i'll mark the door with a ruler and pencil.

growing up, my sister and i were assured that we would always be financially comfortable. if nothing else was certain (which at times many things weren't) we could depend on the money. our money went back a few generations, before which my mother's side of the family had been printers in richmond. one of my ancestors even printed for edgar allen poe, and a gift he had given my ancestor is in the poe museum now (fun fact of the evening).

so my mother raised us with music lessons, ballet, horse back riding, art lessons, all kinds of crap. which was great and i was a very very lucky kid. i was in public school, i did homeschool, i did private school. we had options, because there was enough money to do things like that. i also just wanted to be normal, and having some money definitely made me stand out sometimes, which i hated. i felt i was awkward and weird enough as it was, i didn't need people being jealous of my drawing ability, which i couldn't hide (and it was the one thing i have always felt confident about), AND the fact that my mom would randomly bring fancy boxed lunches from sally belle's just for me and my sister to fox elementary. she would give me obscene amounts of spending money for trips. i was a kid, i had no idea what was appropriate, and who says no to free money?

of course, the money didn't make up for the verbally abusive episodes and three day long bedroom retreats. or leaving your 17 year old daughter on the other side of the country because you've decided you're 'done' being a parent. reason number one of why i hate money: using it to try and appease guilt. money as supplemental parenting... twisted.

as much as i've struggled to learn how to be financially independent, i have looked forward to getting out from under my mother's financial wing for a long time... yet simultaneously reminding myself to be grateful that i was provided for. that said, my mom had some very strange manipulative ways to remind me of it. she was always a fan of buying me something inappropriate without me asking for it, and then using it against me later, calling me selfish and ungrateful.

where is the line between the idea that one's offspring behaves how it does because YOU raised her that way, and the idea that once old enough, said offspring is responsible for her behavior and cannot default to blaming the parent? my mother had a big hand in my personal growth, and as thoughtful and responsible as i have always tried to be, i cannot help but think that she was the one who encouraged any brattiness in me to grow. it's like growing a plant, watering and fertilizing, and then chopping it off at the root once it buds.

i am VERY self conscious about having grown up with privilege. and i'm not saying we were rich; i guess there were a few years that by america's standards we would be classified as upper middle class. i always tried to play it off the 'right' way; that is, i never wanted to brag or act haughty, but then again if you totally ignored your privilege, people think you're ungrateful and undeserving. many times i just tried to be quiet and mutter 'yeah, i am lucky'. either way, i felt isolated.

but i was sooo lucky. i had many things people don't have. sure, i was lonely... but you can't have everything, right?

i've been thinking about this a lot because my mother pretty much lost all that was left of the money yesterday. now she has to provide for herself for the first time. ever. it's kind of an intense situation. it just so happened that i had recently been liberated from her support already, which is good and i knew that it would happen once i finished school anyway. so for me it works out okay, but i am very interested to see how her life unfolds in the next few years. this totally changes her life. i will be there for her, but i also refuse to see her as a victim, seeing how she could have made a few different decisions that would have made this much easier on everyone.

what gets me is this: when someone tells you a part of your life will be stable and comfortable forever, you believe it. then when it's become apparent that they squandered it and then due to plummeting stocks what little was left is now gone as well, well it's a fascinating feeling. i don't give a shit about the actual money. i hate money, life sucks if you have too little, life sucks if you have too much, and i resent the idea that something inanimate can affect your entire being and daily life. and yes, i realize the irony of this coming from someone who never had an unsatisfied material desire growing up, really i do. i'm a prick, it's fine, you can think that. but you cannot deny the truth about money. less or more, it difficults. money makes difficult a verb.

the point is, i am pissed that my mother gave us false confidence in something unstable. she was the adult, she is smart enough to know that the money was not entirely reliable. plus, she never made a true effort to rescue her promise once it started to become clear that it was one she couldn't keep. she just kept spending. i can't believe she didn't have the forethought to tack on at least a little warning. once she realized everything was dwindling, didn't she wonder what would happen? her work paralysis (something the bitter daughter in me feels is a very selfish problem to have) kept her from keeping her promise to us. many of her typical days involved her having a headache/sleeping all day/meditating and going to the spa. and something was always wrong, despite her languid days. no wonder katia and i throw ourselves into work and often go overboard. we knew this was something we had to learn, a weakness we refused to develop.

i have and always will hate money. it's just a means to an end, many endings for which i have no use, really. money turns people into monsters and rips families apart. i will stand by my mother and encourage her as she embarks into the working world for real, for the first time, at 51 years of age. i feel for her because she's probably scared shitless. i know she has no concept of how this has upset me and my sister, how we feel she betrayed us. she is yet again far too wrapped up in her own situation to consider that. but what's going to happen now, when she can't ease her conscience by tossing a few bills out at us? time to face the music, mom.

cutest animal ever

i actually remembered one of my dreams last night. check it:

my friend will and i were at this strange little outdoor party thing... it was more like a teeny tiny fair in the forest but with no rides. yeah i dunno. then we were about to leave, and apparently in order to do that you had to walk over what appeared to be a combination of a creek and train tracks. there were three preppy sorority type girls in front of us, and one ended up getting running over by a train. even though i don't remember feeling the bigness of a train being near us. we also reacted to it in a very matter of fact, calm sort of way.

so as we were leaving, the path turned on itself and we could see the area where we had been, now deserted by all the other people. i thought i saw what looked like a raccoon, and for some reason thought it was a good idea to go back and investigate. as we neared the area, i saw a full grown penguin enter the clearing. it didn't see us, and waddled away, complete with tiny babies wobbling behind it.

one tiny baby had lost the group, and i found it and picked it up. upon inspection it turned out to be half penguin, half koala! what?! amazing. it made me melt.

i was holding it, and then the dream gets a little fuzzy (no pun intended)... i remember feeling that the mama penguin/koala could/was getting territorial... but i felt so happy looking into the little bebeh's face.

then i think i was at walmart. ugh.

then i was somehow taking a very awkward platonic shower with a co-worker of mine (who i am in no way attracted to) and for some reason i felt she was judging my nipples. which is weird because i had really never thought about them before, and in the dream hers were actually weird.

wtf.

penguin koala baby!!!

c'mon

life. is this all you've got? buh-ring it. night night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

post script

as of today, my family's money is gone.

speak entirely in slang

i think life right now, for me, is about learning to wait.

i'm waiting... but i think the point is to live without waiting... that is, enjoy what's going on right now without projecting my mind purely into the future.

i've wound this web of circumstances; a plan to get me on track, a path to 'happiness'. whatever the hell that is. it all depends on the first step that leads me to the rest, and obviously if i fail at the first step, my life is OVER. that's the skewed way that i've seen it. i know it's ridiculous, but i feel life in extremes.

things i want, don't have, and will take a while to get:
-moving
-being unbroke
-losing all the weight

one path: if i can't get in perfect physical shape, then my self-confidence will never be healthy, which means i'll never have the balls to talk to people i'm interested in, because obviously they'll reject me. and what's the big deal about rejection? it's humiliating and i always assume it's because of my weight. because let's face it, weight WILL make many people reject you. few people are willing to look past it. and fuck, i'm one of them. i want someone attractive too. i'm tired of living like a hypocrite. i can go on for days bitching about the shallowness of people, but we're ALL shallow. we all like what we like. until i become someone i like, i don't think anyone will like me... and while i don't like myself, it will show through my actions. and someone liking me should NEVER be the goal of self-improvement. i'm a number one advocate for learning how to be single and happy. being single can be the greatest thing ever. i'm fucked up.

i wish i didn't give a fuck... but you know, if i didn't i probably would have been skinny this whole damn time. it's because i cared too much that i went overboard. it's fucking gross and the world sucks sometimes, but that's the way it is. some cutthroat shit that you just can't think too hard about or you end up like me, embittered and jaded.

some overweight people are still beautiful, but the looks that i was born with don't allow for that. regarding my looks, i get the compliment 'striking', not 'pretty'. because i'm not. and i don't want to be conventionally pretty. how convenient.

so can you base happiness on an ideal weight? of course not. but it is a reflection of how much you respect yourself. and i know i talk about self respect a lot, because it's something i haven't had a lot of, and i know it's important to have a solid core, a caring faith to drive you.

i should dismantle my plan, and all the steps. i need to convince myself that there are plenty of things to live for now, rather than putting my life on hold until i've decided i deserve it. this isn't to say i'm not going to go through with the steps, just that i need to try and let it flow organically and not expect it all to unfold in the methodical manner i think of in my head.

life is stupid and amazing. i need to shoot the veruca salt in me.

she shows in mysterious ways.

september, 1998: i am an eighth grader at robious middle school. it's the last year of middle school, but the first time i had been in one. my mother had moved us to a house who's property line between richmond and chesterfield went down the middle of our yard specifically so i could attend robious.

i am the antithesis of the ideal robious student. a few weeks prior to starting school, my sister and my boyfriend had taken pinking shears to my hair, followed by his hair clippers. i had had a field day with a pair of tweezers and i had too much angst to bother with food. i wore one black v-neck knit 3/4 sleeve shirt, faded from wear. jeans. dr. martens. chain link necklace. skull ring. my sister always pounced at any opportunity to make me her personal doll, resulting in a heinous betty page hairdo at 11 and a carrot-orange jaw length frizzy bob at 12.

my appearance and general expression of doom plastered on my face granted me some fascinating experiences, complete with nicknames. one day i was a goth who was going to die from cancer, the next i am a huge dyke who moved here from canada. you know those crazy 13 year old canadian dykes, they're taking over america!

one girl got very stressed by my 'situation'. i found a note in my locker, a letter really, professing her willingness to help me find god. she penned this letter complete with the repeated botched spelling of 'bibble'. she wanted me to attend bibble school with her so that i may be saved from my miserable godless existence.

i wonder if this girl had told her family about me and they recommended this outreach, or if she had committed this act of charity on her own. this girl had never spoken to me and we had no classes together. i know it was just eighth grade, but it still amazes me how much people determine from looks alone. she had no idea what was going on at my house. i could have been beaten, i could have lost a loved one, i could be sharing a room with four other siblings in a one bedroom house with nothing to eat, i could have a fatal disease. i could have even been seeking solace through the same god she calls on, for all she knows. in reality, i had a selfish, sexually graphic mother who used money to make up for her failings at parenting, a father who's ability to function in the world was starting to disintegrate and thus tried to tighten his hold on his children, and myself, who's freakishly early puberty had convinced me i was the ugliest, most awkward waste of space that ever existed. there was a semblance of faith/spirituality in me at the time, but my teen years were not about to let me explore it. i had the freedom to do whatever i wanted with my appearance, thus reflecting my state of mind to a t.

it's disgusting to form conclusions about personal opinions and faith on appearance alone. i read the letter, spelling errors spoken phonetically, to my mother and sister, who promptly picked the girl and her letter apart. i wholeheartedly joined in with my family, because this was one part of my life i knew how to blend into. i saw the unfairness of picking on her, but was so frustrated by the unfair judgments made about me that i didn't care. it felt good for my family to assure me that she was in fact the crazy one, not me. after all, i spent 8 hours a day in a place where i felt picked apart. all eyes criticized. a place where my art teacher snubbed me because she was jealous of my artistic ability. even if i did something right, it was apparently so right it was wrong. i was never meant to fit in. and i never have.

bibble girl and i were probably more similar than anyone else in that school. both social outcasts, perceived as freaks. the difference between me and her was that she used her inherited beliefs to try and (albeit misguidedly) help, whereas i used my inherited beliefs to hurt. who really takes the high road here?

i only spent one semester at robious, and i did make one (atheist) friend who i am still vaguely friends with now. i finished the year doing 'homeschool'... i.e. nursing my teenage depression before heading to open high the next year.

since then, we've all learned how to create our appearances to reflect our beliefs and moods. some of us think really hard about how to do that, to others it comes more naturally. it doesn't really matter what you do, because you'll always be judged. no matter how polite someone is, there is always the insecure teen somewhere in there, picking you apart before you can get to them. the difference between then and now? i used to care. now i still care, and it's bullshit if anyone ever says they don't. but now i know that what i'm projecting is really me. judge all you want.

i hope bibble girl has found herself, whether that includes god or not. she didn't help me the way she intended, but all was not lost.

putting the 'grit' in 'integrity'

man, this blog is a total snoozefest. let's remedy this situation.

quick personal update since may:

-zoe fucked a lot of my shit up, but it's cool now. she's house trained and crate trained, also much less anxious.
-i'm vegan
-i no longer drink (i barely did before, so it's really not a stretch) and in terms of substances one could call me straight edge, but i will not label myself as such for a few reasons.
-i've lost 25 pounds (30 more to go, hoping to hit that shit by my birthday)

i have a few out-of-town friends who read this who wouldn't know those things and may be interested.

so i've obviously made some pretty big diet changes, and it really wasn't because of any people i know. i was already surrounded by many vegans and a fair amount of straight edgers. i don't know exactly what did it (besides that fucking documentary earthlings, nice lighthearted viewing pleasure!) except me realizing i needed to do myself and the world a favor and stop treating everything like shit. it was holding me back and obviously i was throwing my inner chaos out into the world. what right do i have to do that? it's up to us to reduce our footprints, carbon and non... we sure do have some egos in us, us humans, huh?

i really wanted to write about something else in this post, but i feel that it would be a jolt to change subject suddenly. i'll just post a separate one.