July 2005 blogposts

Two Easy Steps

I wish all my problems were as easy to solve as flickr.

1. Pull plug
2. Walk away

I've spent most of the day alternating between white-hot rage and cold, black despair. I'm now at John's house, watching the Live 8 concerts to keep my mind off everything.

Jesus Fucking Christ...what else can happen to me in the twelve months since Scott committed suicide last September? My shrink keeps telling me I should write a book about my life. I don't know whether it will be a mystery, a thriller, a tragedy, or a farce. At the moment, I'm just grateful I'm free of the flickr lynch mob.

The next time I come up with an idea, could someone just take me quietly aside, and Bette-Davis-bitch-slap me, HARD? TWICE?

The river above, the river below

I went out with my camera just as the massive thunderstorm front was rolling in over the flooded Red River, carrying logs and branches along in its black, turbulent waters. The river above, the river below. Both spilling over their banks. I was able to get back to John's house before the river above spilled down. Just what southern Manitoba needs, another deluge of rain in an over-saturated floodplain.

None of this would have happened if I hadn't volunteered to delete the Opt-Out thread when slight clutter mentioned it.

Always so helpful and eager to please. Always bending over backwards to keep everybody happy so they have no reason to lash out at me. Always so unprepared when the harsh voices rise in sarcasm, criticism and condemnation.

The lessons learned as the emotionally and physically abused 4-year-old, do not serve me well at 41. Every time I think I've learned better, it turns out I'm still playing by the old rules.

Open Letter to Flickr

I'm back. Something Shiites and Giggles wrote me made me realize I had an obligation to come back and take responsibility for the mess I made.

I don't expect, or want, everyone to forgive me for what I've done. I'll just cope.

I realize that this place is never going to be the same for me. I accept that.

I shared a part of myself online that I usually don't. I realized, not at that moment but soon afterwarrds, that I was using what happened to me as an excuse; my aim had been to provide some sort of explanation of some illogical behaviour.

I take full responsibility for the mess I've created. Maybe I can help salvage something useful out of it still.

If the "academy" I created wants me back, I'm willing to accept their invitation. If they don't then that's OK too.

My new flickr nick is !Quiplash with a ! in front (just like !efatima did when she came back).

Crushed

What's happened this weekend has triggered a downward spiral, but the truth is that I have been slipping for quite some time. I just didn't want to see it.

I spent today in bed, listening to the rain. I haven't showered in days. I haven't plugged the phone in for a week. I haven't cleaned the apartment in several weeks. I'm booking off sick tomorrow and calling to shrink to see if I can see him this week.

I just got the worst case scenario. I got crushed. I am about to go through hell again, and put my family and friends through hell again, especially if my medications need to be adjusted.

"I wish I had never bothered"

I've been off sick from work all week, too depressed to get off the couch.

Today I posted to Flickr Central:

At the moment I just don't have the resilience to cope with the unintentional firestorm I've created. This is just making me more depressed by the day, and I need to get out of the line of fire.

I wish I had never bothered to post my idea in the first place, seeing all the divisions and arguments it has spawned.

I've just had enough. Time to just let it go... there are other people who want to take it forward. Let them take the heat.

The Winnipeg Folk Festival starts tomorrow, and if there was ever a year I could use some folkfest magic, it's this year. Frankly I don't feel like going at all. I am just absolutely, utterly exhausted.

I repeat: the next time I come with an idea for something, just take me aside and Bette-Davis-bitchslap me a couple times. WHY does all the crazy shit happen to me lately? A simple little award-nominations group I create explodes to 2,100+ people in less than a week, and generates all kinds of dispute and conflict. I couldn't make up this madness if I tried.

I must be wearing a sign on my back that says "SLAP ME WITH SOMETHING WILDLY IMPROBABLE". My life cannot possibly get any more fucked-up than it already is at this moment. Maybe I shouldn't say that out loud....

Humbling

It has been humbling (and painful beyond belief) to realize that I need to focus on one key thing in my life: my foundation is cracked.

I'm serious.

I've spent most of the last eight years (1997-2005) trying to build up a network and an identity for myself, failing and flailing as I go along, digging myself deeper and deeper into a pit of my own making.

And it is only the hard way that I've learned that I can't work on the higher-up stuff without dealing with the lower-down stuff first. The fundamentals, the foundational stuff that needs to be stable and strong for you to build upon.

For example, I can now see that it's pointless to try and make a romantic relationship work when I can't even love myself.

It's useless to work myself up over not getting what I think I deserve, because life is *not* fair and there is *no* contract that says, if you follow all the "rules", that you will get what you want. People are not always going to follow the Golden Rule, and God is not some celestial vending machine.

And it's deadly dangerous to suppress parts of yourself so severely, that you land up with a continuous "background process" running in your brain, constantly at work to keep those parts out of your consciousness, in order to "save" yourself. Because in "saving" myself I just burdened myself even more. Being blind to yourself as you really are is worse than any prison.

And that it's better to have a smaller number of closer friends than a Rolodex packed full of acquaintances. One minor miracle of the past eight months has been to realize that I don't have to *do* anything to be loved and valued; I just have to accept that I already *am* loved and valued (even if I don't see things from the same perspective as my friends and family do).

I have to focus on the little things before I can expect to achieve the bigger things in life. Which means accepting that I have cracks in my foundation, areas which were slapped together and now need to be repaired properly before I can move forward.

Painful. Humbling. But necessary.