That's what I'm trying to say. I feel bad about asking Carrie for help, and I feel bad that she answered my emails and talked to me about Curtis, when I'm not a real friend, when I'm actually trying to do something that she wouldn't want me to do. And her grandparents died, and I can't give her my sympathy, 1. because I'm not on facebook anymore, and 2. because Curtis is the person that I'm trying to stay connected to, not her.
The voices wanted to make me accept her as 'family' also. But apparently they changed their mind about that and decided not to make me try that. That 'feeling' has disappeared, and all of a sudden, I'm allowed to call her a competitor, instead of viewing her as a family or friend who I'm supporting. Those feelings, those interpretations, are fake, and they can be controlled from one day to the next. For whatever reason, they're not pushing hard on the 'support Carrie as your friend and family member' interpretation today. They were, before. Now they're not. I am a puppet.
I don't want to be a liar. I don't want to pretend to be nice to Carrie when I'm actually trying to get her fiancee.
And yes, Curtis can keep on seeing Carrie. I'm not trying to separate them. I'm trying to visit him on the side. That means either cheating or polyamory. Either way, Carrie never gave me permission to have a sexual relationship with him. She tolerated the idea of a friendship. Polyamory says that everyone involved knows what's happening and gives their consent. Cheating means that somebody doesn't know, and doesn't consent. So it's cheating. Although she would at least have the idea that I'm a possible threat and she knows that I *want* to be with him sexually. It's not a secret and it's not a surprise.
I saw a T-shirt from one of my facebook friends. It said, 'Polyamory is WRONG!' It was a joke. Underneath that it said, 'It's either multiamory or polyphilia, but, mixing Greek and Latin roots? WRONG!' This is because the parts of the word 'polyamory' come from Greek and Latin roots, and you're supposed to use either all Greek, or all Latin, but not both in the same word. So that was the joke. The idea is that polyamory ITSELF isn't necessarily wrong. Only the WORD is wrong. Anyway, though, because of that joke, I like to call it 'multiamory.' I actually agree with the joke.
So today, I'm allowed to feel, or I'm supposed to feel, or I'm being forced to feel, disgusted about myself because I don't have genuine sympathy for Carrie at her grandparents' death.
I never lived close to my grandparents. They were always far away, in New Jersey. It was a long drive and we didn't go there often. So I didn't grow up with them. My other grandfather was living here in Bellefonte, but for most of my life, I lived in other faraway cities - first Greensburg PA, then Scott Depot, WV. So I still didn't see him every day. (My paternal grandmother was already dead a long time ago. I never knew her.) I don't know what it's like to live near your grandparents or live with them and grow up with them there every day.
Curtis's grandmother surprised me. I saw her once when she came to get him at Weis. I thought she was his aunt. She is young, actually middle-aged. That's because his mother gave birth to him when she was in her early or mid-teens. She was a very young mother. My grandparents were always 'old,' even when I was a kid.
Anyway, this is yet another reason why I won't soon be emailing her to ask her to help me find Curtis. Sorry you just lost both your grandparents... Oh well! Can you help me find your fiancee so that I can enjoy his company again? It's the combination of not having any real, sincere sympathy, and at the same time, automatically knowing I have to be respectful. I'm not a real friend. I'm doing something you wouldn't want me to do, something you didn't give me permission to do, something that would hurt you. I'm not a real friend.
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
I'm so drunk I can't even type
Just kidding... While stalking, I have been buying little impulse buys from the grocery store. I decided to get Kimchi. It's fermented cabbage - they eat it in Korea. A few minutes after I ate it, I had a funny feeling. It was sort of a heart palpitation. I don't know if it actually contains alcohol, or if it's just 'lacto-fermented,' the stuff they talk about in Weston Price websites. It probably doesn't have any alcohol.
But I am having a really hard time typing. I ate other foods that trigger my food sensitivities - I had dried pineapple preserved with sulfite, for instance. The Feingold diet, and food-sensitive ADHD, is connected with dyslexia, bad spelling, and bad typing with reversed letters. You can greatly reduce dyslexia by using the Feingold Diet.
Yes, the kimchi gives me a headache afterwards. And it doesn't contain any MSG either. It's all natural. I looked at the ingredients.
Carrie's grandfather just died. Her grandmother died a few weeks ago. Why do people die together?
1. They died of the same cause.
2. Somebody gave up hope after the other one was gone.
People always assume it's psychological - the other gave up, they were lonely, they couldn't stay alive without the other. But I wonder about that. I think that when you're old and vulnerable, you can die of relatively harmless causes, like a common cold. I think that colds and other viruses can kill people when they're very old and weak, and this is the season for it, not just because it's cold outside, but because of football and large numbers of people traveling and bringing viruses.
I don't know the exact cause of death. She just mentioned it on her facebook page.
This is *yet another* reason why I feel bad about bugging her to help me visit Curtis. So I'm not writing to her right now, and I'm not on facebook officially - my 'Jean Williams' facebook page is what I use to look at them, and I can't see their photos anymore, because they're private. Thank goodness. The photos were causing me the most pain, but even the status updates are causing problems for me. 'Jeanette' is my middle name, so I picked the name Jean, and Williams was just a random common name - my other fakebook pages had names like 'Smith,' and I got tired of using Smith.
I wondered if Curtis lied to everyone on his facebook page, or if I saw a fake version of the page, and he really doesn't work at Giant. I visited another grocery store in town looking for him.
Why won't I write to Carrie and ask her? Right now, she's grieving over her grandfather and grandmother both. It's bad enough dealing with your fiancee's stalker on a GOOD day. If she cuts off communication with me I won't have *any* connection to him. She's usually nice and she wouldn't cut off communication altogether - they still both refused to block me on facebook even after I had written to Kayla and got Kayla all stirred up. They should've blocked me and they should've told Kayla to block me too. I told Kayla to do it and she still didn't. Nobody seems to understand this.
This kimchi really is giving me a headache. I wonder what's in it that I'm reacting to? Some product of fermentation.
I really do feel guilty about myself being the center of the universe and not caring about Carrie's suffering. She is grieving over her grandparents, and honestly, I don't care. I don't feel any real sympathy for her right now. We aren't real friends, and I'm stalking her fiancee, and for whatever reason, she was nice to me when I sent her emails, especially since I paid for their sweet tea at McD drive thru when their credit card didn't work. I paid for it out of my pocket. It wasn't a big deal, but it was an act of goodwill, and Carrie's attitude towards me changed after that.
But I am trying to have sex with her fiancee. Most people aren't polyamorous. They get jealous of people who are trying to have sex with their fiancees. It's hard to be friends with competitors. They don't usually say, 'Go ahead! Have fun with him.' They say, 'Give up, stay away from him, you should move on.' That's what she said to me in the beginning.
I have been paying attention to 'social shame.' That's since they decided to call me a Four again. I have social shame about stalking Curtis. I don't want the co-workers to know what I'm doing, unless I absolutely have to break down and ask them for help. I can ask them if they know a guy named Curtis who was recently hired. But it's best if I don't ask that yet. Not only that, but the answer might be 'no.' I might find out that he's not at *either* store, that he lied on his page, or else it was a fake modified web page. I'm still going to look for him by myself. But 'social shame' is there.
The voices told me to listen to my instincts. The social shame is an instinct. It's the social instinct. I see a thousand hostile faces turned towards me, like in the movie Inception where the people in the dream, the projections, realize that you are an invader and you are changing things. They will get hostile to you and kick you out. The real world is like that. If I go around breaking the rules, a thousand angry faces will turn towards me. I can get thrown in a mental hospital or get convicted of a crime. Or I can simply fail the mission. If they start talking and telling him that I'm there looking for him, he could hide every time anybody sees me. That means I fail the mission. So for now it's best if the other employees don't know that I'm looking for someone. I'm just a really lame shopper who wanders around and buys random things.
But I am having a really hard time typing. I ate other foods that trigger my food sensitivities - I had dried pineapple preserved with sulfite, for instance. The Feingold diet, and food-sensitive ADHD, is connected with dyslexia, bad spelling, and bad typing with reversed letters. You can greatly reduce dyslexia by using the Feingold Diet.
Yes, the kimchi gives me a headache afterwards. And it doesn't contain any MSG either. It's all natural. I looked at the ingredients.
Carrie's grandfather just died. Her grandmother died a few weeks ago. Why do people die together?
1. They died of the same cause.
2. Somebody gave up hope after the other one was gone.
People always assume it's psychological - the other gave up, they were lonely, they couldn't stay alive without the other. But I wonder about that. I think that when you're old and vulnerable, you can die of relatively harmless causes, like a common cold. I think that colds and other viruses can kill people when they're very old and weak, and this is the season for it, not just because it's cold outside, but because of football and large numbers of people traveling and bringing viruses.
I don't know the exact cause of death. She just mentioned it on her facebook page.
This is *yet another* reason why I feel bad about bugging her to help me visit Curtis. So I'm not writing to her right now, and I'm not on facebook officially - my 'Jean Williams' facebook page is what I use to look at them, and I can't see their photos anymore, because they're private. Thank goodness. The photos were causing me the most pain, but even the status updates are causing problems for me. 'Jeanette' is my middle name, so I picked the name Jean, and Williams was just a random common name - my other fakebook pages had names like 'Smith,' and I got tired of using Smith.
I wondered if Curtis lied to everyone on his facebook page, or if I saw a fake version of the page, and he really doesn't work at Giant. I visited another grocery store in town looking for him.
Why won't I write to Carrie and ask her? Right now, she's grieving over her grandfather and grandmother both. It's bad enough dealing with your fiancee's stalker on a GOOD day. If she cuts off communication with me I won't have *any* connection to him. She's usually nice and she wouldn't cut off communication altogether - they still both refused to block me on facebook even after I had written to Kayla and got Kayla all stirred up. They should've blocked me and they should've told Kayla to block me too. I told Kayla to do it and she still didn't. Nobody seems to understand this.
This kimchi really is giving me a headache. I wonder what's in it that I'm reacting to? Some product of fermentation.
I really do feel guilty about myself being the center of the universe and not caring about Carrie's suffering. She is grieving over her grandparents, and honestly, I don't care. I don't feel any real sympathy for her right now. We aren't real friends, and I'm stalking her fiancee, and for whatever reason, she was nice to me when I sent her emails, especially since I paid for their sweet tea at McD drive thru when their credit card didn't work. I paid for it out of my pocket. It wasn't a big deal, but it was an act of goodwill, and Carrie's attitude towards me changed after that.
But I am trying to have sex with her fiancee. Most people aren't polyamorous. They get jealous of people who are trying to have sex with their fiancees. It's hard to be friends with competitors. They don't usually say, 'Go ahead! Have fun with him.' They say, 'Give up, stay away from him, you should move on.' That's what she said to me in the beginning.
I have been paying attention to 'social shame.' That's since they decided to call me a Four again. I have social shame about stalking Curtis. I don't want the co-workers to know what I'm doing, unless I absolutely have to break down and ask them for help. I can ask them if they know a guy named Curtis who was recently hired. But it's best if I don't ask that yet. Not only that, but the answer might be 'no.' I might find out that he's not at *either* store, that he lied on his page, or else it was a fake modified web page. I'm still going to look for him by myself. But 'social shame' is there.
The voices told me to listen to my instincts. The social shame is an instinct. It's the social instinct. I see a thousand hostile faces turned towards me, like in the movie Inception where the people in the dream, the projections, realize that you are an invader and you are changing things. They will get hostile to you and kick you out. The real world is like that. If I go around breaking the rules, a thousand angry faces will turn towards me. I can get thrown in a mental hospital or get convicted of a crime. Or I can simply fail the mission. If they start talking and telling him that I'm there looking for him, he could hide every time anybody sees me. That means I fail the mission. So for now it's best if the other employees don't know that I'm looking for someone. I'm just a really lame shopper who wanders around and buys random things.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Straight Talk
4:43 PM 9/21/10
It's not long until I go to Barnes & Noble tonight, the one ritual routine that I have faithfully followed.
So, some things happened that may have been puppet incidents. There is a conflict between what Curtis says and what he does - as always. I got an email from him saying: no one is hacking his email, he doesn't need my help, he can pay his own child support. (All of a sudden now that I've started writing, there are a million things to say and I can't say them all fast enough.) But he has been doing facebook comments that make it seem as though he's reading *my* facebook page. That's a typical puppet phenomenon. He says things that seem related to things I've said. The idea is that I'm supposed to think he is interested in my life, he's still reading what I write, and he doesn't want me to leave him. But he ignores my emails and says he doesn't need my help, but he won't tell me to leave him alone either. I am trying to get a straight answer out of him. (I like the name of my cameraphone, Straight Talk.)
I told Carrie in an email that it would be best if he blocked me on facebook so he couldn't get any more emails from me, and also if he made his page private so that I couldn't see it anymore and wouldn't know what was going on in his life. I will probably resend the same email to him, not just Carrie.
I've been messing with two cameraphones. I bought them - first (yeah, my writing is jumbled today, too many thoughts at once) - first I bought one, and I thought it had a videocamera, but it didn't. The sign above it at Wal-Mart said that it *did* have a videocamera. So I was going to return it, but instead of returning it, I just bought a second one, the higher-end one that was a little more expensive. It didn't have a videocamera either. So the sign was completely wrong. None of them have a videocamera. They *do* both have a single-shot photo camera, just not a videocamera. So anyway, I haven't returned either one, and haven't decided which one I like more, and I'm keeping them both for now, and texting back and forth between them, and learning and troubleshooting. It turned out to be a happy accident that I bought two phones instead of one, because now I can send myself text messages and see how they look on the other end, and learn how to do it all without bugging other people.
They also have bluetooth. I need to learn how to use it. Nancy at Weis told me that she has a bluetooth router that lets her use her mobile phone to connect her laptop to the internet. In other words, her laptop is on, and it uses a wireless connection to a special bluetooth device, which connects to her phone, which connects to the net. You have to purchase the special router device. I'd look around at Best Buy to see if they have anything like that. I am getting the impression that there is a lot of stuff that my Straight Talk phone can't do, but it doesn't matter, because it's the learning experience that matters. What I mean is, I can learn: 'Gee, I really wish I could do *this*, but I can't!' so I know for future reference what features I want to have on my smartphone. If I find out that I want to do something, but I can't, that's the only way to learn what kind of phone I want to have, since I've never had one before. I've only had the cheapest, most basic Tracfones that don't take pictures and don't connect to the internet. All they can do is text, and actually, my oldest tracfone can't send text messages because of some unexplained technical problem, so I bought a new tracfone a while back that's able to send text messages (when I was trying to text Curtis).
It helps that I still have my iPod. I've made a bunch of new purchases of techno-devices in the last few months - many of them were puppet incidents, where 'they' decided to urge me to go out and buy something. All of this is a learning experience. I didn't know anything about what an iPod was or what it could do. It's actually easier to use than my smartphone (for surfing the net), but it doesn't have its own internet connection, and it doesn't have a camera. I thought it had a camera when I bought it, and I was asking a clueless Wal-Mart employee who wasn't sure either, and he said he thought it had a camera. I kept it anyway, even though I got it home, opened it, and found out there was no camera.
I looked up 'bluetooth ipod' on the internet, and saw some pages where they found out that iPods were able to use bluetooth, but it wasn't enabled yet, but the chip and the hardware was in there, and you had to have the latest operating system to be able to use it. If I figure out bluetooth, I might be able to do more with my phones and my iPod and my new laptop.
Summary of recent electronics purchases, bought sometime this year, after I went a really long time without buying any new gadgets:
1. New tracfone, able to send text messages. That was because of Curtis.
2. New laptop. (I already had another laptop, which is forbidden to connect to the net. That one was meant for me to do creative work on, like writing songs on Propellerheads Reason.) The new one is called a Netbook. It's a tiny, minimal laptop meant to connect to the wireless internet. But it has useful programs on it, like Excel. I plan on using Excel to do my bookkeeping. It also has a webcam. I tried covering up the webcam by sticking the little iPod's plastic sticker over top of it, the little sticker that originally comes on the iPod's screen, but the sticker keeps lifting up. I'm paranoid about webcams because I don't want hackers to set up my webcam to take naked pictures of me walking around in my bedroom with my computer on, and that kind of thing. It can happen. Not that it matters when I'm already being spied on by the highest-tech surveillance methods available on earth right now, and they can see me through my walls. But the lower-tech hackers could still gain something by doing that. Same goes for my camera phone. Hackers can find a way to take pictures automatically, save them in a secret place where you won't see them listed in 'my images' or whatever folder, and then upload the images. It all depends on how dedicated the hackers are, and how badly they want to spy on you. There are almost seven billion people on earth, and a lot of them are hackers. And they spend hundreds of hours finding ways to do secret little things that nobody else knows how to do. And they post their secrets on the internet so the other hackers can use them.
3. New iPod.
4. New Straight Talk Phone #1.
5. New Straight Talk Phone #2.
The voices are fighting and fighting against me trying to separate myself from Curtis. They want to convince me that he still cares about me, he misses me, and so on. They want to convince me to keep trying and trying and trying to offer money to him. Every time I talk about my new phone on facebook, I get voices telling me that Curtis is upset about my getting a new phone.
I have to make it through this week. One more week of too many hours - about 72 hours total. Next week I've cut back at Weis, the place where I have painful memories and I cry every morning (unless I drink lots of coffee). It's hard to describe the feelings I had for Curtis. Whenever we had a conversation, I felt this trusting pleasure simply by standing next to him and talking and listening. There was a feeling of warmth in my body, in my chest. I loved the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes, the warmth of his body when he was close to me, the trusting way he told me about what was going on in his life - and we never had enough time to talk, since we were on the clock and always in a hurry, always rushed to get back to work and not get in trouble. One time, he gave me a sprouted onion that would have gone in the trash. I cherished it as a gift, took it home, and planted it in a cup, and watered it. The sprouts grew for a few weeks, but I got sick for a few days - it was during the wintertime - and I didn't water it, and it dried out and the sprouts died. I wanted to plant it outdoors and grow it. He just did it as a silly little thing, for the heck of it, but I took it as though it was a special, wonderful gift and I wanted to keep it alive.
Because of him, I've noticed that it's very hard for adults to be close to teenagers or children. I'm thinking about this because of the voices trying to get me together with young boys, and talking about pedophilia, hebephilia, and so on. There are hardly any situations where I am close to young teenagers. And I can't think of any social environment where adults 'mix' with teenagers and children. The more I think about it, the more it seems like this is wrong, something wrong with our society. Children only socialize with other children, at school, and after school together. The only reason I met Curtis was because he was a high school dropout who had to get a job, and he wasn't going to college. All the older teens are still in school, and going to college, and you can only meet them if you work someplace like McDonald's where there are always teenagers working. What if I was stuck working in an office environment with nothing but adults? I can't believe I used to live that way. I used to work temp jobs in office environments where everybody was older. It's so much fun being around young people. They're more playful, more full of spirit, and they have so much more going on in their lives. There's so much more life in them.
It makes me think about how 'closed' all of our houses and neighborhoods are. It makes me think of intentional communities, about how we would have little small cottages or tents or wigwams or whatever, something primitive, and when you walk out your door, your neighbor's tent is right next to you, and you walk around from tent to tent and they are a very short distance apart. This desire is something that all of the intentional community people would understand, the desire to have your neighbors close to you. Our houses are too big, too far apart, with big giant lawns that have to be mowed with a lawnmower, instead of letting the cows eat the grass so that you can milk the cow and have your own raw milk for your family. It's wasteful. The zoning laws probably forbid people to graze cows on their lawns. I get angry every time I drive down the road and I see the huge, huge, huge lawn and the person driving their lawnmower over it, while I myself would do anything to have a big lawn and my own cow grazing on it and my own raw milk for my family. Think of all the money people could save, all the money they could make, if it was 'normal' for everybody to use cows and goats to graze their lawns instead of a lawnmower, and they'd have their own milk.
It would be much easier to fall in love if we were closer to our neighbors, too, and if children and adults were mixing all day, if people weren't isolated from each other. Intentional communities already know all about this. We would actually interact with people when we stepped outside. It's also a desire to 'trust' your neighbors, that they will be the same neighbors forever, instead of changing and moving every year. There is so much turnover in every apartment complex. There are always people moving and leaving every year. In State College, the town, when I walk around and look at strangers on the street or in the stores, they don't like to make eye contact. This is because we all know that we are all temporary. But in Bellefonte, strangers on the street and in the stores are trusting people. They make eye contact and they start up random conversations with you, as though they know you're safe and you'll always be there and you'll meet them again next week. People in Bellefonte aren't always changing and leaving the way people in State College do, because most of the people in State College are temporary students there.
I'm having my heart broken right now - the heartbreak has been an ongoing torture lasting for months and months and months as I've wanted to be with Curtis and I can't - and that heartbreak is making me think about 'What caused this to happen?' The answer is usually 'There's something wrong with our society.'
I'll post this for now. It's random and it has lots of different topics in it. I don't know why I'm so ADD today. I think I'm getting over a cold, because I was 'hit by a train' the last two days, and all I did was sleep, and I have a cold sore in my mouth.
It's not long until I go to Barnes & Noble tonight, the one ritual routine that I have faithfully followed.
So, some things happened that may have been puppet incidents. There is a conflict between what Curtis says and what he does - as always. I got an email from him saying: no one is hacking his email, he doesn't need my help, he can pay his own child support. (All of a sudden now that I've started writing, there are a million things to say and I can't say them all fast enough.) But he has been doing facebook comments that make it seem as though he's reading *my* facebook page. That's a typical puppet phenomenon. He says things that seem related to things I've said. The idea is that I'm supposed to think he is interested in my life, he's still reading what I write, and he doesn't want me to leave him. But he ignores my emails and says he doesn't need my help, but he won't tell me to leave him alone either. I am trying to get a straight answer out of him. (I like the name of my cameraphone, Straight Talk.)
I told Carrie in an email that it would be best if he blocked me on facebook so he couldn't get any more emails from me, and also if he made his page private so that I couldn't see it anymore and wouldn't know what was going on in his life. I will probably resend the same email to him, not just Carrie.
I've been messing with two cameraphones. I bought them - first (yeah, my writing is jumbled today, too many thoughts at once) - first I bought one, and I thought it had a videocamera, but it didn't. The sign above it at Wal-Mart said that it *did* have a videocamera. So I was going to return it, but instead of returning it, I just bought a second one, the higher-end one that was a little more expensive. It didn't have a videocamera either. So the sign was completely wrong. None of them have a videocamera. They *do* both have a single-shot photo camera, just not a videocamera. So anyway, I haven't returned either one, and haven't decided which one I like more, and I'm keeping them both for now, and texting back and forth between them, and learning and troubleshooting. It turned out to be a happy accident that I bought two phones instead of one, because now I can send myself text messages and see how they look on the other end, and learn how to do it all without bugging other people.
They also have bluetooth. I need to learn how to use it. Nancy at Weis told me that she has a bluetooth router that lets her use her mobile phone to connect her laptop to the internet. In other words, her laptop is on, and it uses a wireless connection to a special bluetooth device, which connects to her phone, which connects to the net. You have to purchase the special router device. I'd look around at Best Buy to see if they have anything like that. I am getting the impression that there is a lot of stuff that my Straight Talk phone can't do, but it doesn't matter, because it's the learning experience that matters. What I mean is, I can learn: 'Gee, I really wish I could do *this*, but I can't!' so I know for future reference what features I want to have on my smartphone. If I find out that I want to do something, but I can't, that's the only way to learn what kind of phone I want to have, since I've never had one before. I've only had the cheapest, most basic Tracfones that don't take pictures and don't connect to the internet. All they can do is text, and actually, my oldest tracfone can't send text messages because of some unexplained technical problem, so I bought a new tracfone a while back that's able to send text messages (when I was trying to text Curtis).
It helps that I still have my iPod. I've made a bunch of new purchases of techno-devices in the last few months - many of them were puppet incidents, where 'they' decided to urge me to go out and buy something. All of this is a learning experience. I didn't know anything about what an iPod was or what it could do. It's actually easier to use than my smartphone (for surfing the net), but it doesn't have its own internet connection, and it doesn't have a camera. I thought it had a camera when I bought it, and I was asking a clueless Wal-Mart employee who wasn't sure either, and he said he thought it had a camera. I kept it anyway, even though I got it home, opened it, and found out there was no camera.
I looked up 'bluetooth ipod' on the internet, and saw some pages where they found out that iPods were able to use bluetooth, but it wasn't enabled yet, but the chip and the hardware was in there, and you had to have the latest operating system to be able to use it. If I figure out bluetooth, I might be able to do more with my phones and my iPod and my new laptop.
Summary of recent electronics purchases, bought sometime this year, after I went a really long time without buying any new gadgets:
1. New tracfone, able to send text messages. That was because of Curtis.
2. New laptop. (I already had another laptop, which is forbidden to connect to the net. That one was meant for me to do creative work on, like writing songs on Propellerheads Reason.) The new one is called a Netbook. It's a tiny, minimal laptop meant to connect to the wireless internet. But it has useful programs on it, like Excel. I plan on using Excel to do my bookkeeping. It also has a webcam. I tried covering up the webcam by sticking the little iPod's plastic sticker over top of it, the little sticker that originally comes on the iPod's screen, but the sticker keeps lifting up. I'm paranoid about webcams because I don't want hackers to set up my webcam to take naked pictures of me walking around in my bedroom with my computer on, and that kind of thing. It can happen. Not that it matters when I'm already being spied on by the highest-tech surveillance methods available on earth right now, and they can see me through my walls. But the lower-tech hackers could still gain something by doing that. Same goes for my camera phone. Hackers can find a way to take pictures automatically, save them in a secret place where you won't see them listed in 'my images' or whatever folder, and then upload the images. It all depends on how dedicated the hackers are, and how badly they want to spy on you. There are almost seven billion people on earth, and a lot of them are hackers. And they spend hundreds of hours finding ways to do secret little things that nobody else knows how to do. And they post their secrets on the internet so the other hackers can use them.
3. New iPod.
4. New Straight Talk Phone #1.
5. New Straight Talk Phone #2.
The voices are fighting and fighting against me trying to separate myself from Curtis. They want to convince me that he still cares about me, he misses me, and so on. They want to convince me to keep trying and trying and trying to offer money to him. Every time I talk about my new phone on facebook, I get voices telling me that Curtis is upset about my getting a new phone.
I have to make it through this week. One more week of too many hours - about 72 hours total. Next week I've cut back at Weis, the place where I have painful memories and I cry every morning (unless I drink lots of coffee). It's hard to describe the feelings I had for Curtis. Whenever we had a conversation, I felt this trusting pleasure simply by standing next to him and talking and listening. There was a feeling of warmth in my body, in my chest. I loved the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes, the warmth of his body when he was close to me, the trusting way he told me about what was going on in his life - and we never had enough time to talk, since we were on the clock and always in a hurry, always rushed to get back to work and not get in trouble. One time, he gave me a sprouted onion that would have gone in the trash. I cherished it as a gift, took it home, and planted it in a cup, and watered it. The sprouts grew for a few weeks, but I got sick for a few days - it was during the wintertime - and I didn't water it, and it dried out and the sprouts died. I wanted to plant it outdoors and grow it. He just did it as a silly little thing, for the heck of it, but I took it as though it was a special, wonderful gift and I wanted to keep it alive.
Because of him, I've noticed that it's very hard for adults to be close to teenagers or children. I'm thinking about this because of the voices trying to get me together with young boys, and talking about pedophilia, hebephilia, and so on. There are hardly any situations where I am close to young teenagers. And I can't think of any social environment where adults 'mix' with teenagers and children. The more I think about it, the more it seems like this is wrong, something wrong with our society. Children only socialize with other children, at school, and after school together. The only reason I met Curtis was because he was a high school dropout who had to get a job, and he wasn't going to college. All the older teens are still in school, and going to college, and you can only meet them if you work someplace like McDonald's where there are always teenagers working. What if I was stuck working in an office environment with nothing but adults? I can't believe I used to live that way. I used to work temp jobs in office environments where everybody was older. It's so much fun being around young people. They're more playful, more full of spirit, and they have so much more going on in their lives. There's so much more life in them.
It makes me think about how 'closed' all of our houses and neighborhoods are. It makes me think of intentional communities, about how we would have little small cottages or tents or wigwams or whatever, something primitive, and when you walk out your door, your neighbor's tent is right next to you, and you walk around from tent to tent and they are a very short distance apart. This desire is something that all of the intentional community people would understand, the desire to have your neighbors close to you. Our houses are too big, too far apart, with big giant lawns that have to be mowed with a lawnmower, instead of letting the cows eat the grass so that you can milk the cow and have your own raw milk for your family. It's wasteful. The zoning laws probably forbid people to graze cows on their lawns. I get angry every time I drive down the road and I see the huge, huge, huge lawn and the person driving their lawnmower over it, while I myself would do anything to have a big lawn and my own cow grazing on it and my own raw milk for my family. Think of all the money people could save, all the money they could make, if it was 'normal' for everybody to use cows and goats to graze their lawns instead of a lawnmower, and they'd have their own milk.
It would be much easier to fall in love if we were closer to our neighbors, too, and if children and adults were mixing all day, if people weren't isolated from each other. Intentional communities already know all about this. We would actually interact with people when we stepped outside. It's also a desire to 'trust' your neighbors, that they will be the same neighbors forever, instead of changing and moving every year. There is so much turnover in every apartment complex. There are always people moving and leaving every year. In State College, the town, when I walk around and look at strangers on the street or in the stores, they don't like to make eye contact. This is because we all know that we are all temporary. But in Bellefonte, strangers on the street and in the stores are trusting people. They make eye contact and they start up random conversations with you, as though they know you're safe and you'll always be there and you'll meet them again next week. People in Bellefonte aren't always changing and leaving the way people in State College do, because most of the people in State College are temporary students there.
I'm having my heart broken right now - the heartbreak has been an ongoing torture lasting for months and months and months as I've wanted to be with Curtis and I can't - and that heartbreak is making me think about 'What caused this to happen?' The answer is usually 'There's something wrong with our society.'
I'll post this for now. It's random and it has lots of different topics in it. I don't know why I'm so ADD today. I think I'm getting over a cold, because I was 'hit by a train' the last two days, and all I did was sleep, and I have a cold sore in my mouth.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Brother John
8:23 AM 8/6/10
My brother visited yesterday and we ate lunch at Aunt Jeannie's. He wondered why I had dropped off the face of the earth, so I told him that actually, I've been writing Retmeishka. So he is here now. Welcome John.
Talking to John brought me back to life again. When somebody comes in from outside, and they're different from all the people around you - I thought of the girl, and I can't remember what her name was, who tried to tell Truman Burbank the truth - Sylvia. She told Truman that yes, the world around you is crazy and there's something wrong with everybody. And he never forgot her because of that. That's how I felt when my brother talked to me yesterday. I remembered that yes, there IS something wrong with this world, and there is more to life than just this, and there are people out there who understand.
I asked John a few questions.
1. How can you stand to move from place to place and leave behind all the people you know?
2. Other questions about dating and love
It was hard to articulate what I wanted to ask him, but he told me enough that I could get a sense of it.
I 'ended up' in State College. I decided to stay here because I was sick of moving around all the time, going back and forth to college every year, and because I had moved several times in my childhood too, so I didn't have 'roots' - I don't use that word, but it means, I didn't know all the people around me really well since birth. I thought it would be better to stay in one place even if I didn't like it here, so that I could focus on other goals, like financial independence.
John has moved from city to city in his adulthood. He has lived in Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA, Tucson, AZ, New York, NY, State College, PA, and maybe a few other places I've forgotten.
He says that in the big city, New York, you can find every kind of deviant. Every strange, weird person can be found there. I've been frustrated lately with the people living in this area - not enough people able to understand me. I told him that I wouldn't feel comfortable living in the city because I don't like to live with too much concrete and asphalt and exhaust fumes - I like to have trees and grass around me. So I don't know if I would be happy in the city even if I could find people who understood me.
(The murderers are still doing 'delusion support' for Curtis, telling me things like, he's only with Carrie as a way to make me jealous, but he doesn't really love her, and *I* am everything to him.)
(My mind has some iron law of consent. I've asked him for consent many times in many ways, and haven't gotten an official answer. He is an adult and he is capable of speech and writing. If he were a baby, he could not give consent to be touched, and we would assume that he needs to be touched and picked up the way babies do. But as he is an adult, it's almost impossible for me to break my 'explicit consent' rule and just start touching him and assume it's okay. The voices like that idea, but I can't force myself to break the 'explicit consent' rule unless I'm on drugs.)
(They've been making it almost impossible for me to even *think* about leaving him, and when I do, I get attacked with 'delusion support,' false ideas and false beliefs about Curtis that are used to make me hang on to him and not give up. They tell me that he reads my blog, for instance, when actually, I think he hates reading - he hates ALL reading - and he told me in a text message that he doesn't spend much time on the internet. But they still make me feel like he reads my blog, and I know he doesn't. No matter how much I try to tell them that he hates reading, and that he doesn't care enough about me to be curious about my blog, they still insist that he's watching everything I do online. That's one of those delusions made to make me think that I have to keep trying to get him to talk to me. In reality, he and Carrie are sitting at home in front of the television. Television is their universe. He doesn't know my world. And he doesn't care enough to find out about it.)
I asked John about how he could leave behind his girlfriends when he moved from place to place. He has moved around mostly because of needing to find new jobs in his field, and also, he is paying child support. So he has to have high-paying jobs.
He says that every girlfriend he has ever had is still in his mind. And I know exactly how that is. I can list every boy I had a crush on all the way back in elementary school. I can list all the guys I've kissed, although there might be one or two incidents where somebody kissed me and I don't remember it - I think I remember sitting with some guy on a bus a few years ago when I was going to Washington DC or someplace, as part of a temp job assignment, and I think he might have kissed me once. So I might forget things like that. But everyone I've actually dated is still in my mind. And I still remember some people who I had only one 'incident' with, like the guy who put hickeys all over my neck when I kissed him at a party where everyone else was drunk except me, because I went along to a party with my co-workers from Gino's Pizza in West Virginia, when I didn't drink. I never saw that guy again either and I didn't really care.
John said it hurts the most when they break up with you and refuse to speak to you ever again. I know how that is. Martin ignored my messages and blocked me on Facebook and did everything possible to stop speaking to me, although I've sometimes thought he might still read my blog. I've talked many times about the incidents of being forced to try to contact somebody who refuses to speak to me or acknowledge that I exist.
He said that online dating made it possible for him to find much higher quality relationships. There were people who it would have been impossible to find in the real world if all you could do was meet friends-of-friends or go sit in bars.
He isn't having any more children, so for him, having a relationship is something you do for the sake of enjoying the relationship. I am planning to have children, but right now I would like to date some people that I'm not having kids with first. And 'they' redirected my attention towards the younger men, so that is the kind of relationship that I'm looking for right now. But when I am looking for someone to have children with, I have to think of things differently than I would if I were enjoying a relationship for its own sake. I see people who I could have a medium-length relationship with, but if I am thinking about having children and giving them a stable family life, then I must think about someone who I can stand to be with for several decades. I like it that my mother and father are still together. There is a feeling of safety and stability there, even though I don't see them having a *passionate* love relationship. And I know what passionate love would feel like, if only in my imagination, because I've had enough experiences with female friends who I 'merged' with, not sexually, but in conversations and in understanding each other, that I can imagine what it would be like to merge with a male friend who was also a lover.
John said something I was familiar with. He said when you meet new people it keeps your mind alive. You always learn something from them, from who they are, from what they know. That is what I want to enjoy doing. I don't want to just talk *to* somebody, I want them to talk to me. I want to learn from them. I want to see how they see the world.
There was a question that I couldn't really articulate to him. I have weak bonds with everyone around me, everyone I work with. I think it would be painful to break those weak bonds too, even though they are people who I don't really know and don't really like. It hurts me to leave behind 'familiar faces,' and I have done that many times before, because I have lost jobs and I have had temp jobs that were never meant to be permanent. It always hurts to leave, even though those people didn't understand me and never would have.
But Peter is the main reason why I don't leave. If he were physically healthy and taking care of himself, I wouldn't feel so bad about leaving. If he were online, like if he had his own MySpace page, as pathetic as that might be, I wouldn't feel so bad. Maybe I should show him some of the internet forums and social networking pages. It was Eric's daughter Tiana who made me make a MySpace page to begin with. I didn't really want to be on MySpace. But I'm glad I know about it now.
John made me feel like I could survive the grief of losing a relationship. He has left many people in his life. He has lost many relationships.
There is something that you can learn. It could be a good thing, or a bad thing to learn this. When someone goes to war, and they see people die, they learn to survive the non-uniqueness of all people. It's hard to explain. Relationships can be that way too. You can understand that people are not unique, and that this one person you love isn't the only person you will ever love for the rest of your life. But it's traumatic to learn that. That's why there is the religious belief about never having sex before marriage, and then, marrying only one person who you will be with for the rest of your life, and never being unfaithful to them. It's not just because of preventing sexually transmitted diseases, although that is one of the most important reasons to do that. It's because you protect yourself against the traumatic knowledge that people are non-unique, that love can happen again, that you can survive losing someone.
That knowledge can be harmful in some situations. For instance, I've read about adopted children. Sometimes they get the realization that they can 'choose who their parents are.' They then develop a sort of dating relationship attitude about finding themselves the perfect parents. They realize that the adoptive parents they have aren't the ONLY adoptive parents on earth, and they could choose better ones. It makes them bond less deeply with the adoptive parents they have. It makes it hard to bond with anyone at all. You have to be able to form some kind of stable bond with somebody. If you realize that people are non-unique, and if that realization is the strongest center of everything that you feel about people, then it will always seem like you can quickly leave one person and go to the next and nothing ever matters and nobody will ever be with you for very long at all. There are different time periods that this feeling can be set for. It can be a day, a week, a month, a year, or five years. My relationships have all lasted quite a few years, but none of them have been permanent marriages. Moving from place to place in my childhood probably affected how I view the idea of permanent, lifelong bonds with people, although lots of other people have moved around in their lives and they are still able to marry someone and form a lifelong bond with them.
I compared this to the feeling about death, which comes from being a soldier and going to war. Every body that you see around you is able to die. When you see people dying in war, and when you yourself have killed them, you have a violated feeling, a knowledge, which says 'You're able to do that.' You've crossed that line, and you survived, and you're able to. You've killed a person. You could kill any of the people around you, and you'd survive. Although actually what happens is the soldiers get on psychiatric drugs and they kill a bunch of people and then kill themselves. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a traumatized feeling that you have after killing someone in a war, where, even if you're not on drugs, you still feel a sense that everyone around you is able to be killed, and you feel differently about all relationships forever because of that.
If it becomes 'too easy' to kill people, or to break up with people you love, or to move from town to town, then you have an unstable life and you cannot get past the 'deepness limit.' There is deepness, and there is also stagnation. In a long-term marriage, you can get past challenges and problems, and have a deeper relationship because of it. Or you can endure the problems and challenges and unhappiness, but not really have a deeper relationship because of it, and you just deny the unhappiness and stagnation and lack of life. So you aren't always getting a deeper relationship merely because you stay with someone forever.
But there really is a 'deepness limit' where you can gain something valuable if you go past that boundary. I am thinking of an example that happened with me and Rachael, my best friend, a long time ago. Whenever we were together, I would gradually become exhausted, and after a while, I would need to be alone. One day Rachael insisted that she would stay with me even though I told her I was tired and I needed to be alone. So I broke the rules of rudeness and kindness and I showed her my irritability and my bad mood and my meanness, because that is what you get if you stay with me whenever I want to be alone. (That is the reason why I rage at the voices, and talk about killing them, and that kind of thing. The murderers are continuing to interact with me whenever I need to be alone.) There was a limit to how long I could stand to be with her without breaking a rule. If I stayed with her longer, eventually I would break the rule of 'be nice.' I would become irritable and I would express my irritability out loud by being mean and unkind and saying whatever I wanted to say.
Except it wasn't that simple. In reality I become sort of quiet and withdrawn. The murderers, zapping and torturing me, have often pretended that they are masochists who want to be yelled at and who want me to kill them, or, in reality, they want to fantasize that I'm going to kill them without it really happening. You have to use certain kinds of drugs and certain kinds of torture to make somebody yell at you if that's a person who has a 'rule' that says, don't yell at people. I have been a mind control victim for several years now and when I think of this subject, I feel sadness, and I feel traumatized. But it's the same thing people are doing whenever they have domination/submission relationships, or sadomasochistic relationships. You break the rules, and you bring out other parts of yourself, and you say things you're usually forbidden to say, and feel things you're usually forbidden to feel. Because of my being tortured against my will, without consent, I still can't feel comfortable right now about exploring certain kinds of sexual relationships. But if I were not being traumatized, I would. It's different when it's being done to you against your will, and it's every moment of every day, every second of your life. I did not consent to this. If I could stop them from doing it, I would.
There are longer-lasting behavior changes besides merely saying something mean to somebody because you're allowed to break the 'be nice' rule. You can have more valuable personality changes than that. Sometimes people try to break bad habits forever - stop drinking alcohol and never drink it again. Religious people probably try to do that more than other people do - they try to make their mates more perfect, to make them stop all bad habits in general, like procrastination, or try to make their mates get a better job. You can do 'self-improvement' type changes like that in a long-term relationship, especially if your bad habit was the result of not having enough support in your life. Alcoholism can happen more easily if you're malnourished, if you never cook for yourself, if you never eat any healthy food, so if you get a mate who cooks for you and you eat three healthy meals a day, it might be easier to stop using alcohol forever.
I would mention self-acceptance here too. Sometimes there are things about ourselves that we don't necessarily like, but they are a stable part of who we are, and very difficult to change, and all we can do is accept that those things exist. That has to happen in a long-term relationship too.
John said that he knows how it feels to love someone so much that you can tolerate their cheating on you. You love them so much that you would just want to know why they cheated on you, and did they enjoy it, and what did they gain from it, and you can still stay with them afterwards.
I like talking to John because he tells me things I already know, but it's coming from a different person, someone other than myself. I agreed with everything he told me because I had sort of thought of it myself. The difference was the feeling that you can survive leaving people behind and not seeing them anymore. For me, right now, Peter is the issue: I don't want to leave Peter here unless I have done something to make his life easier.
It's terrible how much I have lost because of chronic fatigue. I was thinking that I don't have any music because I'm on dialup (it's cheaper), and it's hard to search for music when you're on dialup. But even worse than that, I have chronic fatigue. Chronic illness makes it so hard to do even the simplest things, anything that requires the slightest ambition or motivation, that my life is much more depressing and lifeless because of that. I feel a sense of my *potential*, because in the past, when I was young, I was much healthier, and I could read, and learn, and study, and make things, and do arts and crafts, and meet people, and have conversations, and have adventures - I had more life. I know that is my potential. If I were not sick, I would still be living that way. So, huge amounts of my life's time are being wasted because of chronic illness. Years go by, but nothing gets better. This is so depressing, that it makes it hard to meet new people and share my life with them: there's no good news to share, nothing to give, except years and years of stagnation and misery. And I'm not merely sick, I'm also being attacked by the murderers, so I am sleep-deprived, every day, and my dreams are *always* hypnotized fake dreams, instead of letting my brain process whatever it needs to process on its own. I wonder what my mind would think of if it processed its own dreams without being hypnotized by murderers while I sleep. So all I have is unmet potential, instead of expressed potential or actualized potential. How do you convince people, 'I really am good, I really am worth something, but it's locked inside me and it can't get out?'
I think I will post this now. I'll probably think of more stuff to say afterwards.
My brother visited yesterday and we ate lunch at Aunt Jeannie's. He wondered why I had dropped off the face of the earth, so I told him that actually, I've been writing Retmeishka. So he is here now. Welcome John.
Talking to John brought me back to life again. When somebody comes in from outside, and they're different from all the people around you - I thought of the girl, and I can't remember what her name was, who tried to tell Truman Burbank the truth - Sylvia. She told Truman that yes, the world around you is crazy and there's something wrong with everybody. And he never forgot her because of that. That's how I felt when my brother talked to me yesterday. I remembered that yes, there IS something wrong with this world, and there is more to life than just this, and there are people out there who understand.
I asked John a few questions.
1. How can you stand to move from place to place and leave behind all the people you know?
2. Other questions about dating and love
It was hard to articulate what I wanted to ask him, but he told me enough that I could get a sense of it.
I 'ended up' in State College. I decided to stay here because I was sick of moving around all the time, going back and forth to college every year, and because I had moved several times in my childhood too, so I didn't have 'roots' - I don't use that word, but it means, I didn't know all the people around me really well since birth. I thought it would be better to stay in one place even if I didn't like it here, so that I could focus on other goals, like financial independence.
John has moved from city to city in his adulthood. He has lived in Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA, Tucson, AZ, New York, NY, State College, PA, and maybe a few other places I've forgotten.
He says that in the big city, New York, you can find every kind of deviant. Every strange, weird person can be found there. I've been frustrated lately with the people living in this area - not enough people able to understand me. I told him that I wouldn't feel comfortable living in the city because I don't like to live with too much concrete and asphalt and exhaust fumes - I like to have trees and grass around me. So I don't know if I would be happy in the city even if I could find people who understood me.
(The murderers are still doing 'delusion support' for Curtis, telling me things like, he's only with Carrie as a way to make me jealous, but he doesn't really love her, and *I* am everything to him.)
(My mind has some iron law of consent. I've asked him for consent many times in many ways, and haven't gotten an official answer. He is an adult and he is capable of speech and writing. If he were a baby, he could not give consent to be touched, and we would assume that he needs to be touched and picked up the way babies do. But as he is an adult, it's almost impossible for me to break my 'explicit consent' rule and just start touching him and assume it's okay. The voices like that idea, but I can't force myself to break the 'explicit consent' rule unless I'm on drugs.)
(They've been making it almost impossible for me to even *think* about leaving him, and when I do, I get attacked with 'delusion support,' false ideas and false beliefs about Curtis that are used to make me hang on to him and not give up. They tell me that he reads my blog, for instance, when actually, I think he hates reading - he hates ALL reading - and he told me in a text message that he doesn't spend much time on the internet. But they still make me feel like he reads my blog, and I know he doesn't. No matter how much I try to tell them that he hates reading, and that he doesn't care enough about me to be curious about my blog, they still insist that he's watching everything I do online. That's one of those delusions made to make me think that I have to keep trying to get him to talk to me. In reality, he and Carrie are sitting at home in front of the television. Television is their universe. He doesn't know my world. And he doesn't care enough to find out about it.)
I asked John about how he could leave behind his girlfriends when he moved from place to place. He has moved around mostly because of needing to find new jobs in his field, and also, he is paying child support. So he has to have high-paying jobs.
He says that every girlfriend he has ever had is still in his mind. And I know exactly how that is. I can list every boy I had a crush on all the way back in elementary school. I can list all the guys I've kissed, although there might be one or two incidents where somebody kissed me and I don't remember it - I think I remember sitting with some guy on a bus a few years ago when I was going to Washington DC or someplace, as part of a temp job assignment, and I think he might have kissed me once. So I might forget things like that. But everyone I've actually dated is still in my mind. And I still remember some people who I had only one 'incident' with, like the guy who put hickeys all over my neck when I kissed him at a party where everyone else was drunk except me, because I went along to a party with my co-workers from Gino's Pizza in West Virginia, when I didn't drink. I never saw that guy again either and I didn't really care.
John said it hurts the most when they break up with you and refuse to speak to you ever again. I know how that is. Martin ignored my messages and blocked me on Facebook and did everything possible to stop speaking to me, although I've sometimes thought he might still read my blog. I've talked many times about the incidents of being forced to try to contact somebody who refuses to speak to me or acknowledge that I exist.
He said that online dating made it possible for him to find much higher quality relationships. There were people who it would have been impossible to find in the real world if all you could do was meet friends-of-friends or go sit in bars.
He isn't having any more children, so for him, having a relationship is something you do for the sake of enjoying the relationship. I am planning to have children, but right now I would like to date some people that I'm not having kids with first. And 'they' redirected my attention towards the younger men, so that is the kind of relationship that I'm looking for right now. But when I am looking for someone to have children with, I have to think of things differently than I would if I were enjoying a relationship for its own sake. I see people who I could have a medium-length relationship with, but if I am thinking about having children and giving them a stable family life, then I must think about someone who I can stand to be with for several decades. I like it that my mother and father are still together. There is a feeling of safety and stability there, even though I don't see them having a *passionate* love relationship. And I know what passionate love would feel like, if only in my imagination, because I've had enough experiences with female friends who I 'merged' with, not sexually, but in conversations and in understanding each other, that I can imagine what it would be like to merge with a male friend who was also a lover.
John said something I was familiar with. He said when you meet new people it keeps your mind alive. You always learn something from them, from who they are, from what they know. That is what I want to enjoy doing. I don't want to just talk *to* somebody, I want them to talk to me. I want to learn from them. I want to see how they see the world.
There was a question that I couldn't really articulate to him. I have weak bonds with everyone around me, everyone I work with. I think it would be painful to break those weak bonds too, even though they are people who I don't really know and don't really like. It hurts me to leave behind 'familiar faces,' and I have done that many times before, because I have lost jobs and I have had temp jobs that were never meant to be permanent. It always hurts to leave, even though those people didn't understand me and never would have.
But Peter is the main reason why I don't leave. If he were physically healthy and taking care of himself, I wouldn't feel so bad about leaving. If he were online, like if he had his own MySpace page, as pathetic as that might be, I wouldn't feel so bad. Maybe I should show him some of the internet forums and social networking pages. It was Eric's daughter Tiana who made me make a MySpace page to begin with. I didn't really want to be on MySpace. But I'm glad I know about it now.
John made me feel like I could survive the grief of losing a relationship. He has left many people in his life. He has lost many relationships.
There is something that you can learn. It could be a good thing, or a bad thing to learn this. When someone goes to war, and they see people die, they learn to survive the non-uniqueness of all people. It's hard to explain. Relationships can be that way too. You can understand that people are not unique, and that this one person you love isn't the only person you will ever love for the rest of your life. But it's traumatic to learn that. That's why there is the religious belief about never having sex before marriage, and then, marrying only one person who you will be with for the rest of your life, and never being unfaithful to them. It's not just because of preventing sexually transmitted diseases, although that is one of the most important reasons to do that. It's because you protect yourself against the traumatic knowledge that people are non-unique, that love can happen again, that you can survive losing someone.
That knowledge can be harmful in some situations. For instance, I've read about adopted children. Sometimes they get the realization that they can 'choose who their parents are.' They then develop a sort of dating relationship attitude about finding themselves the perfect parents. They realize that the adoptive parents they have aren't the ONLY adoptive parents on earth, and they could choose better ones. It makes them bond less deeply with the adoptive parents they have. It makes it hard to bond with anyone at all. You have to be able to form some kind of stable bond with somebody. If you realize that people are non-unique, and if that realization is the strongest center of everything that you feel about people, then it will always seem like you can quickly leave one person and go to the next and nothing ever matters and nobody will ever be with you for very long at all. There are different time periods that this feeling can be set for. It can be a day, a week, a month, a year, or five years. My relationships have all lasted quite a few years, but none of them have been permanent marriages. Moving from place to place in my childhood probably affected how I view the idea of permanent, lifelong bonds with people, although lots of other people have moved around in their lives and they are still able to marry someone and form a lifelong bond with them.
I compared this to the feeling about death, which comes from being a soldier and going to war. Every body that you see around you is able to die. When you see people dying in war, and when you yourself have killed them, you have a violated feeling, a knowledge, which says 'You're able to do that.' You've crossed that line, and you survived, and you're able to. You've killed a person. You could kill any of the people around you, and you'd survive. Although actually what happens is the soldiers get on psychiatric drugs and they kill a bunch of people and then kill themselves. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a traumatized feeling that you have after killing someone in a war, where, even if you're not on drugs, you still feel a sense that everyone around you is able to be killed, and you feel differently about all relationships forever because of that.
If it becomes 'too easy' to kill people, or to break up with people you love, or to move from town to town, then you have an unstable life and you cannot get past the 'deepness limit.' There is deepness, and there is also stagnation. In a long-term marriage, you can get past challenges and problems, and have a deeper relationship because of it. Or you can endure the problems and challenges and unhappiness, but not really have a deeper relationship because of it, and you just deny the unhappiness and stagnation and lack of life. So you aren't always getting a deeper relationship merely because you stay with someone forever.
But there really is a 'deepness limit' where you can gain something valuable if you go past that boundary. I am thinking of an example that happened with me and Rachael, my best friend, a long time ago. Whenever we were together, I would gradually become exhausted, and after a while, I would need to be alone. One day Rachael insisted that she would stay with me even though I told her I was tired and I needed to be alone. So I broke the rules of rudeness and kindness and I showed her my irritability and my bad mood and my meanness, because that is what you get if you stay with me whenever I want to be alone. (That is the reason why I rage at the voices, and talk about killing them, and that kind of thing. The murderers are continuing to interact with me whenever I need to be alone.) There was a limit to how long I could stand to be with her without breaking a rule. If I stayed with her longer, eventually I would break the rule of 'be nice.' I would become irritable and I would express my irritability out loud by being mean and unkind and saying whatever I wanted to say.
Except it wasn't that simple. In reality I become sort of quiet and withdrawn. The murderers, zapping and torturing me, have often pretended that they are masochists who want to be yelled at and who want me to kill them, or, in reality, they want to fantasize that I'm going to kill them without it really happening. You have to use certain kinds of drugs and certain kinds of torture to make somebody yell at you if that's a person who has a 'rule' that says, don't yell at people. I have been a mind control victim for several years now and when I think of this subject, I feel sadness, and I feel traumatized. But it's the same thing people are doing whenever they have domination/submission relationships, or sadomasochistic relationships. You break the rules, and you bring out other parts of yourself, and you say things you're usually forbidden to say, and feel things you're usually forbidden to feel. Because of my being tortured against my will, without consent, I still can't feel comfortable right now about exploring certain kinds of sexual relationships. But if I were not being traumatized, I would. It's different when it's being done to you against your will, and it's every moment of every day, every second of your life. I did not consent to this. If I could stop them from doing it, I would.
There are longer-lasting behavior changes besides merely saying something mean to somebody because you're allowed to break the 'be nice' rule. You can have more valuable personality changes than that. Sometimes people try to break bad habits forever - stop drinking alcohol and never drink it again. Religious people probably try to do that more than other people do - they try to make their mates more perfect, to make them stop all bad habits in general, like procrastination, or try to make their mates get a better job. You can do 'self-improvement' type changes like that in a long-term relationship, especially if your bad habit was the result of not having enough support in your life. Alcoholism can happen more easily if you're malnourished, if you never cook for yourself, if you never eat any healthy food, so if you get a mate who cooks for you and you eat three healthy meals a day, it might be easier to stop using alcohol forever.
I would mention self-acceptance here too. Sometimes there are things about ourselves that we don't necessarily like, but they are a stable part of who we are, and very difficult to change, and all we can do is accept that those things exist. That has to happen in a long-term relationship too.
John said that he knows how it feels to love someone so much that you can tolerate their cheating on you. You love them so much that you would just want to know why they cheated on you, and did they enjoy it, and what did they gain from it, and you can still stay with them afterwards.
I like talking to John because he tells me things I already know, but it's coming from a different person, someone other than myself. I agreed with everything he told me because I had sort of thought of it myself. The difference was the feeling that you can survive leaving people behind and not seeing them anymore. For me, right now, Peter is the issue: I don't want to leave Peter here unless I have done something to make his life easier.
It's terrible how much I have lost because of chronic fatigue. I was thinking that I don't have any music because I'm on dialup (it's cheaper), and it's hard to search for music when you're on dialup. But even worse than that, I have chronic fatigue. Chronic illness makes it so hard to do even the simplest things, anything that requires the slightest ambition or motivation, that my life is much more depressing and lifeless because of that. I feel a sense of my *potential*, because in the past, when I was young, I was much healthier, and I could read, and learn, and study, and make things, and do arts and crafts, and meet people, and have conversations, and have adventures - I had more life. I know that is my potential. If I were not sick, I would still be living that way. So, huge amounts of my life's time are being wasted because of chronic illness. Years go by, but nothing gets better. This is so depressing, that it makes it hard to meet new people and share my life with them: there's no good news to share, nothing to give, except years and years of stagnation and misery. And I'm not merely sick, I'm also being attacked by the murderers, so I am sleep-deprived, every day, and my dreams are *always* hypnotized fake dreams, instead of letting my brain process whatever it needs to process on its own. I wonder what my mind would think of if it processed its own dreams without being hypnotized by murderers while I sleep. So all I have is unmet potential, instead of expressed potential or actualized potential. How do you convince people, 'I really am good, I really am worth something, but it's locked inside me and it can't get out?'
I think I will post this now. I'll probably think of more stuff to say afterwards.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
the dennis nausea problem
i visited dennis briefly today. he is going through old stuff - he collects computers and computer parts - and getting rid of some of it. he wanted to get rid of an old laptop, and i had said i wanted one. so he asked $25 for it, and i gave him $40. that was still nowhere near enough, but at least we were settling it in cash.
i haven't got a chores/projects barter going with him, or rather, not very well. he had asked for a ride to huntingdon because his truck has a transmission problem and he isn't comfortable going that far, but i said no to that, i didn't feel comfortable with that particular favor. i had originally said yes, but over the next couple days, i was dreading it more and disagreeing with the idea - he wanted to go to the historical society, or something, for some of his family tree research. i am trying to define what type of favors i will or won't do, and i decided not to do that one. i expected it would take a long time, it was a long drive, and i feel wrong about encouraging him to work on his family tree project whenever i am more worried about his being unemployed. (if only my mom and dad could hear me now. they have said the same things to me in the past, nagging me about getting a job, and if i mentioned to them that i had spent a single second on any activity other than job-hunting, they'd say 'job hunting should be your full-time job.' and now, here i am telling that to someone else.)
well, when i visited dennis, i made a strict rule with him that i would NOT go inside the kerosene-smelling trailer. he is tolerating that rule, and i apologized many times about it, but i don't want to smell like kerosene and get sick.
so we stayed outside, and he showed me some things - he gave me the computer, i paid him, and he showed me his family tree chart and also a bow (i had expressed an interest in eventually bow-hunting, but it is the lowest possible priority right now, and i'm not actually doing it) which was so big, i couldn't pull the string all the way back. i forget what the string is called. it was my slightly injured right shoulder, from the skiing accident in college. the shoulder would not let me try any harder to pull the bowstring.
so, i hugged dennis twice - i asked him if it was okay for me to hug him as a friend, and he said that hugs are always welcome, and he doesn't get many of them. i mean it when i say that i think people ought to at least get a hug, even if you aren't having a sexual relationship with them.
but a couple things were still happening. even though we were standing outside, away from the kerosene, i still got sick from some things. first, he has a tooth infection or something that he told me about a while ago. i could smell it when he was talking, and it smelled like death, almost like vomit or roadkill. i smelled like that the other day because i had a stomach virus (or an unknown problem that made me very sick all day long) and i was lying in bed, miserable, for hours, drooling saliva. it was that disgusting vomit smell of dried saliva. so i almost gagged while he was talking to me because i could smell that.
i think his mouth infection is caused by chewing tobacco. he was chewing at the time while he was talking to me. and it wasn't just the vomit-saliva-roadkill-tooth infection smell, it was also probably the chewing tobacco itself, in his breath, nauseating me. tobacco and nicotine will cause vomiting, especially at high doses, and if you're not used to it. so the vapor of his breath carried enough nicotine and tobacco (whatever other drugs/chemicals are in tobacco) to sicken me.
chewing tobacco is processed in a way that produces nitrosamines. however, they say that the swedish chewing tobacco, called 'snus,' is processed differently and doesn't have the nitrosamines. nitrosamines are the chemicals that supposedly cause cancer.
so i was nauseated while listening to him. and also, after hugging him twice (in a non-sexual way), i feel something going through my clothing, mostly around the shoulders, where i was in direct contact with him. i think it might be nicotine which is on his clothing. i don't know if that is from the sweat, and the nicotine is going out through the skin into his clothing? or if it's just from handling containers of tobacco and the tobacco itself. he has this substance on him which is causing a problem when i touch him. i can feel the tickly sensation of a drug going through my skin, on the shoulders where he touched me during the hug. i recognize that sensation now after two years of living in a drug-contaminated apartment.
this is a major problem. i believe in hugging people and giving them a basic level of human contact. i don't believe people should be 'untouchable.' i want to remain dennis's friend, and learn what kind of boundaries we should have with each other, what level of physical contact and what level of emotional connection we will have. but i really am getting sick and getting contaminated from dennis's and other people's drugs. that seems very unfair.
i don't know how to explain it in a way that dennis would find believable. here is what i require: go to goodwill, buy all-new clothing (get the cheapest stuff - sometimes you can get stuff for $0.25), take a shower, put on the goodwill clothes, making sure that they do not contact any household surfaces - they must stay inside the plastic bag at all times until you put them on, and THEN hug me. and the shower - he might have to get all new towels and washcloths, too. this is how my life is, in a contaminated house - i know ALL ABOUT IT. you have to buy new towels, new clothes, new washcloths, new socks - everything. i've experienced all of that. i've thrown in the garbage huge amounts of clothing. this is a major disaster, and he doesn't even know, or believe, that he is contaminated with something.
i don't know what to do about this. i will have to put on 'hazard uniforms' of some kind when i visit him, some clothing that it won't matter if it gets contaminated.
i haven't got a chores/projects barter going with him, or rather, not very well. he had asked for a ride to huntingdon because his truck has a transmission problem and he isn't comfortable going that far, but i said no to that, i didn't feel comfortable with that particular favor. i had originally said yes, but over the next couple days, i was dreading it more and disagreeing with the idea - he wanted to go to the historical society, or something, for some of his family tree research. i am trying to define what type of favors i will or won't do, and i decided not to do that one. i expected it would take a long time, it was a long drive, and i feel wrong about encouraging him to work on his family tree project whenever i am more worried about his being unemployed. (if only my mom and dad could hear me now. they have said the same things to me in the past, nagging me about getting a job, and if i mentioned to them that i had spent a single second on any activity other than job-hunting, they'd say 'job hunting should be your full-time job.' and now, here i am telling that to someone else.)
well, when i visited dennis, i made a strict rule with him that i would NOT go inside the kerosene-smelling trailer. he is tolerating that rule, and i apologized many times about it, but i don't want to smell like kerosene and get sick.
so we stayed outside, and he showed me some things - he gave me the computer, i paid him, and he showed me his family tree chart and also a bow (i had expressed an interest in eventually bow-hunting, but it is the lowest possible priority right now, and i'm not actually doing it) which was so big, i couldn't pull the string all the way back. i forget what the string is called. it was my slightly injured right shoulder, from the skiing accident in college. the shoulder would not let me try any harder to pull the bowstring.
so, i hugged dennis twice - i asked him if it was okay for me to hug him as a friend, and he said that hugs are always welcome, and he doesn't get many of them. i mean it when i say that i think people ought to at least get a hug, even if you aren't having a sexual relationship with them.
but a couple things were still happening. even though we were standing outside, away from the kerosene, i still got sick from some things. first, he has a tooth infection or something that he told me about a while ago. i could smell it when he was talking, and it smelled like death, almost like vomit or roadkill. i smelled like that the other day because i had a stomach virus (or an unknown problem that made me very sick all day long) and i was lying in bed, miserable, for hours, drooling saliva. it was that disgusting vomit smell of dried saliva. so i almost gagged while he was talking to me because i could smell that.
i think his mouth infection is caused by chewing tobacco. he was chewing at the time while he was talking to me. and it wasn't just the vomit-saliva-roadkill-tooth infection smell, it was also probably the chewing tobacco itself, in his breath, nauseating me. tobacco and nicotine will cause vomiting, especially at high doses, and if you're not used to it. so the vapor of his breath carried enough nicotine and tobacco (whatever other drugs/chemicals are in tobacco) to sicken me.
chewing tobacco is processed in a way that produces nitrosamines. however, they say that the swedish chewing tobacco, called 'snus,' is processed differently and doesn't have the nitrosamines. nitrosamines are the chemicals that supposedly cause cancer.
so i was nauseated while listening to him. and also, after hugging him twice (in a non-sexual way), i feel something going through my clothing, mostly around the shoulders, where i was in direct contact with him. i think it might be nicotine which is on his clothing. i don't know if that is from the sweat, and the nicotine is going out through the skin into his clothing? or if it's just from handling containers of tobacco and the tobacco itself. he has this substance on him which is causing a problem when i touch him. i can feel the tickly sensation of a drug going through my skin, on the shoulders where he touched me during the hug. i recognize that sensation now after two years of living in a drug-contaminated apartment.
this is a major problem. i believe in hugging people and giving them a basic level of human contact. i don't believe people should be 'untouchable.' i want to remain dennis's friend, and learn what kind of boundaries we should have with each other, what level of physical contact and what level of emotional connection we will have. but i really am getting sick and getting contaminated from dennis's and other people's drugs. that seems very unfair.
i don't know how to explain it in a way that dennis would find believable. here is what i require: go to goodwill, buy all-new clothing (get the cheapest stuff - sometimes you can get stuff for $0.25), take a shower, put on the goodwill clothes, making sure that they do not contact any household surfaces - they must stay inside the plastic bag at all times until you put them on, and THEN hug me. and the shower - he might have to get all new towels and washcloths, too. this is how my life is, in a contaminated house - i know ALL ABOUT IT. you have to buy new towels, new clothes, new washcloths, new socks - everything. i've experienced all of that. i've thrown in the garbage huge amounts of clothing. this is a major disaster, and he doesn't even know, or believe, that he is contaminated with something.
i don't know what to do about this. i will have to put on 'hazard uniforms' of some kind when i visit him, some clothing that it won't matter if it gets contaminated.
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.)
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