Masochism is simply the inability to separate destruction from pain.

I’ve been feeling rather restless lately. Maybe it’s the winter, or maybe it’s just all the changes my brain has been going through. Has anyone else been feeling this, besides me? My thoughts are coming from all directions, but at the same time the RaeRae compendium of useless knowledge is starting to get some real-world application. Everything is knitting together and making for a more cohesive view of reality. A cohesive view of reality is important. Hell, any view of reality is important, and should be treasured.
Micah is half-off for Christmas break (meaning that one job is over, but the night job is on and seems far too easy now that he does it with a full nights sleep) and he’s been getting sort of obsessed with Norse mythology. He asked me for one of the crystals in my box and painted a rune on it. It looks pretty damn awesome, as the red of the paint kinda smeared, and it looks like he carved it into the stone with the blood of his enemies. I think I fell in love with the manliest geek ever. And it’s awesome.

It’s that one little word that gets thrown around a lot, and argued over, and covered over, and still strikes a chord of fear into the hearts of all those who have gone through it. Abuse. It usually has an adjective in front of it, to differentiate it from the others (physical, emotional, sexual, etc.) but it works the same way. In the mind of the abuser, it is a desperate clamoring for control. It is a wounded ego lashing out at someone or something that reminds the abuser of how helpless they feel. Its twisted cycle is almost sickeningly predictable, and pulls all those involved tighter and tighter into the vice of pain:
The abuser lulls the abusee into emotional attachment.
The abuser gets upset at the abusee and lashes out, but makes it seem as though the abusee is the one at fault.
The abuser tries to soothe things over by making promises, getting emotional.
The abuser waits until everything is calm again to abuse again.
The abusee makes excuses for the abuser’s behavior, and starts walking on egg shells, relinquishing control of the situation to the abuser.
The abuse happens more and more, and the abusee comes to expect it, as if its something they deserve.
The abuser isolates the abusee, making sure the abusee is even more helpless and therefore abuse-able.
The abusee gets a moment of clarity, but it is short lived either though bargaining or more abuse.
The cycle perpetuates itself until something permanently separates the abuser from the abusee.

I kept thinking about this all day, because, if you separate this one little word from this cycle, and call it what it really is, which is control, then there are some rather close-to-the-vest scenarios, from self-destruction to what’s going on in society today, where this little power struggle plays itself out. But, how do we break up with things that only want to hurt us, yet at the same time we rely upon?

As I write this, it is 12:12 eastern standard time in Indianapolis. I’m out of wine, and my bathroom smells suspiciously of cigarettes. I have a closet full of postcard sized specialized paper that absorbs the ink from my strange musings, but doesn’t rip when I want it to. Handfuls of it. All stolen out of the discard bin. The only things I hear are the deep, even breaths of my lover’s exhausted fitful sleep from working two jobs, and the rustle of late-night traffic.
I keep getting the feeling that the galaxies are all starting to connect for me, but I’m not seeing the fruits of that connection yet. I do, however, live in pretty frequent coincidences. The most prevalent thought in my head seems to be “Damn it, I was supposed to be right here, right now, taking this all in. How the hell did I get here?”. But I like that feeling. It’s that sense of overarching destiny that keeps things moving along.

“‎I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.” – Sister Joan Chittister, Catholic Nun

In pop culture, girls who crush hopelessly on guys they can’t have are painted as just that – hopeless. Over and over again, we’re taught that girls who openly express sexual or romantic interest in guys who don’t want them are pitiable, stalkerish, desperate, crazy bitches. More often than not, they’re also portrayed as ugly –  whether physically, emotionally or both –  in order to further establish their undesirability as an objective fact. Both narratively and, as a consequence, in real life, men are given free reign to snub, abuse, mislead and talk down to such women: we’re raised to believe that female desire is unseemly, so that any consequent shaming is therefore deserved. There is no female-equivalent Friend Zone terminology because, in the language of our culture, a man’s romantic choices are considered sacrosanct and inviolable. If a girl has been told no, then she has only herself to blame for anything that happens next – but if a woman says no, then she must not really mean it. Or, if she does, she shouldn’t: the rejected man is a universally sympathetic figure, and everyone from moviegoers to platonic onlookers will scream at her to just give him a chance, as though her rejection must always be unfounded rather than based on the fact that he had a chance, and blew it. And even then, give him another one! The pathos of Single Nice Guys can only be eased by pity-sex with unwilling women that blossoms into romance!

My laptop sat under the front seat for the entirety of the trip, so I wound up satisfying my urge to write on slips of paper. I jotted down job leads to places such as a haunted house that promises minimum wage in return for dressing up as a monster for five hours a night on the weekends during September and October. On the second leg of the journey, at Micah’s dad’s house near the Arkansas/Tennessee border, I chronicled just how awkward it was to be treated like a rebellious teenager when you’re doing the one thing with your life that is brave and positive and responsible, which is leaving a place that offers you absolutely no growth. Then, in the next breath, I marked how thankful I was that Micah’s stepmom offered us a tent, just in case. I wrote these sentences in the almost dark, while my feet were so covered in poison ivy that I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t write much while in Kentucky, I just did a lot of moon-gazing and reading and attic-dwelling and thinking. And about every two hours or so, I was coerced into playing dolls by two little girls.
Now. I have a lot of free time and a lot of new experiences. Right now my responsibilities are making sure we have enough money, and getting a job. I applied to tons of coffee shops and bookstores, and was offered an interview, that I wasn’t able to take, for the store is too far away from my current dwellings. I went to a meeting for the Indiana Department Of Workforce Development, at a library, and wound up applying for a job at that same library. There are theatres pretty much everywhere here, but I understand that I’ve got to get settled and networked before I dive into that world. But, I am here, I am safe, and I feel strangely liberated.

We are on the second leg of the exodus. Micah and I have been in Jonesboro since Saturday, visiting his dad. Today was kind of rough, as we got lost on the way back from a gaming session Micah’s stepsisterinvited us to. The gaming session itself was fun. Micah and I played a Native American healer and warewolf in a prohibition era fantasy game, set in Chicago. Our part of the game was that we were searching for our sister, who had just become a vampire. Micah’s character almost beat the shit out of the other characters, until one of them got the idea to repeatedly hit his character with a car. As fun as that was, it didn’t cover for how scary getting lost was later. We kept almost hitting redneck country, in our jeep that held all of our worldly possessions. Needless to say, we got in really really really late.

Micah’s father kept looming over us while we were jobhunting online. It was frustrating, and Micah had to try with all his willpower not to get into a fight with us. The man was making useless suggestions, as if neither one of us had ever been to a job interview. It felt like he saw us like rebellious teenagers going on our first roadtrip. Ugh.

Micah’s stepmom was a lot more helpful, though. She suggested that if we needed a cheap place to stay, we could always camp out. Then she gave us a tent out of the shed. Just like that. It was small enough that it actually fit into the jeep, even though we thought the entire vehicle had been stuffed full. That part felt like the moment when you’re in a video game, and a random villager you talk to hands you this old trashcan lid they found, and suddenly “Player 1 Recieved a Shield!”

Last night I discovered I had a break-out of poison ivy from our outing at the park. It just keeps getting worse. I think what happened was the oil got on my socks and the bottom of my pants, and then I took a nap on the bed in the same pants and socks and my skin kept reabsorbing the oils. So, now that we’re in Kentucky, it should be better. Have I mentioned yet that Kentucky is absolutely fucking beautiful? I definitely feel that the exodus is going well so far.

Also, now I’m a redhead. The color seems to suit me so well, with my pale pink skin and fiery attitude, that it makes me wonder why I wasn’t born this way.

Two days. Two more days until the grand exodus. The visit to my family has still not veered from surreal, even though a few of the relatives that were on hard times have found employment since I arrived, and feel like they are getting their lives back. It’s just the others that are trying to convince me to stay on fallow ground, when I can see the emptiness in their eyes that kind of puts me at unease. And the fact that they act offended when I say I’ve got to move on, as if this bit of backwoods is the only place to live, and that I’ll be perfectly happy if I just come back, settle down on some farm and start popping out children, and go back to singing in church as my only artistic outlet. I feel like that wasn’t my life back then, that was just a way to survive with my sanity somewhat intact. I was doing a dance to keep my secrets tucked under the veil, which is why within weeks of leaving for college, I felt like I could finally breathe. I guess that’s one good skill I’ve honed, that people tend to think that I’m just like them, that they see themselves in me a bit, and that I can chameleon pretty easily. Someday I’m pretty sure I’ll use that as a weapon, but hopefully only a weapon for good instead of betrayal.
I keep collecting small things, like hawthornes and bull quartz and yarrow, as if I were about to cast a spell. If I were into that, I’m sure that would be one helluva spell. But, in my walks lately, those are just the things I’ve been drawn to, for some unconscious reason. Maybe I’m just building a small memory, and those trinkets are there to remind me where I came from, without any feeling of “I need to stay here”. Because that’s the strange thing. Despite everyone’s pleading, I have no interest in staying here. Never have. It’s something I’ve had tucked in the back of my mind for over a decade now. It’s the one thing that so many people, including my father, have tried, but never gathered the courage to do. Which is why it bewilders me that so many people seem shocked that I have no reason to stay.

The difference in the person I am, and the person I had thought I would be when I was younger would probably be a big surprise, but a good surprise. I was a shy kid, who had this idea in her head that the future would make everything easier. I’d be this carefree, yet strong woman who practically lived in coffeehouses, loved and was loved fiercely, did whatever her passions drove her towards, and went on adventures. I’ve done all those things. But, it took a lot of changing and growing in ways that many people are too afraid to think about. I’ve had to go through a lot of pain and pick up a lot of scars, and constantly be reborn. To the point that, when people see me that haven’t seen me in a long time, they are surprised themselves. For a while I thought I was fake, that I was invisible and an emotional wreck, that everyone looked at me and saw a prude. I became who I am because I was frustrated with these things, and sought to change myself from the inside out. I kept doing this, and doing this, until I was satisfied. I am the goddess of evolution. As a result, I keep growing, and I’ll keep re-defining who I am, and it will all be beautiful.

My relatives were strangely well-behaved yesterday. I had maybe one aunt get really antagonistic, but no one else was wishing for a fight. At least there’s still lots of watermelon in the fridge.
I realized something about economics yesterday, while watching Antiques Roadshow with my dad. He kept complaining about how some of the coins in his old coin collection could only be sold for their metal, and not for their collector value. I said something about how this is a buyer’s market, and nothing like it would have been ten years ago. People are too worried about selling, and know that it’s to the point of just pawning things to pay the bills. So, it’s the buyer that sets the price, and then worries about if they can sell what they just bought. Everything is going up in price, but losing value. It’s the strangest phenomenon.
I’ve also realized, that though my past job was pretty shitty, and one of those “minimum wage-slave” kinds of gigs that I hope never to have to do again, it’s kind of made me a crusader for the lower class. People keep talking about political things, and economic things, and I keep spouting out almost anarchistic dogmas, without really meaning to. I mean, it’s like I was doing field research and one day I figured out what makes and keeps poor people poor and now I’m putting words to their/our circumstances, and it’s all coming out angry and subversive. I’ve never really felt “poor”, even though by poverty line standards I have been, but then again, I’ve never felt the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” that most people seem to be afflicted with, where I empathize with rich people, and hope that some of that trickles down to me. Despite my fancy college education and all my strange eccentric sophistication, (that once actually had a cop fooled that I was much more wealthy than I was and had him almost chasing down my stolen wares until I told him that it was just a fifteen dollar backpack and a book of poetry), I’ve come out with some pretty hard life lessons, that maybe hopefully made me a better person. Or maybe I’m just romanticizing this shit too much.
Also: there’s a huge, viscous dog that got loose outside, and I’ve been instructed to poke it with a stick if it comes at me while I’m outside while my parents are at church. I keep hearing a small dog yelp in the next yard over, and it makes my heart sad.