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09/27/2004 Entry: "Being Bullied in the Real World" It's 12:30 in the morning as I started type this. I am waiting on some last-minute laundry, pondering the existence of life and such. In the last week, two people unwittingly said something that had me feeling badly. One said, "I stopped reading your blog, it was depressing as hell to see what you were going through." Another said that she saw my blog as a story of disaster, hoping good would prevail in the end. Neither one of these people meant it in a bad way, but it hit a nerve because I never want to be one of those whiny goths, I want to be a perky goth. But I have really been mopey goth since... ... Jesus, I read through my past year like flipping through a scrapbook written by bad Australian Soap Opera writers ("Stailla... I luuv yew!"). Twice in the last week, I have had friends who haven't read my blog, nor have I seen since Evecon, asking what's been going on. I don't want to tell them. I don't. But I am a poor liar, and can't force myself to lie, "Oh, nothing!" I told one, "it's been a rebuilding year." That didn't go well, because I could hear the raised eyebrow through the phone. Another was going through personal tragedy of her own, but she's always been a sympathetic soul, so I said, "Oh, well, after I last saw you, my grandmother died, Christine's brother died, we have had massive money problems, we went to Vegas and got really sick, in fact, we got sick a lot this year... then I got laid off..." Of course, that was my friend Betty, who had just lost Bobbie, and now I kind of wish I hadn't said anything. I hope I didn't come across like I was trying to one-up her. There have been many times I wanted to give up. I haven't really thought about suicide that much, because I have this ego problem that if I even attempt it, all those people I talked out of killing themselves since the 80s will find out, and I'll look like a hypocrite. But I mean, give up as in resign myself that my life will always be an unhappy struggle, and my death will probably come when God runs out of cruel pranks. Sometimes, I have shouted at God like Lieutenant Dan from "Forrest Gump," daring him to kill me, and when he doesn't, I know he's scared I'll find him and beat the shit out of him. Sometimes I try and convince myself everyone's life is this bad; I just granulize it. Then I start hearing people go, "Damn... your life sucks, dude!" I try and say, "Well, at least I am not in junior high anymore," which has always been a kind of splash of cold water in my face, but that's just resulted in me reliving things I would have rather forgotten. I was beat up or bullied nearly every week in junior high. Every week. Why did I take it? Sometimes I wish I could go back, and play the crazy guy. I know I was a fat weakling who couldn't fight, and made such a tempting target. But now I know if I had snapped just once, and really hurt someone, really made a public display of crazed insanity; no one would have bothered me. Maybe Chris Riffer could have pounded me to tartar, but if I bit him, and tore off a body part like an ear or a nose... school kids know you don't mess with that! Kate taught me the value of "the crazy." She had a reputation of being crazy-go-nuts violent, even though the only public display she showed was when Donnalee tried to dunk her at the pool (I forgot what she did in retaliation, the tales varied so widely in exaggeration). I don't know how Kate would have fared in a real fight, but people were scared of her, and she played the part well. Then there's the element of "fear of the unknown," like, "No one fights the retarded kid," someone told me years later, "because they will fight raw. You never know what they are going to do." Why do I bring this up? Because I am feeling pretty beaten up. I used to take several different paths home from school, often through woods or across a creek or two. I could tell you 5-10 different ways from the corner of Rugby and Westmoreland to Southridge. Sometimes the bullies were ahead of me, and sometimes they were actively looking for me. "Hey, there's Larson!" I usually got away, because they didn't cross creeks for some reason, and didn't follow me into deep woods. Sometimes, I would be sitting behind the fence of a tennis court, trying to discern where the bullies were. Maybe I'd stay they for an hour, hoping they'd get bored and move on. Or try and triangulate where they were without being seen. This became harder when the followed me to high school, but luckily, by my sophomore year, most grew out of it, and those that didn't ended up in juvenile detention or something. Either way, they were gone. But now, the shadow of those memories are back. With everything that's been happening, I have felt scared. I don't have any woods to run into, no tennis courts to hide behind, no creeks to wade across, and no darkened overpass to hide in. Many of my old habits have been regressing, like the self-blaming, the insulting, the tapes that go in my head, saying I am in pain and suffer because I deserve it. "Why don't you just go away?" they go, "No one likes you. You make the grownups feel awkward, and the kids can sense your difference." Of course, none of my friends have treated me in this manner, so these are all old tapes in my head. All these plays and scenes are ghosts from the past, pretending to be real again. Like the "dark side of the Force," they cloud everything. I feel like being happy is a privilege, not a right, and I am so far down the scale of that privilege, being happy will always result in punishment. People used to make fun of my laugh. Not since I was 15, but they used to. My father did, the kids around me did... and I developed this annoying habit of suppressing laughter during my "I have no emotions, I am like a Vulcan" days of denial (ages 12-14). To this day, whenever I laugh, I reflexively follow with an, "I'm sorry," because I feel my laughter annoys people, and sucks the fun out of a room. As an adult, I can find nothing wrong with my laughter (and no one else has commented on it), but I think the "I'm sorry" is more of an "I am sorry I lost control." When I later realized that denial of all emotion meant denial of all joy as well as pain, I realized that I was following the path of my father. This revulsion of who he was might have been my saving grace, but it's hard to form a solid philosophy of "not being" something. But I lost a huge part of my ability to be happy as a kid, and now, at 36, I wonder if I'll ever be "allowed" to have it again. I cling to other's good fortune like a ship's mast in a violent sea. I try and tell myself that other's can have hope and joy, and maybe someday I can, too. Recently, two of my close friends have gone under some spiritual awakenings. Both who had troubled futures, and while this joy may be fleeting, at least I gain some sense of calm that Rogue and Sawa are doing "the right thing" and finding peace in their lives. I saw Sawa this weekend, with her hair growing back, a pentacle around her neck, sharing a really strong tea with a bunch of friends. She looked happy. This gave me a tiny sense of joy, like a small flame I have to cradle and protect from everything else before it gets snuffed out. I really want to be happy. I really do. I know this was kind of depressing, but thanks for those who read it to the end. I just had to let this out. I'll be okay, because I have suffered worse. At least I am not alone anymore.