyway. i jokingly say that my life is following the jim carrey movies, and that over the past year, i was doing 'yes man' along with jim carrey. because i did something very similar. sometime last year, i suddenly decided that it was my duty to say yes to dennis somehow, and give him my contact information. the martin hypocrisy accusation - 'martin did that to you, and it hurts you, therefore you shouldn't do that to people' - was used against me. so i suddenly gave dennis my email and phone number. (*note, martin is not to blame for what happened with me and him. i apologized previously for not being strong enough to fight back against the criminals brainwashing and controlling me.*)
i was kind of hoping dennis would get the idea: TALK TO ME *OUTSIDE* WORK - do not walk up and pass by my department five times to catch me in another conversation only minutes after we just finished up a previous conversation. i was hoping that i could salvage some kind of a friendship, but only in email, because again, i did not think he was a 'bad person' who i absolutely shouldn't be friends with under any circumstances, but instead, he was a decent person, and i could have a friendship outside work with some limitations. i preferred to talk online and in email, and reduce the amount of time spent saying 'what? what? what? what? what?' over the counter at work while my managers watch me to see if i'm keeping busy.
well, so this winter, the mold poisoning incapacitated me, and i was totally helpless to do anything. i started asking other people for help out of desperation. i slept in my car when it was, like, 2 degrees outside, with two sleeping bags, a coat, and multiple layers of clothing, because the mold was so bad i felt like i was going to literally DIE in my apartment, and that's no exaggeration. i kept PASSING OUT, as in fainting. i thought i would not wake up. i thought it was carbon monoxide, but we don't have anything that can produce CO here. it was the mold.
i don't have any female friends in state college. all my friends are male. i couldn't sleep at eric's house, because eric is my ex-boyfriend, and he still gets aroused whenever we hug each other, and we had fights in the past, big fights, whenever i had to briefly move in with him because i got evicted from my apartment, because he wanted me to have sex with him whenever i was living with him. so i slept in my car in 2 degrees to avoid going to eric's house. peter is wonderful (in meeting new people, i am beginning to really appreciate the miracle that peter is)... which is the reason why he is also married already... so i can't stay at his house. and i knew it would not be right to go sleep at dennis's house, even in 2 degree weather. (i hope i'm not exaggerating when i say 2 degrees. i remember it was only one night when the temperature was down extremely low and i looked it up on the internet and it was some ridiculously low number. it was so cold, i was completely closed within the TWO sleeping bags, and i had on like three pairs of socks and several layers of clothes, and i was so stuffed in the sleeping bag that i couldn't move. and only my nose was sticking out, but my nose was freezing, and i had to have the window open a tiny crack or else the carbon dioxide buildup would use up all the air in the car - i had it happen a couple times and figured out that opening the window was necessary - so it was even more freezing with the window cracked open.)
oh shit. it is POURING RAIN and i left my trunk open to dry out the shampoo. and all the rugs are lying in the parking lot. oh well. i just now went down and shut the trunk. i will let it dry later.
so... this winter disaster... i asked for help. dennis gave me an air filter. it might be a placebo, but i appreciated it. i don't know if it helped or not, but it reassured me. he also gave me some computer stuff, and i DO need it. but i was 'on my deathbed' as i have said, so i couldn't do anything.
finally when it got warmer, and i was able to open the windows, and the mold got a little better, i offered to try helping dennis in return for his favors and gifts. i had been forming the concept of 'give help, get help' with work and chores and projects. i wanted to repay dennis for the things he had given me.
so i talked to him about this concept. i asked him if he would come over and help me clean my house because the landlord was going to have some people look at my apartment. so, he did, and it was very helpful to have someone there while i was cleaning. and i tried to offer to help him in exchange, and to get some momentum going of 'you help me, i help you.' an ongoing trade.
however, he kept on giving more than he was receiving. it would happen again and again. i would help him with something, but it would be trivial, and he'd end up using it as an opportunity to buy me more stuff. for instance: i went to help him look around a graveyard because he has been doing family tree research, and he is looking for the names of certain people, and taking pictures of the graves and he's printing out the whole family tree. so we went out driving. i told him i wanted to be back at a particular time, but it wasn't absolute - there was a LITTLE flexibility, and it wasn't like i had an appointment that very instant so that i had to be home at exactly 1:00 PM. i told him, bring me home around 1:00 with a little leeway. well, to him that meant: bring me home at 4:00. i was there with him for like three hours of leeway. and guess what, HE BOUGHT ME DINNER, even though i was 'helping him' by being a second pair of eyes as we walked around looking for names. we were at the restaurant and i started getting the cash out of my wallet to pay for both of us. i was actually going to pay the meal for *BOTH* of us as part of my way to return the favors. however, dennis jumped up and went to the counter and handed them the money while i was still going through my cash and arguing with him about paying for it. that made me angry. that gave me the 'paying for a prostitute' red flag and i knew right away that 'repaying dennis for the help' was going to be a problem. dennis was in the 'traditional dating/paying for a prostitute' behavior pattern, while i was in the 'paying someone back for a favor, and trading favors back and forth over a long period of time, helping each other improve both of our lives' approach. i did not want sex to be involved.
as i said, i asked myself what type of touch would be okay with him, and i decided that a brief hug was fine. but we had never been comfortable enough with each other to actually do a friendly hug or a casual arm around someone. and i am cautious and shy with touch, so i tend to wait a while even for platonic, friendly, casual contact.
however, as usual, there was the 'can't say no to dennis' phenomenon. so, i went over to his house to eat and watch a movie. this was the part where i did not foresee the exact details of how the inevitable, foreseeable conflict would happen. i knew nothing about the inside of his house, so i didn't know that we would be sitting together on a small couch and that he would want to have his arm around me the whole time we were watching the movie. i decided to try that, for whatever reason, and i leaned against him while watching the movie.
well, a couple things were already causing a problem. he always smells like kerosene. now i know why. his trailer is full of kerosene fumes. i knew that i would be getting sick after being there a while, and i was right. i could not live in eric's trailer with the oil heater and the propane stove - it gave me a LOT of problems. i have to stay away from all fossil fuels - oil, gas, kerosene, coal stoves, whatever. so while we sat on the couch, my heart started pounding, and it had nothing to do with the 'excitement' of the situation - i knew it was because there was something bad in the air. so i asked to open the door. we opened the small window at first, but that wasn't enough, and i opened the door a crack. it got better after i opened the door - i was right, it was definitely because of bad air. my heart felt better. but i could still smell the fumes, and i still felt sick. it was uncomfortable and sickening and i couldn't relax.
meanwhile, dennis did not want to merely have his arm around me, but wanted to also stroke my hipbone with his fingers, because of the way that i was curled up sideways. i decided to find out what this was like, and i tolerated it. but i was sick with fumes already and somewhat nauseated from the food, too, because something in it was the 'bad fat' that i can't eat, it was butter or something, which makes me sick at my stomach. my stomach was sick for hours and hours afterwards.
meanwhile, dennis kept making cynical jokes during a serious drama movie. i thought he would have lots of movies that i liked, but it turns out that there was almost nothing on his shelf that i would even consider watching. he had lots of movies and i couldn't stand any of them. the only two that looked at all tolerable were 'dances with wolves' and 'pirates of the caribbean.' we tried 'pirates,' but the dvd was messed up, and it kept making lines all over the screen, so we did 'wolves' instead.
he also showed me a movie which i instantly knew to say 'no' to. i think it was 'maxwell smart' or something, and it was supposed to be a comedy, and i was vaguely familiar with it and had heard of it, but i usually *hate* comedies, and when i read the cover of the dvd, i knew right away that this was a problem and that we would *NOT* be watching this movie. it was called 'the nude bomb,' and again, it was supposed to be a comedy, where somebody was going to destroy all the fabric on earth, leaving everybody naked. the very idea of the movie irritates me right away, because i am a nudist, and i believe nudity should be *no big deal*. so, in my universe, we do not make comedy movies about what would happen if all the fabric disappeared, because this should be no big deal anyway. it shouldn't be something that we're getting all excited over, and we shouldn't be getting all nervous about it, and laughing and giggling and making it into a comedy, while secretly (or not secretly) being aroused by it. in my world, NAKED PEOPLE ARE *NOT* AROUSING. they merely exist. sexual activity has *no connection* with nudity.
and yes, i know all about the bonobo apes, and i know about their sexual behavior, and if naked people tended to behave that way, i am saying that would be fine, and the bonobo apes aren't overpopulating the world with infinite numbers of children - they express their social, sexual, and physical needs all the time without the inhibitions that humans have, yet they don't always get pregnant. if that is how humans tended to behave, that is fine. but again, 'no big deal' is what sex is to a bonobo. it isn't this secret, giggly, comedy-movie type of thing. 'taken for granted,' 'an everyday fact of life,' etc, is how bonobo apes view sex.
so, right away, i knew i would be disgusted with this movie. i politely said something like 'hmm, that sounds like it would be funny,' or something, and then i went and looked on the shelf for something else.
so we got dances with wolves, after finding out that pirates of the caribbean wouldn't work. and dennis kept making cynical jokes, once again, it often involved nudity and being anxious about nudity. 'he grabbed the wrong gun' (as in, his penis) was one such joke when kevin costner chased away the indian when he was naked. meanwhile, i'm sitting there taking it for granted that kevin costner is naked, and i'm not saying anything or going 'oooh, he's so hot,' or anything dumb like that, i'm just quietly watching the movie. but dennis can't handle seeing kevin costner naked and just quietly shut up and watch the movie. and there were other annoying jokes throughout the movie but i don't remember what they were.
you can feel sympathy for someone and at the same time, i'm not a saint. i can't help liking one person and disliking another. i can understand that dennis is anxious about sex, anxious about relaxing and watching a drama movie, and that he feels deprived of human contact, and just wants to touch somebody. i know how it feels to be starved of human contact, and touch-deprived. i know how it feels to be very badly isolated and alone. so in spite of that, i couldn't help being annoyed with him. this is one reason why i go after married men: they do not give the 'i'm desperate' vibes. 'desperate' behavior is very annoying, while you feel sorry for them at the same time, and i *do* know what it's like to suffer isolation for years and years.
also, again, he had his arm around me and was occasionally touching my hipbone (it's hard to describe, but i was lying kind of sideways). it felt pleasant for about one second, and then after that, felt sickening. i sat quietly and tolerated this. meanwhile, i am suffocating on fossil fuel fumes, and trying to focus on a good movie that i haven't seen in almost a decade.
so about maybe 1/4 of the way into the movie, i suddenly said that i had to leave. i thanked him for dinner, emphasized for about the third or fourth time that i wanted to know more (non-sexual) ways that i could repay him for his help, in an exchange of work. and he gave me the 'duhhhhh... there isn't any work to do' response, even though his life is in the middle of a crisis (he got laid off work and needs to find a new source of income, and to me, that's a pretty important problem that needs to be fixed, and he could use moral support for job hunting, or even just to go file a claim at the unemployment office, because i know from experience that job-hunting is very discouraging) and i KNOW that he has important tasks that need to be done, and urgently. anyway i told him that i wasn't really comfortable in the fumes, which was *true*, and that i needed to go home and get some fresh air, and that i was expecting a phone call too.
so i did leave. i gave him a quick hug, but then he wanted to give me a kiss. i bent my head down so that he would kiss my forehead, for two reasons: 1. i didn't want to kiss him, and 2. i have herpes, which will be passed through kissing.
i really was expecting a phone call. earlier that day i had gone out to get some food. an immigrant named alex approached me. this was most likely a puppet incident, because i was talking about my cat named alex in the blog, and i have talked about immigrants. but i said yes to him and we shook hands. i emphasized immediately that i am doing a 'new' way of meeting people: i help you, you help me. we do work for each other, and get to know each other by working together. and i asked if he could think of anything he needed or work that needed to be done. he said that he did and that we could talk about it. however, i know that i must emphasize repeatedly from the beginning that this is not sexual dating, but is focused on work and friendship, and that i will say so from the beginning. so i was expecting alex to call, or maybe i was supposed to call him - i wasn't sure.
well, that didn't happen. instead, i got in my car, still very sick from the kerosene, and i drove very, very, very far away, for several hours, and i was so far away that it was hard to get back home. i was getting very tired and had to buy some coffee, but my stomach was very sick, and also, i started getting attacked by 'new' voices on the way home. some new guy supposedly noticed me in the territory. i don't know if he actually was new, or if he was just one of the usual voices pretending to be new. so i tried drinking the coffee but then felt like i was going to vomit and couldn't drink any more coffee. it took hours to get home, and i never talked on the phone to alex, and also, i missed a phone call from peter. and i can't call peter back in the middle of the night, because it will wake up his wife and kids, so i always have to wait till the next night.
and the rest of that night, a criminal was 'buzzing' the air bubbles in my stomach and intestines, trying to make me throw up. i was lying in a position where the burps could not come up easily, so they kept buzzing the bubbles and making noises while i was trying to sleep. they would not just leave the air bubbles alone, they had to buzz them and try to make me get sick.
while i was driving far away, i knew i was leaving behind all of the people i know in state college. they want me to view martin (oh, i forgot to even tell about the new incident in the martin disaster) as a special, long-term bond, that i am supposed to keep in contact with him and help protect him and make sure that he is happy and safe. and i knew peter would be trying to reach me, too. and i knew dennis still had all of his problems, and, as i said, he's not a 'bad person,' but he is desperate and his behavior annoys me. so i felt like i had to leave behind all of the people that i was 'taking care of.' like they were my children.
and that is when i formed the apology to martin: that i am sorry for not being strong enough to fight back against the attackers, who brainwash me, control me, and force me to believe lies about him.
well, i still want to mention martin again and what happened with him. first, every time that martin sends me an email saying any kind of 'no,' they are brainwashing me to believe the opposite of everything he says. they are lying to me and trying to force me to believe that no means yes. this is very, very, very dangerous for somebody in my situation to believe that 'no means yes.' i can be thrown in a mental hospital, or get convicted of stalking, if i hear the word 'no' and believe that he's saying 'yes.'
it is a lie which is based on a tiny fragment of truth. martin *did* express a few brief milliseconds of physical attraction and interest in me, through his overall behavior and body language and nonverbals. still, that does NOT indicate that 'therefore no means yes, forever and for all eternity.' it merely means that he experienced a few milliseconds of physical attraction or interest towards me.
so, they are giving me the extremely dangerous 'no means yes' brainwashing every day and encouraging me to write more emails to him, telling me that he needs to hear from me. and, surprise surprise, he DID send me another 'no' email telling me to leave him alone. and surprise surprise, this afternoon they started up the bombardment on me *again* after all that, telling me that in reality, martin needs me and that i have to keep trying to communicate with him. and i can't help believing it, because it *is* based on tiny fragments of truth. the electronic mind control system is real, and martin and i are both victims and puppets under this system, and it is really true that victims need to support each other. based on that tiny fragment of truth, they are telling me to keep trying, and keep trying, and don't separate from martin, and all that, because he understands and he sympathizes with me and he believes me. it all seems plausible because i've seen his nonverbal behavior and his emotions, and there is a lot of conflict. i am *well aware* that he has *reasons* for saying no.
that's my bad day.
why do i sometimes have 'angry eyes?'
nobody's getting killed, nobody's getting arrested, and nobody's committing suicide. and no, that doesn't mean that any particular person is a 'nobody.' the word 'nobody' is meant in the usual sense of the word and not like saying to some person 'you're just a nobody.'
anyway, i just had a really, really awful day, and i will tell more about it when i get back from working on my car with diane. and i am really angry about a lot of the things that happened in the awful day, but the anger is exaggerated by the drug contamination.
i wanted to mention 'angry eyes,' which they keep referring to. i handled tobacco, and it did sprout and start to grow before dying - probably from juglone poisoning in the walnut soil that i got from my backyard.
the house is contaminated with tobacco among other things. whenever i get hit with tobacco, and then wash it off, i go into nicotine withdrawal several hours later. i recognize the symptoms by now. i start yawning and start craving coffee and sweets. i become irritable and hungry. i can feel that my voice becomes tense and strained, and i feel that my facial expression looks angry, especially the eyes.
tobacco has actually been the most useful and beneficial herb that i handled, which is the reason why i am very, very, very, very (copy-paste x number of times) GLAD that i never started smoking. it is much easier to withdraw from extremely low doses of transdermal nicotine instead of quitting cigarettes. tobacco cheers me up, makes me ambitious and energetic, and gives me the ability to work faster and for a longer time without getting tired. it clears my mind. it is very helpful. however, it also raises my blood pressure, and i go into withdrawal after about two hours, and start getting hungry. and i also get 'angry eyes.'
i remember angry eyes, because a guy who worked at mcdonald's one time looked at me, and he was talking, i forget about what - and i think he was a cigarette smoker - and i looked at the eyes, and his eyes, all by themselves, were very scary looking and angry. that's the first time when i clearly and definitely noticed that phenomenon. i notice it on sue, also, when she is in withdrawal. and lots of other people get angry when they are in nicotine withdrawal. the voice gets strained, and when you talk to the person, you start to feel anxious, like you did something wrong, when you really didn't. you start to feel like they don't like you anymore, like they're rejecting you, and you feel like you're socially inferior and worthless. it's a bad feeling, until you tell yourself 'that person is in nicotine withdrawal.' then you realize: it's not me, it's YOU, and you are in drug withdrawal and this mood isn't real, it's only a drug effect.
so the voices have been mentioning the angry eyes and urging me to explain why i look that way sometimes. it is because i am frequently getting hit with tobacco in the household contamination.
******
i have one apology for martin. and no, apologizing doesn't signal that 'it's over' or anything like that, nor does it signal that anything major is changing or that anything bad is happening. this is an 'ongoing' apology, which should be seen as my overall attitude towards this terrible situation. an apology that keeps going.
i apologize for not being strong enough to fight back against the people who are controlling me - that i can't stop them from doing what they do - that every day, i believe their lies again and again. i am sorry that i can't fight back against that. i am continuing with my life, and i will keep trying to solve my problems in a long-lasting way, but right now, i can't fight them.
this apology is my overall attitude about it.
anyway, i just had a really, really awful day, and i will tell more about it when i get back from working on my car with diane. and i am really angry about a lot of the things that happened in the awful day, but the anger is exaggerated by the drug contamination.
i wanted to mention 'angry eyes,' which they keep referring to. i handled tobacco, and it did sprout and start to grow before dying - probably from juglone poisoning in the walnut soil that i got from my backyard.
the house is contaminated with tobacco among other things. whenever i get hit with tobacco, and then wash it off, i go into nicotine withdrawal several hours later. i recognize the symptoms by now. i start yawning and start craving coffee and sweets. i become irritable and hungry. i can feel that my voice becomes tense and strained, and i feel that my facial expression looks angry, especially the eyes.
tobacco has actually been the most useful and beneficial herb that i handled, which is the reason why i am very, very, very, very (copy-paste x number of times) GLAD that i never started smoking. it is much easier to withdraw from extremely low doses of transdermal nicotine instead of quitting cigarettes. tobacco cheers me up, makes me ambitious and energetic, and gives me the ability to work faster and for a longer time without getting tired. it clears my mind. it is very helpful. however, it also raises my blood pressure, and i go into withdrawal after about two hours, and start getting hungry. and i also get 'angry eyes.'
i remember angry eyes, because a guy who worked at mcdonald's one time looked at me, and he was talking, i forget about what - and i think he was a cigarette smoker - and i looked at the eyes, and his eyes, all by themselves, were very scary looking and angry. that's the first time when i clearly and definitely noticed that phenomenon. i notice it on sue, also, when she is in withdrawal. and lots of other people get angry when they are in nicotine withdrawal. the voice gets strained, and when you talk to the person, you start to feel anxious, like you did something wrong, when you really didn't. you start to feel like they don't like you anymore, like they're rejecting you, and you feel like you're socially inferior and worthless. it's a bad feeling, until you tell yourself 'that person is in nicotine withdrawal.' then you realize: it's not me, it's YOU, and you are in drug withdrawal and this mood isn't real, it's only a drug effect.
so the voices have been mentioning the angry eyes and urging me to explain why i look that way sometimes. it is because i am frequently getting hit with tobacco in the household contamination.
******
i have one apology for martin. and no, apologizing doesn't signal that 'it's over' or anything like that, nor does it signal that anything major is changing or that anything bad is happening. this is an 'ongoing' apology, which should be seen as my overall attitude towards this terrible situation. an apology that keeps going.
i apologize for not being strong enough to fight back against the people who are controlling me - that i can't stop them from doing what they do - that every day, i believe their lies again and again. i am sorry that i can't fight back against that. i am continuing with my life, and i will keep trying to solve my problems in a long-lasting way, but right now, i can't fight them.
this apology is my overall attitude about it.
brainwashing goes on and on, daily
someday, i will be able to complain to the police that i am being brainwashed by a criminal attacker... and they'll believe me. the martin phenomenon is a daily bombardment of somebody telling me to talk to him and to view myself as being bonded with him in a long-term relationship of some kind. i wrote in my other blog about the fiction stories that i wrote as a teenager, and how the attackers are tying in martin's life as though it is part of that fiction story. ... day after day, this brainwashing goes on, telling me to believe certain things about him, and to view him a certain way. they want me to either get another conviction (from martin) or get killed (by dating some wacko while i'm looking for other people).
the guy who looks like either an identical twin or a very, very similar-looking brother
i looked at martin's pictures on facebook. i was able to do that because he sent me a message on facebook instead of to the email address that i had originally given him. if you send someone a message on facebook, it temporarily opens up your profile to the recipient so that they can look at it. i assume that he did this knowingly and that he was capable of sending to my regular email address if he had chosen to. for a few days i didn't realize i was able to look at the pictures - i thought i could only view the profile page with the couple lines of text on it.
i didn't really decide on my own that the guy was an identical twin - instead, i wrote a couple comments that sort of hinted at it or asked about it, but i hadn't decided for sure. it was when i went to sleep and woke up that i was hearing somebody telling me that yes, he did look like an identical twin, and they were wearing the same jackets in one picture. (however, it's possible they were both wearing jackets that signified membership in a group, a uniform of some kind, and i just couldn't see what the group was. but it looked like 'twins wearing the same clothes.')
so actually i am not really sure. there was only one photo where i could clearly see them both together in the same photo. however, they weren't straight-faced - they were making funny faces (i couldn't tell what was going on - it looked like a bumper cars ride or something, where they had on seat belts) so i didn't get to see both of them side by side with a neutral facial expression, but instead, they are both making different expressions in the picture. in the picture with the different facial expressions, it isn't obvious that they are identical twins, but instead, they could just be two very similar-looking brothers, or fraternal twins who are the same age and look a lot alike.
that might explain why i originally saw this one other photo he had and it looked like somebody else, not him. it looked ALMOST like him, but not quite.
and, it might explain something else weird that i noticed a long time ago, but i didn't think anything of it. when i first started working at the store, there were two guys who looked a lot alike, but eventually, i decided it was the same guy, except he sometimes wore glasses, and sometimes didn't. i decided it was just the glasses and that i had been confused because i didn't know anybody in that department. but it would be weird if they were both employed in the same store for a while, except he doesn't seem to be there anymore.
i don't have any idea what his name is, and i didn't see them together in lots of pictures, just one. also, i didn't read anywhere in his blog any mention of a brother. it makes me doubt it and i wonder if he is just some friend who happens to have a strong resemblance to martin, at least in the one photo. when i look at the picture again, they actually don't look the same anymore - they look quite different. the more i look at it, the more different they look.
'well, just another mystery,' is all i can say.
i didn't really decide on my own that the guy was an identical twin - instead, i wrote a couple comments that sort of hinted at it or asked about it, but i hadn't decided for sure. it was when i went to sleep and woke up that i was hearing somebody telling me that yes, he did look like an identical twin, and they were wearing the same jackets in one picture. (however, it's possible they were both wearing jackets that signified membership in a group, a uniform of some kind, and i just couldn't see what the group was. but it looked like 'twins wearing the same clothes.')
so actually i am not really sure. there was only one photo where i could clearly see them both together in the same photo. however, they weren't straight-faced - they were making funny faces (i couldn't tell what was going on - it looked like a bumper cars ride or something, where they had on seat belts) so i didn't get to see both of them side by side with a neutral facial expression, but instead, they are both making different expressions in the picture. in the picture with the different facial expressions, it isn't obvious that they are identical twins, but instead, they could just be two very similar-looking brothers, or fraternal twins who are the same age and look a lot alike.
that might explain why i originally saw this one other photo he had and it looked like somebody else, not him. it looked ALMOST like him, but not quite.
and, it might explain something else weird that i noticed a long time ago, but i didn't think anything of it. when i first started working at the store, there were two guys who looked a lot alike, but eventually, i decided it was the same guy, except he sometimes wore glasses, and sometimes didn't. i decided it was just the glasses and that i had been confused because i didn't know anybody in that department. but it would be weird if they were both employed in the same store for a while, except he doesn't seem to be there anymore.
i don't have any idea what his name is, and i didn't see them together in lots of pictures, just one. also, i didn't read anywhere in his blog any mention of a brother. it makes me doubt it and i wonder if he is just some friend who happens to have a strong resemblance to martin, at least in the one photo. when i look at the picture again, they actually don't look the same anymore - they look quite different. the more i look at it, the more different they look.
'well, just another mystery,' is all i can say.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Adolescent Myths; Community; Work Exchange Project
When the overt attacks began in 2003, they spent many hours interrogating me about my adolescent fiction stories and myths. I used to draw cartoons, play out stories with toys, and write fiction. It was in the magic/fantasy genre. Fantasy stories, not sci-fi - it wasn't in the future, and it wasn't high-tech. This was witches-and-wizards type fantasy. Sometimes it also was present-time, with normal humans having unexpected adventures. A lot of it was psychological and had to do with dreams, paranormal, illusions and mental phenomena.
They were interested in my myths. Maybe I have been controlled for a long time, when it was covert, and my myths were influenced by them. Lately they've been talking about 'the prophecy.'
I created a planet called Darcon, which was inspired by Fantasia in the Neverending Story. Darcon, like Fantasia, was the place where all of my drawings, stories, and fantasies went. Even if my drawings accidentallly got lost or thrown in the trash, the characters would still live on Darcon.
Darcon was healthy until I was about 14 years old. Then, it was destroyed by a demon called Sloemaeyir and his four dragon-like, ghost-like creatures, the Zhants, named Emphth (Lightning), Kundt (Storm/Wind/Tornado - I'm not sure if this storm contained water, or it was only dry air - I would have to dig out the drawings and see whether I drew raindrops falling from the clouds or not), Sheltza (Fire), and Zorfth (Earth/Earthquake/Volcano). It was left a dry blackened desert, the entire planet.
That was also about the time when I started having more health problems, getting depressed, and withdrawing from some of the activities that I used to do, like piano lessons. I think it was connected with my getting braces, having teeth removed, and getting a cavity filled with silver-mercury-copper amalgam. I also started getting my hair permed, wearing makeup occasionally, and using acne treatments, so I was exposed to more chemicals than before. I can think of a lot of things that happened during that time that might have made me become sicker and more depressed.
I didn't finish writing the story, but, the myth said that four characters would appear on Darcon and travel across the black desert to meet each other and reawaken the world. I started writing about one of the characters, but didn't get to the others. They connected with each other through dreams and visions. There was a lot of suffering and torture on the journey. It usually involved not being able to tell the difference between illusions and reality, and it also involved being isolated from others.
Luke was a dog, a cartoon character who I drew in health class (and any other class, actually) in seventh grade. He was given his name by Chris, the guy who sat in front of me, who used to turn around and watch me drawing. One day Chris wrote the word 'Luke' above the dog, and I kept the name. Luke had a pet snake named Rover (and back then, I wasn't consciously thinking about phallic symbols, so he was nothing but a snake). I shared Luke with my best friend Rachael - she always got excited to see whatever new things he was doing, whatever adventures he and his friends were having. She read my stories as I wrote them.
Luke originally had a normal, happy life with the other dogs, who were sometimes doglike, and other times, anthropomorphic, or whatever the word is for humanlike. Sometimes they ran around on all fours and other times they stood on two legs, talked, and held objects in their hands with their fingers and opposable thumbs like people. They were like 'people with fur.' Apparently I loved fur and hair that much all the way back then. I wasn't aware that it would be described as a 'fetish' to want hair on people. It seemed normal to look at it that way: that humans had lost something wonderful, something that other animals still had. I never liked the 'humans lost their hair because we're more evolved and we're superior to animals' interpretation.
They interrogated me while I slept, and I felt someone speaking through me, telling them all of the answers, all of the childhood stories, all of the myths. They treated it as though it was my religion. But I remember there was a very negative feeling - someone was greedy, stealing all of it, something that was private and precious to me. I felt like nobody understood me, when I was young - nobody understood what was important to me, nobody understood my feelings or who I was. That's not really true - my brother understood me better than anybody else, and then after that, Rachael did. But still there's always some time whenever you feel as though your own feelings are in a different world from everybody else's. Whenever they stole it from me in the interrogations, it was my whole private, secret world being made into somebody else's tool of mind control. They were looking at it to find out what was important to me, so that they could use it to control me. That was, again, after I quit the Judith Swack therapy, when the overt attacks began.
Luke was sort of timeless and ageless. He lived in different phases of time. An example of this is, it's like Aeon Flux, who dies over and over again, and then is alive and well in the next episode. (I am uncomfortable with snuff fetishes, because of the problems that began with the guy in the chatroom in 2000. A snuff fetish was involved.) I shouldn't use Aeon Flux as an example. Lots of other cartoon characters do that same thing. Luke wasn't dying in every episode - that's not what I mean. But he lived in drastically different places and times that were disconnected from each other, and it would have been impossible to be in all of those places and times. And there was no explanation as to why he was sometimes in one place, sometimes in another place. (*Maybe they were thinking of Aeon Flux because I saw that movie a couple years ago, instead of the cartoon. In that movie, - spoilers.... they were having problems with infertility, and there were spy systems and things controlling everybody's lives and preventing them from having children.*)
In one of his phases, he had all of his gang of friends. In another phase, he was a homeless wanderer, playing his guitar as he traveled. In another phase, he was journeying across the black desert of Darcon, trying to remember where he came from, where he had been, and how he had gotten here.
Recently, they have been tying in this story with some events in my real life, which is why I said they were using it as a tool of mind control. In Luke's desert journey, he is separated from all of his friends and cannot communicate with them. They become taunting illusions that he cannot reach. No matter how hard he tries, every time he reaches out to them, they are only a mirage. Or it's only a dream, and he wakes up.
This has been connected with a real-world paranoia that I am having, about people trying to reach me in email, but being unable to get through. Or they cannot visit my blog, because when they look at the page, the page says it's gone. If they get a reply from me in email, it's a fake letter written by somebody impersonating me. And I might have actually emailed them, but my letter was intercepted, and my real letter doesn't get through, and a substitute letter or a censored version gets to them instead. If they read my address someplace and want to send me a letter through the post office, they actually read the wrong address, or wrote it down wrong, or somebody delivers it to the wrong place, and for whatever reason, it can't get through. The recipient is waiting to receive letters that never show up, and becomes more desperate to hear from people who never speak to him/her. 'They,' the voices, are sometimes portraying me as that unreachable person, and sometimes portraying the guy from work as that person. The theme is sadness, frustration, isolation, loneliness, desperation, and gradual breakdown and loss of sanity.
I hear voices where somebody blurts out a phone number quickly, but I can only catch part of it, and the rest is cut off. I've had voices trying to tell me their name and address. I used to try telling them what mine was, too. I hear voices telling me that somebody is going to commit suicide unless I can contact them right away and tell them it's okay and I believe them. Sometimes they tell me that they're trapped someplace, held captive, and they're forced to zap me, and forced to put voices in my head, and they try to resist, but they can't resist, and they can't escape.
I am going to talk on the phone to a real-world person today, in a little while. She is somebody who answered my Craigslist Cry For Help, with regards to my being sick and overwhelmed with the need to clean up the household contamination and do everything else at the same time. She is the first person who I will be working with in the real-world, labor-exchange agreement, where I help you, and you help me, doing ordinary physical chores and projects. It is this type of thing that will counteract the isolation, the frustration, the being separated from all of society, that I have suffered for years. I will meet people in order to work together with them.
This project is my responsibility. I am doing it because I saw, after the household contamination, that my life was slipping away, with disaster after disaster, and I realized: the disasters will never end. It will always be one more new problem, year after year. And being female, I have a limited time in which I can bear children. I did not want to lose that opportunity forever. I saw that I could not possibly fight against the disasters all by myself. Every time I almost recovered from a disaster, a new accident would happen. It would be an illness, or the wintertime problems which were probably mold-related, or an economic bubble that would cause job layoffs, and so on.
I spent many years thinking that soon, very soon, the future would be better than the past. I'd pay off my debts, I'd pay back my parents, I'd fix this or that health problem, I'd make things better in a lasting way, I'd get a better job if only I took some more classes (using borrowed money)... But the household contamination disaster was SO SEVERE and so overwhelming that it was the last straw.
They reminded me recently about Eek the Cat, who says 'It never hurts to help!' only seconds before he gets run over by a car or something. He always tries to help somebody, but it destroys him. They reminded me that one of the reasons why I wanted to get the herbal stimulant drugs was because I wanted to get enough energy to work lots and lots of hours, and earn lots of money, partly so that I could contribute to helping Peter, so that I could make his life easier.
And Peter reminded me of Alexander, my stray cat who had died recently. I felt as though he died because I was living in an apartment where I wasn't allowed to keep pets (since the landlord has rabbits outside and doesn't want them to get killed by dogs and cats). I had wanted to move to a place where I could keep Alexander with me, and I would have been able to observe him closely and make the decision to take him to the vet whenever he was dying. But I didn't move to a better apartment, because I was still floundering, trying to pay off debts, trying to keep a job without getting laid off or fired or quitting. Alex was at my ex-boyfriend Eric's house, and I used to go over there all the time to visit, but I wasn't there constantly. So when Alexander started throwing up, and couldn't keep any food or water down, we thought it might just be a temporary virus, and I decided to wait a couple days to see if he would get better. But then, he just got sicker, and he died. I feel like maybe, if he had been with me, I could have seen him and I would have known what to do, and I would have taken him to the vet. But I couldn't get a better place to live (where pets were allowed), because I was still trying to recover from all the disasters of my life.
So when Peter first showed up, right after Alex died, this was somebody else to take care of, and I wanted to try again. But the things that I did to make myself stronger - trying to grow herbal stimulant drugs - destroyed my life, and I was even LESS able to help.
'If only I do this one thing, then soon, the future will be better than the past.' That was always the theme. Try one more thing and it will be better. But everything I did, I was doing it by myself, and often it required or implied the borrowing of money.
It is not possible to do everything by yourself. I can't cite references, but 'studies have shown' that real-world social support networks are probably THE most important factor that determines how healthy a person is, physically and psychologically. I have read about intentional communities - the successful ones, not the ones that failed - and the people living there give and receive social support all the time with daily tasks, such as raising children and cooking food. Meals are healthier and cheaper and home-cooked. Disasters get fixed sooner. Unemployed people get financial support. I do not mean this in a Utopian way. I mean it in a realistic way, that life in community is not 'perfect,' but BETTER than the isolation in the mainstream world, with their single-family dwellings, 'nuclear families,' and single people living alone and not knowing their neighbors.
Well, in a little while, I will be talking on the phone. This wasn't entirely 'my' idea - it was partly 'their' idea, as I have been discussing it with 'voices' for a long time now. It's normal to be suspicious of 'things the voices tell you to do,' but sometimes, they encourage me to do things that I already mostly agree with, and this is one of those things. There is a lot of work to do, and this is only one small thing... but it is happening in the real world instead of just being talked about.
They were interested in my myths. Maybe I have been controlled for a long time, when it was covert, and my myths were influenced by them. Lately they've been talking about 'the prophecy.'
I created a planet called Darcon, which was inspired by Fantasia in the Neverending Story. Darcon, like Fantasia, was the place where all of my drawings, stories, and fantasies went. Even if my drawings accidentallly got lost or thrown in the trash, the characters would still live on Darcon.
Darcon was healthy until I was about 14 years old. Then, it was destroyed by a demon called Sloemaeyir and his four dragon-like, ghost-like creatures, the Zhants, named Emphth (Lightning), Kundt (Storm/Wind/Tornado - I'm not sure if this storm contained water, or it was only dry air - I would have to dig out the drawings and see whether I drew raindrops falling from the clouds or not), Sheltza (Fire), and Zorfth (Earth/Earthquake/Volcano). It was left a dry blackened desert, the entire planet.
That was also about the time when I started having more health problems, getting depressed, and withdrawing from some of the activities that I used to do, like piano lessons. I think it was connected with my getting braces, having teeth removed, and getting a cavity filled with silver-mercury-copper amalgam. I also started getting my hair permed, wearing makeup occasionally, and using acne treatments, so I was exposed to more chemicals than before. I can think of a lot of things that happened during that time that might have made me become sicker and more depressed.
I didn't finish writing the story, but, the myth said that four characters would appear on Darcon and travel across the black desert to meet each other and reawaken the world. I started writing about one of the characters, but didn't get to the others. They connected with each other through dreams and visions. There was a lot of suffering and torture on the journey. It usually involved not being able to tell the difference between illusions and reality, and it also involved being isolated from others.
Luke was a dog, a cartoon character who I drew in health class (and any other class, actually) in seventh grade. He was given his name by Chris, the guy who sat in front of me, who used to turn around and watch me drawing. One day Chris wrote the word 'Luke' above the dog, and I kept the name. Luke had a pet snake named Rover (and back then, I wasn't consciously thinking about phallic symbols, so he was nothing but a snake). I shared Luke with my best friend Rachael - she always got excited to see whatever new things he was doing, whatever adventures he and his friends were having. She read my stories as I wrote them.
Luke originally had a normal, happy life with the other dogs, who were sometimes doglike, and other times, anthropomorphic, or whatever the word is for humanlike. Sometimes they ran around on all fours and other times they stood on two legs, talked, and held objects in their hands with their fingers and opposable thumbs like people. They were like 'people with fur.' Apparently I loved fur and hair that much all the way back then. I wasn't aware that it would be described as a 'fetish' to want hair on people. It seemed normal to look at it that way: that humans had lost something wonderful, something that other animals still had. I never liked the 'humans lost their hair because we're more evolved and we're superior to animals' interpretation.
They interrogated me while I slept, and I felt someone speaking through me, telling them all of the answers, all of the childhood stories, all of the myths. They treated it as though it was my religion. But I remember there was a very negative feeling - someone was greedy, stealing all of it, something that was private and precious to me. I felt like nobody understood me, when I was young - nobody understood what was important to me, nobody understood my feelings or who I was. That's not really true - my brother understood me better than anybody else, and then after that, Rachael did. But still there's always some time whenever you feel as though your own feelings are in a different world from everybody else's. Whenever they stole it from me in the interrogations, it was my whole private, secret world being made into somebody else's tool of mind control. They were looking at it to find out what was important to me, so that they could use it to control me. That was, again, after I quit the Judith Swack therapy, when the overt attacks began.
Luke was sort of timeless and ageless. He lived in different phases of time. An example of this is, it's like Aeon Flux, who dies over and over again, and then is alive and well in the next episode. (I am uncomfortable with snuff fetishes, because of the problems that began with the guy in the chatroom in 2000. A snuff fetish was involved.) I shouldn't use Aeon Flux as an example. Lots of other cartoon characters do that same thing. Luke wasn't dying in every episode - that's not what I mean. But he lived in drastically different places and times that were disconnected from each other, and it would have been impossible to be in all of those places and times. And there was no explanation as to why he was sometimes in one place, sometimes in another place. (*Maybe they were thinking of Aeon Flux because I saw that movie a couple years ago, instead of the cartoon. In that movie, - spoilers.... they were having problems with infertility, and there were spy systems and things controlling everybody's lives and preventing them from having children.*)
In one of his phases, he had all of his gang of friends. In another phase, he was a homeless wanderer, playing his guitar as he traveled. In another phase, he was journeying across the black desert of Darcon, trying to remember where he came from, where he had been, and how he had gotten here.
Recently, they have been tying in this story with some events in my real life, which is why I said they were using it as a tool of mind control. In Luke's desert journey, he is separated from all of his friends and cannot communicate with them. They become taunting illusions that he cannot reach. No matter how hard he tries, every time he reaches out to them, they are only a mirage. Or it's only a dream, and he wakes up.
This has been connected with a real-world paranoia that I am having, about people trying to reach me in email, but being unable to get through. Or they cannot visit my blog, because when they look at the page, the page says it's gone. If they get a reply from me in email, it's a fake letter written by somebody impersonating me. And I might have actually emailed them, but my letter was intercepted, and my real letter doesn't get through, and a substitute letter or a censored version gets to them instead. If they read my address someplace and want to send me a letter through the post office, they actually read the wrong address, or wrote it down wrong, or somebody delivers it to the wrong place, and for whatever reason, it can't get through. The recipient is waiting to receive letters that never show up, and becomes more desperate to hear from people who never speak to him/her. 'They,' the voices, are sometimes portraying me as that unreachable person, and sometimes portraying the guy from work as that person. The theme is sadness, frustration, isolation, loneliness, desperation, and gradual breakdown and loss of sanity.
I hear voices where somebody blurts out a phone number quickly, but I can only catch part of it, and the rest is cut off. I've had voices trying to tell me their name and address. I used to try telling them what mine was, too. I hear voices telling me that somebody is going to commit suicide unless I can contact them right away and tell them it's okay and I believe them. Sometimes they tell me that they're trapped someplace, held captive, and they're forced to zap me, and forced to put voices in my head, and they try to resist, but they can't resist, and they can't escape.
I am going to talk on the phone to a real-world person today, in a little while. She is somebody who answered my Craigslist Cry For Help, with regards to my being sick and overwhelmed with the need to clean up the household contamination and do everything else at the same time. She is the first person who I will be working with in the real-world, labor-exchange agreement, where I help you, and you help me, doing ordinary physical chores and projects. It is this type of thing that will counteract the isolation, the frustration, the being separated from all of society, that I have suffered for years. I will meet people in order to work together with them.
This project is my responsibility. I am doing it because I saw, after the household contamination, that my life was slipping away, with disaster after disaster, and I realized: the disasters will never end. It will always be one more new problem, year after year. And being female, I have a limited time in which I can bear children. I did not want to lose that opportunity forever. I saw that I could not possibly fight against the disasters all by myself. Every time I almost recovered from a disaster, a new accident would happen. It would be an illness, or the wintertime problems which were probably mold-related, or an economic bubble that would cause job layoffs, and so on.
I spent many years thinking that soon, very soon, the future would be better than the past. I'd pay off my debts, I'd pay back my parents, I'd fix this or that health problem, I'd make things better in a lasting way, I'd get a better job if only I took some more classes (using borrowed money)... But the household contamination disaster was SO SEVERE and so overwhelming that it was the last straw.
They reminded me recently about Eek the Cat, who says 'It never hurts to help!' only seconds before he gets run over by a car or something. He always tries to help somebody, but it destroys him. They reminded me that one of the reasons why I wanted to get the herbal stimulant drugs was because I wanted to get enough energy to work lots and lots of hours, and earn lots of money, partly so that I could contribute to helping Peter, so that I could make his life easier.
And Peter reminded me of Alexander, my stray cat who had died recently. I felt as though he died because I was living in an apartment where I wasn't allowed to keep pets (since the landlord has rabbits outside and doesn't want them to get killed by dogs and cats). I had wanted to move to a place where I could keep Alexander with me, and I would have been able to observe him closely and make the decision to take him to the vet whenever he was dying. But I didn't move to a better apartment, because I was still floundering, trying to pay off debts, trying to keep a job without getting laid off or fired or quitting. Alex was at my ex-boyfriend Eric's house, and I used to go over there all the time to visit, but I wasn't there constantly. So when Alexander started throwing up, and couldn't keep any food or water down, we thought it might just be a temporary virus, and I decided to wait a couple days to see if he would get better. But then, he just got sicker, and he died. I feel like maybe, if he had been with me, I could have seen him and I would have known what to do, and I would have taken him to the vet. But I couldn't get a better place to live (where pets were allowed), because I was still trying to recover from all the disasters of my life.
So when Peter first showed up, right after Alex died, this was somebody else to take care of, and I wanted to try again. But the things that I did to make myself stronger - trying to grow herbal stimulant drugs - destroyed my life, and I was even LESS able to help.
'If only I do this one thing, then soon, the future will be better than the past.' That was always the theme. Try one more thing and it will be better. But everything I did, I was doing it by myself, and often it required or implied the borrowing of money.
It is not possible to do everything by yourself. I can't cite references, but 'studies have shown' that real-world social support networks are probably THE most important factor that determines how healthy a person is, physically and psychologically. I have read about intentional communities - the successful ones, not the ones that failed - and the people living there give and receive social support all the time with daily tasks, such as raising children and cooking food. Meals are healthier and cheaper and home-cooked. Disasters get fixed sooner. Unemployed people get financial support. I do not mean this in a Utopian way. I mean it in a realistic way, that life in community is not 'perfect,' but BETTER than the isolation in the mainstream world, with their single-family dwellings, 'nuclear families,' and single people living alone and not knowing their neighbors.
Well, in a little while, I will be talking on the phone. This wasn't entirely 'my' idea - it was partly 'their' idea, as I have been discussing it with 'voices' for a long time now. It's normal to be suspicious of 'things the voices tell you to do,' but sometimes, they encourage me to do things that I already mostly agree with, and this is one of those things. There is a lot of work to do, and this is only one small thing... but it is happening in the real world instead of just being talked about.
what is Jim Carrey's next movie?
I am a little concerned that Jim Carrey's next movie is The Three Stooges. So far, my life has been sort of following his movies. I don't know what The Three Stooges is going to be about, so I don't know what I should expect to happen in my life. Supposedly, - no, I'm not even going to say that.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
disrespectful conversations
i'm having a problem today with voices telling me that somebody said something to somebody else, and it's insulting, degrading, or disrespectful towards me. i don't know if the particular thing is true. they want me to blog about it for the purpose of saying 'i know all about everything you're doing and it's not a secret.' they want me to quote specifically what was said, and by whom. it is, indeed, disrespectful. i am resisting the urge to quote what was said. i don't know if it was true, for one thing.
i am taking the 'i'm above that' attitude. i don't believe in eavesdropping. if i were able to listen to telephone conversations, using technology, - i am not interested in doing that, and i don't want to learn how. so why is it any different when 'the voices' tell me that somebody said something about me to somebody else? they can say what they want to say.
maybe we should say: we are all on the same planet, fighting the same battle, and even when i dislike somebody, and they say something disrespectful about me, in some way we are 'fellow sufferers' even though it doesn't feel that way. they want me to write about what was said to whom, to threaten them and prove that i know everything they're saying about me and that it's not a secret.
there is a temptation to say, 'well, whenever my community is built, you won't be invited to join.' however, the 'community' right now is very ad hoc and informal and temporary. whenever somebody has a more wealthy, powerful, well-developed, functioning community, with lots of resources, it's possible to include people who disagree with the overall spirit of the community. but in the beginning, intentional communities are vulnerable, and have to be filled with like-minded people cooperating with consensus, who all share the same mission. if the community were stronger, it could withstand the behavior of untrustworthy people talking in a disrespectful way about other members of the community. as i said, i'm nowhere near that stage of community development.
the message is: take me seriously. i usually accept this kind of disrespect with a quiet resignation - i used to avoid all human contact because of people like you, saying things like that (assuming it really happened, instead of being disinformation from the voices). they are angry about the fact that it was said. i do not want to be specific about what it was or who it involved.
if i can gain anything from it, it is only: that person might not be trustworthy, and i'm inclined to believe the best of people. but right now, trust isn't a crucial issue, because i'm not doing anything illegal. but in the future, when i'm a prostitute smoking pot that i paid for with my untaxed income, with all my illegal immigrant buddies back in the woods, we won't tell you our exact location, and you won't be invited, because we don't trust you. so there.
i am taking the 'i'm above that' attitude. i don't believe in eavesdropping. if i were able to listen to telephone conversations, using technology, - i am not interested in doing that, and i don't want to learn how. so why is it any different when 'the voices' tell me that somebody said something about me to somebody else? they can say what they want to say.
maybe we should say: we are all on the same planet, fighting the same battle, and even when i dislike somebody, and they say something disrespectful about me, in some way we are 'fellow sufferers' even though it doesn't feel that way. they want me to write about what was said to whom, to threaten them and prove that i know everything they're saying about me and that it's not a secret.
there is a temptation to say, 'well, whenever my community is built, you won't be invited to join.' however, the 'community' right now is very ad hoc and informal and temporary. whenever somebody has a more wealthy, powerful, well-developed, functioning community, with lots of resources, it's possible to include people who disagree with the overall spirit of the community. but in the beginning, intentional communities are vulnerable, and have to be filled with like-minded people cooperating with consensus, who all share the same mission. if the community were stronger, it could withstand the behavior of untrustworthy people talking in a disrespectful way about other members of the community. as i said, i'm nowhere near that stage of community development.
the message is: take me seriously. i usually accept this kind of disrespect with a quiet resignation - i used to avoid all human contact because of people like you, saying things like that (assuming it really happened, instead of being disinformation from the voices). they are angry about the fact that it was said. i do not want to be specific about what it was or who it involved.
if i can gain anything from it, it is only: that person might not be trustworthy, and i'm inclined to believe the best of people. but right now, trust isn't a crucial issue, because i'm not doing anything illegal. but in the future, when i'm a prostitute smoking pot that i paid for with my untaxed income, with all my illegal immigrant buddies back in the woods, we won't tell you our exact location, and you won't be invited, because we don't trust you. so there.
Circumcision again
They woke me up talking about one of my favorite subjects again. Instead of talking about it, I should just show everybody the way to the anti-circumcision web pages, where other people have argued about it much more clearly than I can, since I'm probably going to be long-winded, rambling, and disorganized, and not necessarily logical.
There is a problem with people reading the files on my computer: it slows down my dialup internet connection, and I notice when it's happening, so I hit the button on the firewall and wait a minute until they temporarily stop trying. It's usually less of a problem if I have already gotten the web pages and am 'settled in' instead of just starting up. But that means that a lot of their reading attempts might have been cut off by the firewall. They could have jumped to conclusions about what I was going to say, if they read only a little bit of it, but since I ramble, by the end I could be saying the opposite of what I said in the beginning. So I could have said lots and lots of positive, complimentary, good things about a person, but they might have read only the one small bad thing that I said, and quit reading or didn't get all of it.
Well, last time I talked about this, I focused on one single theme: circumcision and STDs or AIDS. I could still go on about that argument. But I'll go to another topic.
Focusing on one thing helped because this subject has so many parts to it, it would be worth a whole book. That would be an entertaining book, sort of a medical-porn genre.
Well, I have been getting bombarded for most of the past year with questions about a taboo subject, body odors. That started up again and they want me to write about how this relates to circumcision.
Humans evolved in a world without indoor plumbing, so, a long time ago, people didn't take showers every day. They still found each other sexually attractive, or we wouldn't be here. Other nonhuman animals and insects use pheromones to tell other animals whether they are ready to mate. (Pheromones are chemicals emitted by one animal and detected by another animal. They are similar to hormones. They are airborne, and inhaled through the nose like a scent, but they are usually odorless.) So, worrying about how people smell is a modern thing. In the past, it was part of how we bonded socially and sexually.
(This is totally off-topic, and yet, relevant at the same time. I haven't added any new Flickr photos for months, because I spent the last few months in a half-dead state, and also, my laptop is running out of hard drive space, which is why Dennis gave me a zip drive. So I keep hearing voices complaining that my Flickr photos start off with that annoying duck climbing up on my back and trying to have sex with me, and/or pecking my eyes out, instead of sitting still and letting me pet him in a platonic way. I didn't upload the one photo where I snapped the picture at the exact moment when he pecked my crotch, because I thought it wasn't family-friendly enough to keep my Flickr page rated G. By the way, my landlord gave those muscovy ducks away to somebody else, because they kept 'attacking' visitors who didn't understand that they weren't really being violent, just extra-friendly. That duck gave me parasites, too. But he really was a nice duck, you just had to make sure he didn't climb up on your back. One time he got his clawed feet tangled in my long hair and it was difficult to gently remove a large, struggling, flapping duck without hurting him. That took a few minutes, but, obviously I did untangle him. I will eventually add some more pictures that aren't so ridiculous.)
Anyway, back to the topic. 'It smells bad' is one of the excuses for circumcision. There are a few different counterarguments to that. Maybe I should just brainstorm and list them all without elaborating, and then elaborate on them later?
1. maybe it smells good, but we're not allowed to say that or think that
2. washing it off can be done quickly and easily
3. removing the foreskin is permanent - it will never grow back. if you regret it, too bad, you can't fix it. the grief and loss and self-hatred, when you realize that you permanently injured yourself, can even lead to suicide, just like any other form of unnecessary cosmetic surgery - unless you choose to dedicate yourself to an anti-circumcision campaign, which is how some people survive this trauma - by preventing others from making the same mistake.
4. body odors become associated with a memory; smell is a key to triggering a vivid memory of an entire time period of your life, with all of the emotions - whenever a smell is associated with sex, it is permanently part of your memory of that whole experience, that person, the mood you were in, the emotions you felt at the time - everything. so the smell of the human body becomes associated with memories of intimate encounters, closeness, and physical contact.
5. it smells exactly like the smegma that appears on the FEMALE labia, which is the same substance. should we cut off the female labia? (in Africa, they do!)
I can tell my own personal experience with this. I had a brief encounter with a European immigrant, someone who I worked with on an overnight cleaning job. I quit that job, and back then, I was very antisocial, so I didn't stay in contact with this guy afterwards. So I only had the one encounter.
He had a foreskin. It did have a strong smell. It was strange to me because I associated that smell with my own body - it was exactly the same, but stronger. However, I was already anti-circ back then, and was fully committed to accepting everything and getting used to it, no matter what. So I decided that the smell was just something you got used to. I thought I would probably learn to like it if I had enough pleasant experiences with it. And the smell was only noticeable in the beginning, for a minute, which might be because it was underneath his clothing all day.
I also knew already that there are many benefits to keeping the foreskin intact, and you lose a lot when you remove it. So I said, if it bothered me, I could just get him to wash off, which is easy and trivial, because the permanent loss of the foreskin is a major loss. If people are aware of how functional the foreskin is, if they appreciate what it does, if they understand that it feels a lot of sensation, and protects the glans from drying out, and makes vaginal intercourse much easier, and does a lot of other useful things, then the smell seems like no big deal in comparison. And, as I said, I think it's something people learn to like whenever they get used to it.
I wanted to focus on #3 in the brainstorming list above. The others are pretty self-explanatory. During the 'discussions' going on in my mind, they said 'circumcision is a load of crap,' and suggested an alternative title: Circumcision Is Suicide. That's not necessarily true for everybody... but there are SOME people who DO feel that bad afterwards.
When I was a little kid, I used to sometimes have nightmares - probably fake nightmares, now that I know about dream control. I occasionally dreamed that I had severely injured a person or animal, sometimes a person I loved, like my parents, and they were injured so badly that they could not be fixed, and had to be 'put out of their misery.' I would then have to completely kill the person or animal. These were horrible dreams and I would wake up crying.
Whenever you inflict permanent injury on yourself or someone else... The doctors and nurses who circumcise infants - you can't go tell them that circumcision is wrong, and that they've been doing something horrible for years and years. They have to protect themselves against realizing how bad it is. They have a very strong rationale for why they do what they do, and if that rationale breaks down, they need something equally strong to substitute for it, something positive, something they can do to make up for all that they have done.
And right now, there isn't much a person can do. I can imagine a corporation that would find a way to regrow a fully functioning foreskin (or female genitals, or anything else removed or changed by cosmetic surgery). However, it would be very expensive in the beginning, so not everybody could do it. You could argue about whether health insurance should cover this: you are the victim of an 'accident' that occurred in your infancy. But healthcare is a mess in this country... and that's too big of a topic for me to get into - I would have to explain everything I've learned in all of my reading over the past few years about WHY the healthcare system is such a mess. Anyway, it would be difficult, dangerous, expensive, and not everybody could do it. Some people would go without.
If you remove something, and you absolutely cannot get it back, ever, that seems like too big of a risk to take.
People in the USA don't know what they're missing - they don't know what life with a foreskin is like - because they lost it when they were infants. So they don't know what they're doing to their children.
But if you circumcise yourself as an adult, you have years and years of experience with having a foreskin, so you notice the difference when it is gone. There are anecdotes on the net, where people described all of the differences that they observed after getting circumcised as adults. And some of them were badly traumatized by it, deeply regretting this self-inflicted permanent injury, and, as I said, some people even feel suicidal.
This isn't as severe, but I have body parts that I lost. I had eight of my teeth removed whenever I was too young to refuse consent. The internet didn't exist back then, so we couldn't just google some counter-arguments whenever big decisions needed to be made. If you wanted to research something, you had to go to a library and you had to know exactly what you were looking for. Information was difficult to find. Especially anecdotes - the stories people tell. You might find something 'official' and 'scientific' published in a book, but you wouldn't find the experiences and stories of ordinary people. Maybe for popular topics, yes, but for obscure topics, it was harder. So I couldn't have gone online and researched whether other people might have chosen not to get braces on their teeth, or chosen not to remove the wisdom teeth, and read about what happened to them.
Also, I am annoyed because my mom taught me how to pluck my eyebrows, when I was a young teenager. I was taught that having any eyebrow hair over the bridge of my nose was bad. So I ripped out all the hairs over my nose bridge, over and over again, week after week, and as a result, the roots of the hairs scarred, and they never grew back. They grew back a little bit, but it's sparse - only a few hairs here and there. That bothered me, because I eventually changed my mind about plucking eyebrows, and I wanted them back. I grew up and appreciated the beauty and touchability of thick, full, unplucked eyebrows. Hair is there to be stroked and petted.
I have a picture from back then, but the scanner isn't set up on my computer right now, and that's a big nuisance project that I won't be doing anytime soon, so I can't easily show the picture. (I tried to take a picture of the picture using my digital camera.) It shows my eyebrows plucked almost down to nothing, and I was also trimming them short with scissors, too, and it looked horrible, like I had some disease.
The teeth lost, and the eyebrow hairs, aren't as bad as circumcision. I can only faintly imagine what it would be like to lose a part of your body that felt sensation. Teeth and hairs don't feel much sensation - I guess hairs do, somewhat. But the foreskin feels A LOT of sensation. You notice a big difference when it is gone.
If some guy is with a woman who complains about the way that he smells, and wants him to get circumcised because of that, she needs to understand just how much sensation that skin feels. I can't emphasize that enough, and I've already rambled for too long. But I want to contrast how trivial the smell is, next to how important the foreskin is - and that assumes you don't like the way it smells.
I rambled enough... Hearing voices asking me to talk about the subject of body odors and social/sexual bonding, for the past few days - I gave in and finally talked about it. This is one of those 'taboo' subjects in the USA... and the Europeans are at risk from the 'Circumcision Prevents AIDS' bullcrap, because their belief systems aren't strong enough or explicit enough to ACTIVELY FORBID circumcision. You can't just passively neglect to circumcise. You have to actively, strongly say that it is not allowed.
I associate Judith Swack with the onset of my overt psychotronic attacks, so I don't really trust her... However, there was one thing that I really agreed with, and admired. She was Jewish, however she rejected the Jewish practice of circumcision. She still called herself Jewish, and still was part of that religion, but she strongly disagreed with that one thing, and said that if she had had a son, she would have kept him intact. I think other Jewish families should do the same thing.
In the USA, circumcision isn't religious, it's part of mainstream culture. So they could just as easily 'forget' to circumcise, for passive reasons ('my health insurance provider wouldn't pay for it, so we didn't do it' - that's why they stopped circumcising in Great Britain, if I recall). But the Jewish religion actively REQUIRES circumcision. Mainstream USA does it merely because it's popular, it's common practice, it's quick and easy to do, and the hospital encourages it - but in reality, they don't care one way or the other about it. There are men who don't even KNOW that they're circumcised, don't know there is such a thing as circumcision, until they grow up and read about it on the internet, or see another guy who 'looks different,' or see something in porn videos. Nobody ever told them 'You Must Circumcise!' If they happened to have their baby outside of a hospital, for whatever reason, they might just accidentally forget to circumcise their baby. It would not be a conscious decision, it would just be ignorance and inconvenience. Anyway, there is a big difference between passively neglecting to circumcise, versus being ACTIVELY FORBIDDEN to circumcise. And there is a difference between passively going along with the routine of the hospital circumcising your baby for you, versus being actively required to circumcise because you're Jewish. As I said, Europe is in danger because they are 'passively neglecting' to circumcise, and that's not strong enough to fight against the disinformation about AIDS. ('They' said they are tempted to start a 'Circumcision Causes AIDS' campaign.)
Rambling... I type too much. In person, I don't talk like this. However, 'they' demanded that I talk about this subject, for the past few days. So, here it is.
There is a problem with people reading the files on my computer: it slows down my dialup internet connection, and I notice when it's happening, so I hit the button on the firewall and wait a minute until they temporarily stop trying. It's usually less of a problem if I have already gotten the web pages and am 'settled in' instead of just starting up. But that means that a lot of their reading attempts might have been cut off by the firewall. They could have jumped to conclusions about what I was going to say, if they read only a little bit of it, but since I ramble, by the end I could be saying the opposite of what I said in the beginning. So I could have said lots and lots of positive, complimentary, good things about a person, but they might have read only the one small bad thing that I said, and quit reading or didn't get all of it.
Well, last time I talked about this, I focused on one single theme: circumcision and STDs or AIDS. I could still go on about that argument. But I'll go to another topic.
Focusing on one thing helped because this subject has so many parts to it, it would be worth a whole book. That would be an entertaining book, sort of a medical-porn genre.
Well, I have been getting bombarded for most of the past year with questions about a taboo subject, body odors. That started up again and they want me to write about how this relates to circumcision.
Humans evolved in a world without indoor plumbing, so, a long time ago, people didn't take showers every day. They still found each other sexually attractive, or we wouldn't be here. Other nonhuman animals and insects use pheromones to tell other animals whether they are ready to mate. (Pheromones are chemicals emitted by one animal and detected by another animal. They are similar to hormones. They are airborne, and inhaled through the nose like a scent, but they are usually odorless.) So, worrying about how people smell is a modern thing. In the past, it was part of how we bonded socially and sexually.
(This is totally off-topic, and yet, relevant at the same time. I haven't added any new Flickr photos for months, because I spent the last few months in a half-dead state, and also, my laptop is running out of hard drive space, which is why Dennis gave me a zip drive. So I keep hearing voices complaining that my Flickr photos start off with that annoying duck climbing up on my back and trying to have sex with me, and/or pecking my eyes out, instead of sitting still and letting me pet him in a platonic way. I didn't upload the one photo where I snapped the picture at the exact moment when he pecked my crotch, because I thought it wasn't family-friendly enough to keep my Flickr page rated G. By the way, my landlord gave those muscovy ducks away to somebody else, because they kept 'attacking' visitors who didn't understand that they weren't really being violent, just extra-friendly. That duck gave me parasites, too. But he really was a nice duck, you just had to make sure he didn't climb up on your back. One time he got his clawed feet tangled in my long hair and it was difficult to gently remove a large, struggling, flapping duck without hurting him. That took a few minutes, but, obviously I did untangle him. I will eventually add some more pictures that aren't so ridiculous.)
Anyway, back to the topic. 'It smells bad' is one of the excuses for circumcision. There are a few different counterarguments to that. Maybe I should just brainstorm and list them all without elaborating, and then elaborate on them later?
1. maybe it smells good, but we're not allowed to say that or think that
2. washing it off can be done quickly and easily
3. removing the foreskin is permanent - it will never grow back. if you regret it, too bad, you can't fix it. the grief and loss and self-hatred, when you realize that you permanently injured yourself, can even lead to suicide, just like any other form of unnecessary cosmetic surgery - unless you choose to dedicate yourself to an anti-circumcision campaign, which is how some people survive this trauma - by preventing others from making the same mistake.
4. body odors become associated with a memory; smell is a key to triggering a vivid memory of an entire time period of your life, with all of the emotions - whenever a smell is associated with sex, it is permanently part of your memory of that whole experience, that person, the mood you were in, the emotions you felt at the time - everything. so the smell of the human body becomes associated with memories of intimate encounters, closeness, and physical contact.
5. it smells exactly like the smegma that appears on the FEMALE labia, which is the same substance. should we cut off the female labia? (in Africa, they do!)
I can tell my own personal experience with this. I had a brief encounter with a European immigrant, someone who I worked with on an overnight cleaning job. I quit that job, and back then, I was very antisocial, so I didn't stay in contact with this guy afterwards. So I only had the one encounter.
He had a foreskin. It did have a strong smell. It was strange to me because I associated that smell with my own body - it was exactly the same, but stronger. However, I was already anti-circ back then, and was fully committed to accepting everything and getting used to it, no matter what. So I decided that the smell was just something you got used to. I thought I would probably learn to like it if I had enough pleasant experiences with it. And the smell was only noticeable in the beginning, for a minute, which might be because it was underneath his clothing all day.
I also knew already that there are many benefits to keeping the foreskin intact, and you lose a lot when you remove it. So I said, if it bothered me, I could just get him to wash off, which is easy and trivial, because the permanent loss of the foreskin is a major loss. If people are aware of how functional the foreskin is, if they appreciate what it does, if they understand that it feels a lot of sensation, and protects the glans from drying out, and makes vaginal intercourse much easier, and does a lot of other useful things, then the smell seems like no big deal in comparison. And, as I said, I think it's something people learn to like whenever they get used to it.
I wanted to focus on #3 in the brainstorming list above. The others are pretty self-explanatory. During the 'discussions' going on in my mind, they said 'circumcision is a load of crap,' and suggested an alternative title: Circumcision Is Suicide. That's not necessarily true for everybody... but there are SOME people who DO feel that bad afterwards.
When I was a little kid, I used to sometimes have nightmares - probably fake nightmares, now that I know about dream control. I occasionally dreamed that I had severely injured a person or animal, sometimes a person I loved, like my parents, and they were injured so badly that they could not be fixed, and had to be 'put out of their misery.' I would then have to completely kill the person or animal. These were horrible dreams and I would wake up crying.
Whenever you inflict permanent injury on yourself or someone else... The doctors and nurses who circumcise infants - you can't go tell them that circumcision is wrong, and that they've been doing something horrible for years and years. They have to protect themselves against realizing how bad it is. They have a very strong rationale for why they do what they do, and if that rationale breaks down, they need something equally strong to substitute for it, something positive, something they can do to make up for all that they have done.
And right now, there isn't much a person can do. I can imagine a corporation that would find a way to regrow a fully functioning foreskin (or female genitals, or anything else removed or changed by cosmetic surgery). However, it would be very expensive in the beginning, so not everybody could do it. You could argue about whether health insurance should cover this: you are the victim of an 'accident' that occurred in your infancy. But healthcare is a mess in this country... and that's too big of a topic for me to get into - I would have to explain everything I've learned in all of my reading over the past few years about WHY the healthcare system is such a mess. Anyway, it would be difficult, dangerous, expensive, and not everybody could do it. Some people would go without.
If you remove something, and you absolutely cannot get it back, ever, that seems like too big of a risk to take.
People in the USA don't know what they're missing - they don't know what life with a foreskin is like - because they lost it when they were infants. So they don't know what they're doing to their children.
But if you circumcise yourself as an adult, you have years and years of experience with having a foreskin, so you notice the difference when it is gone. There are anecdotes on the net, where people described all of the differences that they observed after getting circumcised as adults. And some of them were badly traumatized by it, deeply regretting this self-inflicted permanent injury, and, as I said, some people even feel suicidal.
This isn't as severe, but I have body parts that I lost. I had eight of my teeth removed whenever I was too young to refuse consent. The internet didn't exist back then, so we couldn't just google some counter-arguments whenever big decisions needed to be made. If you wanted to research something, you had to go to a library and you had to know exactly what you were looking for. Information was difficult to find. Especially anecdotes - the stories people tell. You might find something 'official' and 'scientific' published in a book, but you wouldn't find the experiences and stories of ordinary people. Maybe for popular topics, yes, but for obscure topics, it was harder. So I couldn't have gone online and researched whether other people might have chosen not to get braces on their teeth, or chosen not to remove the wisdom teeth, and read about what happened to them.
Also, I am annoyed because my mom taught me how to pluck my eyebrows, when I was a young teenager. I was taught that having any eyebrow hair over the bridge of my nose was bad. So I ripped out all the hairs over my nose bridge, over and over again, week after week, and as a result, the roots of the hairs scarred, and they never grew back. They grew back a little bit, but it's sparse - only a few hairs here and there. That bothered me, because I eventually changed my mind about plucking eyebrows, and I wanted them back. I grew up and appreciated the beauty and touchability of thick, full, unplucked eyebrows. Hair is there to be stroked and petted.
I have a picture from back then, but the scanner isn't set up on my computer right now, and that's a big nuisance project that I won't be doing anytime soon, so I can't easily show the picture. (I tried to take a picture of the picture using my digital camera.) It shows my eyebrows plucked almost down to nothing, and I was also trimming them short with scissors, too, and it looked horrible, like I had some disease.
The teeth lost, and the eyebrow hairs, aren't as bad as circumcision. I can only faintly imagine what it would be like to lose a part of your body that felt sensation. Teeth and hairs don't feel much sensation - I guess hairs do, somewhat. But the foreskin feels A LOT of sensation. You notice a big difference when it is gone.
If some guy is with a woman who complains about the way that he smells, and wants him to get circumcised because of that, she needs to understand just how much sensation that skin feels. I can't emphasize that enough, and I've already rambled for too long. But I want to contrast how trivial the smell is, next to how important the foreskin is - and that assumes you don't like the way it smells.
I rambled enough... Hearing voices asking me to talk about the subject of body odors and social/sexual bonding, for the past few days - I gave in and finally talked about it. This is one of those 'taboo' subjects in the USA... and the Europeans are at risk from the 'Circumcision Prevents AIDS' bullcrap, because their belief systems aren't strong enough or explicit enough to ACTIVELY FORBID circumcision. You can't just passively neglect to circumcise. You have to actively, strongly say that it is not allowed.
I associate Judith Swack with the onset of my overt psychotronic attacks, so I don't really trust her... However, there was one thing that I really agreed with, and admired. She was Jewish, however she rejected the Jewish practice of circumcision. She still called herself Jewish, and still was part of that religion, but she strongly disagreed with that one thing, and said that if she had had a son, she would have kept him intact. I think other Jewish families should do the same thing.
In the USA, circumcision isn't religious, it's part of mainstream culture. So they could just as easily 'forget' to circumcise, for passive reasons ('my health insurance provider wouldn't pay for it, so we didn't do it' - that's why they stopped circumcising in Great Britain, if I recall). But the Jewish religion actively REQUIRES circumcision. Mainstream USA does it merely because it's popular, it's common practice, it's quick and easy to do, and the hospital encourages it - but in reality, they don't care one way or the other about it. There are men who don't even KNOW that they're circumcised, don't know there is such a thing as circumcision, until they grow up and read about it on the internet, or see another guy who 'looks different,' or see something in porn videos. Nobody ever told them 'You Must Circumcise!' If they happened to have their baby outside of a hospital, for whatever reason, they might just accidentally forget to circumcise their baby. It would not be a conscious decision, it would just be ignorance and inconvenience. Anyway, there is a big difference between passively neglecting to circumcise, versus being ACTIVELY FORBIDDEN to circumcise. And there is a difference between passively going along with the routine of the hospital circumcising your baby for you, versus being actively required to circumcise because you're Jewish. As I said, Europe is in danger because they are 'passively neglecting' to circumcise, and that's not strong enough to fight against the disinformation about AIDS. ('They' said they are tempted to start a 'Circumcision Causes AIDS' campaign.)
Rambling... I type too much. In person, I don't talk like this. However, 'they' demanded that I talk about this subject, for the past few days. So, here it is.
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