*click

I had relatively easy teenage years. Probably because I had built up walls and was oblivious to a lot that may have been going on. Like social rules about not talking with anyone unpopular or in a different grade. Looking back, my innocence to such silly things made me cool. Or as one person who taunted me before wrote in my yearbook, I dared to be different.

In my twenties, I was an observer. Looking at others and wondering why I was different. What was inside me that was so lacking that I had never even had so much as a kiss for my entire life. I wasn't looking inwards but causing myself a lot of pain. So it was that at twenty-five, I felt old. These may have been my awkward growing pain years.

And now lately I carry a camera around and actually look at the world. I'm at a place where I love myself and my differences and don't really care how I compare to others. I see a lot of beauty in the people I care about. I wish that they would trust that when I make a move to take their photo, it's because they are looking pretty and not move because my point-and-shoot is slow and if they move it will turn out blurry and I'll have missed the opportunity. Or shall I just leave the camera at home and keep pointing and shouting how pretty you look here and there, then and now? Would you believe me? Or would you need photo proof?

I write this and laugh. Knowing fully how I don't like having my own photo taken.

Thomas The Killer

feel like i just had a shot of caffeine
Thomas came in the window with a very loud meow
i quickly realized he had something in his mouth
he jumped up on the bed
but i shooed him off it
he went into donkey-mode and became hard to move around
he dropped the bird
dead
and i shooed him away
after patting his head to make him spit out the feathers
scooped it up into an empty coffee cup, put the lid on
vacuumed up the feathers
and put the cup into a bag of garbage and took it outside

and this morning he was so cute
lying on my back with his paw on my head
the one with impeccable sense of time
being probably 5 minutes before the alarm...
well, he did dig his claws into my scalp a little
hmmm

oh snap

It's not how well you are loved
but how well you love.

While forgetting for a moment where this notion might have originated or why, I wonder if all adoptees find this phrase jarring. It makes me pause and reflect how I have been focussed on being loved. When I love, I see how beautiful I am and love myself not through their eyes but my own. Yet I certainly have wished many times I were a more loving person. Perhaps I've tried in my own way and it comes out confusing to others. How I openly admire.

I'm feeling dejected at the moment. Apathetic. Like I could just flop, face down on the bed and never get up. Except I couldn't breathe and would want to move my head. And then there would be Thomas and I'd want to snuggle with him. The body does go on. It gets hungry. It needs release of waste. It gets tired. It feels tempted to pet the soft, fluffy, warm cat.

Although things went fairly well seeing my ex's parents for the first time since the break up, I feel the loss of them more now or the knowing of the loss has become real. I find it interesting that they blamed F for the break up of their daughter's first relationship. And that I suspected F of causing our break up. Is there any fire behind the smoke of denial?

I also find it interesting that I feel the closest to tears while walking about. Perhaps because I am vulnerable to attack in public. People criticizing me. Not sure why they think they have the right. Guess it makes them feel better about themselves to put me down. And I do understand why I would be a target, having no current will to fight. So all I can do is put my big black hood up and hope that I look like a scary Demon-worshipper.

Where wit, all?

Drake, the tech, is a talker on the phone.
In person, he will talk and I don't have much more to say than, "Okay."
And then we just look at each other. He expectantly. Me, just waiting to get back to work.
As a tech, he can charge $30 an hour for 1 minute of "work" and I'm a little annoyed that he charged the company 2 hours for calls to me and one of our suppliers. And that he recently referred to my computer as the "main" computer and that his invoices are still addressed to the woman I've replaced.
I wonder if these little annoyances add up and make me even more angry than I would otherwise be at his comment over the phone today.
"Did he pull a dick trick and disappear?" he asked.
Pause.
"He left, yes." I answer.
I wish I had the wherewithal to respond to comments that upset me.
If only I had answered, "Oh you mean as in a castration?"
Or simply ask him to mind his manners or something like that.

boys will be boys
if a woman complains about them
she's being a bitch, is she on the rag?

At a job interview, I was asked how I would be with a lot of "boys will be boys" occurrences, not from co-workers but from customers.
I wish I had asked exactly what he meant and for some examples.
And then suggested to him that maybe he wouldn't have a job vacancy if he personally said it was okay to stand up to whatever crap he was asking me to accept.


all this hypocrisy and sexist crap and violence against women and and and...
this is why I suspect there are more women who write about murder than men.