It's been a weird day.

Sometimes, because the buses have become a hazard to an immunocompromised ex-boyfriend who fell off his bike and therefore can't get himself to his job 30 miles away, you agree to let him use your car, because you are a nice person and it saves taking him off the insurance.  And sometimes, you actually need your car for a random hour in the middle of the day so you wake up at 5:30 to drive him to work and pick him back up. 

On the drive home, he explains that the drug test for the job he's finally getting actually in the city he lives in feels as though it does not test for the substance he doesn't want it to test for, but how can he confirm that?  And you spend two hours Googling and determine with 90% certainty this is the case. 

Then you listen to the absolutely fucked up list of Mean Girls shit that his exit interview is going to consist of because he works in a field that mostly needs human beings no matter how useless they are.  He's got sufficient proof, too, which makes you wonder why stuff like this keeps happening to him, but the evidence it totally does is undeniable. 

Through all of this, you realise that his current girlfriend must not be at his place, because he's at your place, and he's still at your place after ten minutes.  You also know that he's not usually given to this level of communication about himself until it all has to come out in a big chunk.  And you realise that this means you're hearing the chunk.  Not his girlfriend.  Who won't break up with him even though she's still mad at you because he didn't bother to tell her he was sleeping with you and her at the same time. 

You file this information away, because he is your friend, and you want to be his friend.  And if you need to get it out again to say, "Hey, you're being a shitty partner to your girlfriend, again," you will. 

This song is called 'I Am So Sad. I Am So Very Very Sad.' It goes like this.

Sometimes, your friends have a theatre company, and they ask you for advice and input and you remember all you actually want to do is this.  Maybe not even for them, but you want to do creative theatrical work that matters, and for people who maybe sort of at least pretend occasionally to care about your opinion and point of view.  And you discover yourself hand-drawing art work and researching visual art styles and fonts and wonder where the fuck this person came from, because as sure as hell you haven't had this kind of drive to do anything in... well, probably years, but for *sure* months. 

Did they want any of that?  No.  But it doesn't really matter because apparently it was something I needed to do.  I'm not sure why I now sort of feel like shit about it.  Probably because I lack the ability to do any of that on my own, but also because people mostly dislike me anyway so it's not like I'm ever going to find any other people to do that stuff with. 

Yay, self-pity. 

A Request

Men, could you do me a favour and embrace dress wearing? Not just the kilt, but if more of you dudes were secure in your masculinity and just wore dresses for... I dunno, whatever the reasons people who enjoy wearing dresses wear them, my non-dress-wearing ass would appreciate it.

Let's be clear, I wear dresses the same way I wear masks right now, to subscribe to whatever social code dictates they be worn. But lately the dresses have been feeling like a required symbol of being female. I am absolutely a straight chick, I'm very, very both of those things, but I have no interest in feminine presentation, and I'm tired of feeling like, "Oh, if you like dresses, make-up, flowers, princesses, that makes you a GIRL." Because, fuck, what the hell am I, then? A deeply closeted gay guy with extremely problematic genitalia? I was reading about this mother whose 5 year old grew up with cars and princesses and suddenly announced one day a desire to be a girl. Mom's next sentence after this was, "We immediately drove to the store to shop for dresses." So, OK, maybe they had a conversation about, "How would you like to express that you want to be a girl?" But she doesn't say that. She equivocates being a girl with time to go dress shopping. I wore a LOT of dresses and skirts as a kid. A lot. And eventually I managed to get away with not wearing them except for formal occasions. I wore a dress for my wedding because it felt like a requirement. Hell, the entire wedding felt like a requirement, so, OK, fine, I will play but on my terms as much as possible. My most recent ex really needed me to have a dress. I own two as a result of this. I've worn one of them once. The other one, actually bought for a work event where it was going to be required until it was cancelled, still hasn't been worn. I almost want to take them and drop them off and tell him to give them to his current girlfriend, but I have a feeling they'd be too big for her. So, yes, is this a factor in my current discomfort? Yep, just add it on the pile with everything else I hate about myself, about every other instance where I don't measure up and can't measure up to expectations I don't even really feel the need to meet except that clearly who I am is a problem for a lot of people. If that 5 year old needs to wear dresses to feel OK, cool, great, I don't care. But I do wonder if, hey, maybe that 5 year old can just be a boy who wears dresses.

So, dudes who wanna feel pretty, please embrace those dresses for me, OK?

A Wish

Where are you supposed to go when the walls close in and there are too many people and you want to scream but you can't scream here because that would probably concern people?

What are you supposed to do when you have sort of a vague idea that you haven't eaten and should maybe do that but don't want to? 

How long, reasonably, can you go without a shower? 

I want to scream, and scream and scream until there's nothing left of me to hurt any more.  I want to throw rocks and break glass and never have to see or speak to a living person ever again. 

I want to drive until I run out of gas.  I want to stop existing. I want to see the stars again, and become one of them. 

My Very Own Pet Monster

I get one more paycheck from my current job until the end of summer. The incredibly good thing is that, literally the same day, I interviewed for a short term summer position that would pay only about 1800 less than I'd earn in the same period at other job.  That's equal to the stimulus plus the one time extra $600 unemployment is paying out. Unemployment in Colorado considers 32 hours full time, so I'm not eligible if I'm over that. 

If I don't get the summer job, and they revised their notification dates from telling me tomorrow or Monday, to an hour later telling me Monday or Tuesday, indicating I'm probably not getting the job. 

Either way I will be financially OK, more or less.  If I don't have work to do, I'm not sure how mentally OK I'll be. 

It's been a bad couple days. I feel like garbage.  And that's not, "I feel bad," that's, "I feel beyond useless or valuable." 

Talked to the ex, because he's decided I should be over it and willing to accept the girlfriend who's probably going to move in with him.  Admitted to me that, while I first heard *anything* about our problems last September and was officially dumped by November, he was over me by January. 

He says I'm a good person, just not right for him, but when his problems with me were extreme discomfort with normal social situations and food, because he couldn't lay off me about everything, and everything became about his need for me to be normal for him, well, I don't see how I can actually have functioning human relationships with ANYBODY who isn't a bigger shut in than me.  And that's the whole point. I want to go, I want to be included, I just want to be able to sit quietly and not asked what's wrong with me every five minutes, because that doesn't make me more comfortable. 

"[Current girlfriend] could be your friend, too!" He said. Five minutes later, I mentioned that none of his friends liked me, and he says, "I stand up for you!  I don't let [current girlfriend] say a word against you."  Meaning she does.  But she's supposed to be my friend? 

In a world where the only interaction people can have is online, I get ghosted by dudes on a dating site. Like, we're talking, and you're just gone, because the one thing I'm not bad at, talking about interesting stuff, you can't show up for.  Cool.   Fine. 

So, I'm feeling rejected a lot of places. 

My D&D friends love me.  I have not bad interactions online most of the time. 

I have a spite project to ride my bike a shittone that I'm sticking to because, well, spite.  Ex wanted me to enjoy riding with him, to actively feel good doing it and be proud of myself and, why?  Literally anybody can do what I'm doing, so it doesn't mean shit.  Anybody.  He goes, "Could your ex husband?"  "Sure, if he wanted to."  "Would he?"  "No."  "Having the drive to do it makes the difference." "Why should I be proud of that?"  "You moved to NEW YORK."  "Yeah, with 10k, and a plan, and I failed."  "Not everybody does that!"  "Literally anybody could!" 

It's true.  I'm not fucking special.  I was supposed to be, and I'm not.  I'm never gonna be any better than the rest of my stupid useless family. 
 

In Which I Fail at Everything Including My Gender, Somehow

There's a video going around right now that all women are supposed to relate to, with ten things that happen to all women, and women I follow on Twitter are consistently posting that they've experienced 8-10 of these things.  Been drugged, molested, known someone who's been drugged, etc.  I don't know specifically if any of my female friends have ever been roofied, so I'm sitting at 0.  Like, as the video suggests strongly, a guy.  (I understand that men of all ages do experience physical, mental and sexual abuse.  Absolutely.  That's not the conversation.) 

I love feeling rejected by my own gender.  It's great.  Like, "Oh, you haven't undergone abuse at the hands of men, I guess you're part of the problem."  And it tells me there's something different and wrong and "not like all girls" about me.  That no one has even taken enough interest in me to objectify me, or something.  I used to get a little sanctimonious about it, because, hey, this hasn't happened to me, none of this has, what the heck is wrong with the rest of you that you allowed it, that you endured it?  And I got told time and again that this isn't supporting women and believing women and can you tell from this conversation that it's still absolutely separating ME from other people?  Soooo.  Now it's just alienating.  I can't be a woman who hasn't been abused, so what the fuck am I? 

I'm not feeling super good about who I am, at the moment, anyway.  I don't see a lot of opportunities to ever find another relationship, because I am intolerable.  I don't eat, I don't buy a bunch of useless shit nobody needs, I don't find value in... much of anything, actually.  I have a job I will never, ever get out of, and I am sick and tired of other people. 

All of my regular human interaction that isn't Dungeons and Dragons is phoning up people with problems.  I am OVER other people's problems.  I have my own, and they are me, and I can't fix that, so why am I bothering with everybody fucking else?  I can't even get dogs right. 

Friends of mine have a mutual friend who they introduced to me saying, "You two will either love each other or hate each other," asserting that we are basically the same person.  And the reality of this is that she is an unreliable, moderately talented person with an incredibly inflated opinion of herself who consistently burns bridges with people.  And.  Well.