Reflecting on Events

My last home in Simi Valley, Ca



My new home in Halifax, Va

I have been looking at my past posts and trying to figure out what I would like this blog to be about.

I have done emotional posts and I have done innocuous posts more about the differences in my everyday life, you know, the writing that will not get me into trouble with anyone. 

Guess which one gets more hits and more comments?  The more emotional writings.

Plus, I believe that there is a lot of my family reading and I did preface this blog with a disclaimer.  I do not want to hurt or offend, but if you are interested in my brutal gut-wrenching facts, which I don't mind sharing, then you need to be willing to deal with the aftermath of emotions.

I was stunned at the amount of guilt others expressed to me when I shared some of the events of my early childhood.  I am glad, guilt is one of the very few emotion that spurns a change in behaviour.  The problem?  I have no need of your guilt.  I have my own to deal with.  I do not like pity either, now I know that certain feeling is connected to my pride.  I feel inferior when it takes pity for someone to be nice to me, but even more than that, things don't normally go well if that is the reason for someone taking an intersest in me because I tend to get abandoned the first chance presented.  I don't blame them.  The person did not invite me because they wanted to be with me, but because they felt an obligation.  That hurts much more then being ignored.  To witness first hand how inept I am with other people, to know that my personality is not enough to overcome the awkwardness.  I figured out pretty early that I needed a PR rep, a scout to run ahead and prepare the others for me.  I badly need an advocate to break the ice and translate for me. 

I also do not dwell on my abuse.  I do not poke at the wound to make it fester.  I am fascinated by the people who hold grudges.  I do not understand why I would want to stunt myself and give the abuser that much control over me.  I feel sorry for the person who makes me atarget to feel better because to me, they have the deficiency.

The point is... I do not share my traumas to get a reaction from others.  I have a very specific reason for writing the abuse down. 

I want you to know why I make my decisions.

I feel that my learned behaviours are often criticised and if I twist my head and squint my eyes I can usually see it from the other persons point of view.  Which then strips me of my defenses because I can see how they are correct for what their eyes see.   What hurts me so much is the fact that they are Wrong! So very wrong about the why of my action and my explanation usually make things worse.  I am not lazy and I am not malicious. And for someone to really believe that of me cuts deeply into my soul.

So the reason I share what effected me while growing up is what I see as the roots to my misunderstood behaviour.  To me I act perfectly normal and I usually don't know I have caused harm until an explosive confrontation.  I do not like confrontation.  I get tongue tied and feel like I have been blind-sided.  I can take criticism, but not when I am being yelled at.  If you don't like sometime I do then TELL ME!  I am not a little kid who will cry.  I will try my very best to change.  I have always felt like an adaptable person, as long as you take me in consideration of your choice I can handle a lot of things.  I do have two problems.  I can't change how I think and things will never work out between us if I don't like you.  I had a roommate I disliked and to keep life civil I did not speak to her.  She asked me why one day and I just said I had nothing to say, which was true.  She kept pestering me to answer why I didn't talk to her and I almost blurted out that I had nothing nice to say to her.  I wanted to go off of her, but I kept control and let her believe what she wanted about me.

I am the kid that touches the hot stove and then tries to figure out what part of that event caused the pain.  That is what I did growing up, it is what I do now.  I never thought I deserved the treatment I received, but I did think that I had done something to trigger the response, good or bad.  I believe it is my job to figure out the trigger and to avoid it at all costs, if that means disappearing or not interacting with others than so be it.  People on the whole disappoint me.  I don't like to be disappointed, so I avoid them now.

I do not believe people as a whole are evil.  I do think their are some born on the fence and something makes them tip, but mostly I have learned that people strike out due to hurt and to fear.  And for some reason I have a target on my back... and on my head...and on my chest....and so on.

I have always felt that if I could figure out why I was considered a target then the ill treatment would end.  Unfortunately, That hasn't been the case.  My best defense has been to disappear.  That strategy comes with many downsides, but I have learned to live with them and even like the quiet.

I don't want to talk much about the recent rampages our society has had to face, but I do want to offer a little sliver of insight into maybe what those young men were feeling because I too would entertain the thoughts of taking a rifle, going to the top of a building and picking off the horrible people who made my everyday life a living hell. 

For me the fantasy felt wrong.  Not only did I know that I could not practical achieve the goal, but I knew I could not deal with the consequences.  I think that is one of the marked differences in men and women.  Men are able to turn off their feeling to get the job done and feel comfort in the practical tasks needed to reach their goals.  Planning is very fulfilling whether it is renovating a bathroom or organising the purchase of weapons, planning in its self is the comfort.

Then to actually go through with the thoughts, well that takes a complete turn off of emotion.  But where is the why? For me, I wanted desperately to be heard.  I thought I wanted my opinions to matter to the world.  I thought I wanted to be a superstar with fame and money.  That wasn't it.  It has taken time for me to figure it out, but I just wanted a safe, non-judgemental person that would listen to me.  I needed to feel connected even if I didn't feel understood.  The men who performed the violence felt in control, they felt feared and the felt power, all of the emotions that were missing from their every day lives and for the short while of the rampage everyone in the world listen.

How powerful is that result.  To know that people across the world were listening to your brutal actions and they understood, maybe not the why, but they understood the pain and fear of the victims and our hearts went out.

We have become capable of huge leaps in technology.  We can talk and see people across the world and that is fantastic, but are we taking care of the people close to us.  I am sorry to say, but for many, there were breakdowns in the families of the people who performed these acts of violence.  And was their a community to back the family up?  Was there a church group?  How about scouts or a Boys and Girls club?  When I felt my family was useless and my school was hell, it ended up being my church friends that made the difference in my life.  We are drifting from the core of where we live for the support we need.  We are looking to professionals to "fix the problems" when we only see them once a week and in reality children are stuck in the house for hours, but they never talk because one person is on the computer while another person is on the laptop.  I know.  I have seen it happen and my jaw drops.  To me when you are in the room with another person you talk and engage, if you are not interested in doing that then you leave.

Teenagers are roaming the mall not in chattering excited groups, but with a cell phone in their hand typing away.  The disconnection and inability to even see the lay of the land on a level deeper that bubble gum frightens me.  I worked with behavioural children that needed deeper ways of connecting because talking about the weather or the local sports them wasn't going to work with them.  Now I am finding we all need to learn how to have an active, meaningful conversation with another person in front of us.

Please, take care of those closest to you.  Choose to listen and observe those family and friends that matter to your heart, because everyone needs to be known well enough that we can be talked down from the ledge.

I know I am "preaching to the choir" when I write this.  I am amazed at the good mothers I see in my close and extended family and I do not envy the sacrifices that are made by the children's parents. 

Christmas Traditions: Giving

My 2nd Christmas at 15 months old and still no hair.

In times of plenty my parents would share the wealth.  Before I knew about charity organization advertising for presents to give toys too, my Mom would organize a Christmas for a less fortunate family.  She would ask at church about a family in need and find out the particulars i.e. ages, sex, how many children and so on. 

Then came the shopping.  She would ask my opinion on gifts.  I would help by wrapping the square boxes, don't ask me to do the irregular shapes.  I remember her baking bread and muffins and getting jars of jam ready.  We would all pile into the car and try to quietly help heap the boxes of stuff on the porch without getting caught.

I clearly remember my father calling the family after we came home, pretending to be Santa Claus he told the family to check on the porch for their early Christmas delivery.  It was so exciting.  It was so fun.  I loved hearing the screams of pleasure and excitement coming through the phone. Because my parents were willing to share, somebody I did not know or would ever have anything to do with, were very happy.

Unfortunately we did not do the Christmas for another family every year, but we did it enough for the tradition to stick in my head.  Once we moved to Simi Valley and my parents had to worry about a mortgage the elaborate giving stopped, but when a family we really like was in trouble because the father had lost his job before Christmas, my mother sprang into action.

She was able to organise helping with another family, so the burden wasn't only on us.  It was like I remembered, buying the gifts for the family and wrapping, but this time I knew them, which added another layer to the giving.

As we grew older we would ding-dong ditch the gifts and now that I think of it, we did not do big Christmas's for families, but we would ding-dong ditch our favorite Santa cookies every year, which became our new form of the giving tradition.

This certain year we organized our gifts and a Christmas dinner into boxes.  That rush of adrenaline and excitement building as we delivered the items.  This time was a ding-dong ditch and I was to do it.  I was pretty fast for a fat girl.  I picked a spot to hide and rang the door bell.  The family was home and from my secret place I watched the mother's head shake back and forth in disbelief as the two gathered the haul into the house. 

I liked the anonymity of the giving.  My offering wasn't judged on how I looked or what I gave.  It was taken as an offering of giving, of love and of happiness.  The mother was solemn and a little grave to see what others had done for her children and that was true emotion.  That emotion was not displayed because I came to the house for my congratulation or because I wanted praise.  It was how she really felt in that small moment of time.  That is what I live for.  That is what I want to feel and to experience, but I have come to realize that profound emotion in another is a rare occurrence.  They have to be willing to let their guard down and I know for me that is near impossible, so the emotion I wish to feel is absent.

I did attempt my own continuation of this tradition.  I was in charge of the Young Women in my church ages 14 -16 years old.  I had to think of something to do together every week and I decided to give a family a Christmas tree fully decorated.  It filled up a month and a half of activity nights.  I found unfinished ornament and I had the girls find designs they wanted to try.  Every week we would work on the ornaments for the tree, some were very creative.  Finally on the last night only two girls showed up to deliver the tree and gifts, but it didn't matter.  I began feeling that old rush as we prepared the tree by putting the lights on and packaging the handmade ornaments into nice boxes.  For a nominal amount of money, but lots of work we had a very dramatic gift prepared.

I was in charge this time and I knew I could not run as well, but it didn't matter the house had a locked fence around it!  We stood on the sidewalk considering and conferring.  We couldn't leave it all on the sidewalk anybody could take it.  One of the girls noticed the ornament boxes fit under the gate, so we pushed those under.  Right as we ran out of ideas, a truck pulled up.  We scrambled afraid it was someone from the family.  One of my girls was brave and talk to the man who excited the car and found out he was a friend.  He agreed to open the gate for us, but the family must have been expecting him because we heard the front door begin to open.  The girls should have been in Track and field they took off like jack rabbits.  I lost my charges, but I figured we could meet back at my car.  Sure enough my rag tag group slowly came out of the shadows, almost getting caught was quite an added thrill. 

We drove back to the church meeting house on a high.  It provided a bonding experience for all of us.

I am impressed with the mall trees hung with large tags with the stats of a child in need and I am very grateful for "Toys for Tots" and other such organizations.  I have been lucky enough not to feel the pain of no holiday until I was older, but dumping a pile of toys into a collection box does not hold a candle to those ding-dong ditching trips.

I went without my family and Christmas Traditions for a period of time, twice on my Mission and then again when I lived away from my parents.  I did not know that the traditions we shared as a family made the Holiday time different from the rest of the year.  For the short time leading up to Christmas our priorities change.  The daily grind can be lifted.

For me it is not the material possessions that make the Holidays come alive, which I know makes it difficult for others to give to me, it is actually "the thought that counts".  Isn't that funny.  Picking my gifts, I need a hint with what they want, but I like to think about the kids and how they have changed. 

I want to close this collection of Christmas post with my thoughts on Christ.  Yes, he was born at a different time of year and Yes, many of the traditions that are celebrated originate from pagan, non-christen roots, but I am impressed with how the early Christens were able to celebrate their own beliefs within a hostile culture.  They used the same symbols as their counter-parts, but they changed the meanings to worship Christ.

I have been listening to a Christmas radio station with a wide mix of styles.  "White Christmas" and "Winter Wonderland" are well represented, but the station has been playing many classic hymns by solo artist and choirs.  I have felt my heart swell more than once as I listen to the words.  I am grateful that there is truth in these songs.  I am glad that every child knows the words to "Silent Night" and though the meaning might not break through to the mind.  I know the words pierce the heart when a child sings the words "Holy infant so tender and mild."  I believe and know that Christ is "the word of the Father, now in flesh appearing".

I miss the relationship I had with Christ earlier in my life.  I realize that Christmas seems to have become more of a secular holiday bent on material possessions, but I still see and feel moments of worship tucked into the tradition of our hearts.

I know that not everyone celebrates Christmas.  I do and I hope that each person can honor what their season of giving is about.  For me it is Christ.

Try to give anonymously. Give just to give. Put some effort, thought and a tiny bit of sacrifice into your Christmas. It changes your heart, if only for a small moment.

Family, Love and Sacrifice can never be taken away from our Christmas forever.

Christmas Traditions: Santa Cookies

A PLATE OF OUR FAMILY SANTA COOKIES!

 

Best Birthday cake set ever!  Loved this book,
would look at it for hours trying to pick a cake.

I am not sure how this tradition started.  I asked my mother where she found the design for the cookies and she can't remember.  I believe it was in a magazine.  When I was little my mother had her fingers in all kinds of pies.  She painted with oils and watercolor.  She built elaborate Gingerbread towns and she made wedding cakes, which then transferred over to birthday cakes.  I had some fabulous cakes.  I still remember when she made the "Three little Pigs", the Wolf and their straw house.  The cakes were very professional looking.  I found a picture of the design.  In an ironic twist our oven broke on my next birthday and my mother had to scramble.  My cake was made of various Hostess cake treats i.e. snowballs, cupcakes and Twinkies, it was a bit of a let down after the year before, but I survived.

So, the Santa cookies were a natural extension of her talents.  I globed onto them because they were easy.  Now I know that is a relative term, easy.  We would make Christmas sugar cookies every year and my younger brother and I would try to use every single cookie cutter.  No plan, but Mom would just cut out her one shape, which did not seem right to me.  After the cookies were baked came the decorating. 

Decorating cookies is hard. 

I did not like my child-like crocked lines.  I wanted my cookies to look like the cookies in the magazine.  Just because I was 5 years old was no excuse.  I wanted straight lines.  I wanted smooth frosting.  I wanted the Angels wings to sparkle and the candy canes to be red and white.  It was really hard and I gave up, luckily they still tasted fantastic, so I never got too frustrated.

Later in my twenties I finally learned how to get the perfect cookie design and I was grateful for my mother's Santa cookies because I did not want to go through what Martha Stewart was telling to do to get the frosting just right plus I am not a fan of how Royal icing taste and that was the frosting you had to use.

I figure this tradition is going to disappear because only my mother and I know how to do the cookies.  So for this blog I am showing how to decorate our very Special Santa cookies.  Mom was quite incensed when I told her I was going to do this, but I figure family can print these instructions out and maybe the tradition will continue.

You will need-

Favorite Sugar cookie recipe cut into Hearts (any shape heart will work, but it should not be too small)

Favorite Frosting recipe set aside a small amount to make into red for hats( make sure you have red food coloring)

Star Tip and a bag to pipe white frosting

Round Red Hots for Santa's nose

Chocolate chips for Eyes(you can also use mini M & M's)

 

Turn the heart upside down and put a triangle of red frosting.

Pipe a dot on the top point of the heart for the puff ball of his hat and then run the tip across the bottom of the triangle for the fur trim of Santa's hat.

 

Next follow the shape of the heart with stars to form his beard.  Do an extra tall spot in the middle for his nose.  Then fill in the checks with two or three stars.  Add two stars under the white hat trim for his eyes.

Place the red hots for his nose and the chips for eyes.

You are done!

For how cute these cookies are the effort is well worth it.  And of course, they taste great too!  We used to ding- dong ditch our creations through our friends.  I miss those times.

Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy Holidays.  Our traditions make us who we are, whether we know it or not.

 

Christmas Traditions: Christmas Tree



My 1st Little Tree away from home. 
 Made the a lot of the little decorations.  My companion
 felt we had to give it away, which I agreed with,
 so we ended up with...

It is just not the Holiday season to me without a live, pine smelling decorated Christmas tree in the corner of the room.  I went some years with out a tree, two when I went to Montana for my mission.  That first years was terrible.  I arrived in the mission field(to the area I would serve) on Dec. 10th, about a week in I realized that I would not have the time to establish connections with the people well enough to feel at home.  I really didn't care about presents, I remember pining for a Christmas tree.  I was hoping that some members would surprise us with one, but my heart knew that was a fool-hardy want. 

I agreed to a macrama plant holder/tree hanging on the window.

 The 2nd year I had just returned to the mission field right at the Holidays again after being home ill for 3 months.  I was angry and dishearten to return, but I felt I had to live up to my commitment. 


That year the Elders(Male missionaries) had a fake tree packed away in their mobile home.  They put it up and us sister's didn't have anything.  I made a tree on the wall with some garland.  My companion and I made the best of it.



The Elder's Tree



But I remember the difference I felt without the tree.


                                                       My desperate attempt at a tree. I made the garland from cereal and bought a kit to make the ornaments from beads.  The tree is just some garland on the wall, not to bad for no money.

I was taught that the tree is the chance for a decorative artistic statement and I loved it.  We didn't grow up with the red and gold tree that is normal for most homes, no, our tree was pink and white with ornaments I wasn't allowed to touch.  In early life, Mom was nice and we had a kids tree that had the cool bubble lights on them.  We were allowed to have the funny stuff on that tree, but the living room tree was highly theme.  As I grew older, I would look in catalogs trying to decided what I wanted my tree to someday look like.  My mother had a business at the time, so we were able to find all kinds of ornaments I had never seen in homes. 

In recent years my mother started collecting the Fairy ornaments made from Cicely Mary Barker Fairy prints.  My mother has always loved her work, even to the point where she used her artist skills to paint the prints herself and hang them in my bedroom, so when she saw the ornaments she fell in love and our tree changed. 


It was so fun to collect all of the fairies and then to find complimentary ornament.  We have fairy horns full of purple flowers, crystal clear birds and leaves,  Beautiful glitter flower balls and purple tassels.  All twinkling under a 1000, white, blue and purple lights.  We love our tree!  It speaks of who my mother and I are.  Plus everything is nice and subtle so you don't think of fairies when you see the tree glowing in the darkness.

That speaks of the Holidays to me.  I love sitting in the dark with just the computer screen on smelling the light scent of pine as Christmas music wafts across the room.  I always feel a sharp pang of disappointment at having to take the tree down.  I think my mom feels the same way because we are late getting our tree and we are very late taking the tree down.  It feels so wrong to me to get the tree right after Thanksgiving and then throw it away after Christmas.  That is just Nuts to me!  We have our tree going into February! Ha! That's a little long I admit.

I have always picked out the tree.  I learned from the best, my mom of course.  We are very particular about the shape and type.  It just has to be a Douglas fir, never got into the Noble trees.  They are to sparse.  The Noble won't hold all of our ornaments, but the main reason is because of the smell.  The Douglas has the sharp pine smell of the outdoors and that is the real reason for bringing a piece of nature into your living room.  Our trees have to have a fat bottom and go into a nice point.  It has to be a fat-bottom tree, we don't care if it has a hole in the middle, that can go towards the wall, but it need to have that right shape.

I wrote this essay as a piece of my personal history.  I think it explains the importance of the tree hunt.

The Christmas tree is very important to me.  The smell.  The lights, decorating it means Christmas to me.  The tradition I loved the most and remember with fondness  was going to the train tracks in downtown Los Angeles to pick out a tree.  I don't have any idea how my parents found out about the hub, but the tradition began while we lived in Burbank, Ca.  We would pile in the car and drive for quite a while to where  the sets of train tracks met.  Box cars full of fresh Douglas firs bound the night before in a white twine by some northern state native were being unloaded right in front of us.  Stripe red and white Tent after plain white tent filled the space, each with rows and rows of trees illuminated with bright bare bulbs in the chilly winter night.  It was usually cold enough to see our breath puff out like dragon smoke. 

One fateful night we found the ultimate Christmas Tradition.  We happened upon a tree auction.  My mother's eye twinkled with a barely contained glee.  We watched as tree after tree was pulled off the box car, twine cut and limbs fluffed to their natural position.  You had moments to decided if this was your tree or not.

My Mother was like a Drill Sargent inspecting her troops.  Each tree on the auction block had to meet a certain list of requirements.  Holes? Gone.  Right size?  No, gone.  Right shape?  Zip, outta here.  Finally, the one would arrive.  The bidding would start causing a buzz of electricity.  It was scary, but really fun at the same time.  Sometimes we lost and had to start the process over, but it was quite thrilling when we won.  We always got the perfect tree,  A Douglas fir full and round at the bottom moving upwards to a perfect point.

And there was Dad to tell us it was the right height and to drag our piney, sappy green treasure to the car, the sweet smelling sap sticking his fingers to the steering wheel.

We hunted those tree like an Amazonian tribe hunts for game.  On Christmas Eve the lights remain on to glow into the morning light.


Every year there were less and less vendors until we knew that our Christmas tradition had disappeared.

Our Tree now.  I tried to do a picture of the hanging fairies and the other ornaments. 

I thought I would leave my parents home and set up my own home and traditions, but that wasn't in the cards,  still I prepared for my own tree.  I bought a collection of glass Disney Ornaments.  My parents go me a 4 ft pink tree and I am very proud of my little creation.  It has mickey heads as the glass ball ornaments and a Tinkerbell tree-top with fiber optic wings.  The tree can't hold all the ornaments, I still have a set of Nightmare before Christmas ornaments in the box.  I am happy to see it glowing in our front hall.

Merry Christmas to Everyone and I hope that everyone can live their Holiday traditions.  I didn't know how important they were when I was little, but now as an adult, they are what make my Christmas.


Hit here to see bigger pics

One of the ways I Cope

Well, maybe this writing is helping me.  I had a bit of a breakthrough with my last post on "How I Think".  It is kind of strange and I am not writing this down  so I can get a bunch of people feeling sorry for me.  I am writing this thought down because it is my reality.  That is very important to me. 

This is my last complaining post.  I did my wallowing and I am done.  I have to deal with the situation I am in and I have decided to let alot of things go.  I can be very stubborn, but I have to stop wishing for changes that aren't going to happen.   I can adapt.  I am just very unsure of how at the moment.

My way of coping through my whole life has been to make up stories.  It started with my dreams.  I used to have very vivid dreams.  They were so powerful that I began a dream journal in my twenties.  I had them from the time I was 6 years old and for a reason I can't explain they stopped within the last few years.  My parents took me to the movie Gremlins.  It was rated G at the time, but that movie really scarred me.  It was with that movie that I began to replay the pictures I saw in my dreams, only it was my family dying instead of the actors.  It was very traumatic for me and I became super careful about what I watched.  I was tricked into seeing Nightmare on Elm Street at a sleep over.  She told me about the bad words, but not the high level of violence.  Let's just say I was awake all night in an indescribable terror because every time I closed my eyes.  I saw myself getting killed.  I did not know how my friend could sleep after watching that movie, in fact I don't remember seeing her again.

I did not really have any playmates when I was younger.  The block is a child's whole life and I grew up in the busy city of Burbank, Ca.  I traveled along my city block from corner to corner during the day, but there were not any other girls my age to play with.  I missed out on the girls social structure from the very beginning of my life.  I don't think it would have really mattered, I found and still find girls to be very confusing.  If I wanted to play with someone it had to be with boys and they could only stand me(and I them) for so long, so I learned to play by myself.  I developed a habit of talking out loud when I played.  It helps me to form my ideas.  I believe that is why we are social creatures.  Talking aloud, even if the other person can't offer a solution, helps to define the emotions we are feeling.  It seems a bit crazy to talk to one's self, but I did not have anyone I could safely express myself to so I began to trust my own opinion.

My Mother went on a trip to England to visit a Sister living there and she left my brothers at home with my Dad, but since I had to get to summer school she had me stay with her friend, Alice.  I was about 8 at the time and Alice's children were much older than me, so I tried to be extra good while I stayed there.  Anyway, Alice had a pool in her backyard.  I had never felt so safe and happy as I did in that water.  I made up games and intricate stories of mermaids and princes.  I talked out loud and I remember feeling a blush of Scarlet when Alice answered one of my rhetorical questions.  I was so lost in my own world I became embarrassed that she had heard me.  But, this was about the time when I began placing myself into the stories on purpose.

It just has become more in depth as I have gotten older.  I use a TV show or characters in a book as the base of my story and then I make sub-plots with me placed in that reality.  I figure out a back story and how I can enter the show just as any other character.  I have my traits.  I have my normal problems, but in my head the other people act like I want them to.  They follow the script that I write, like they are suppose to, none of this unpredictable behavior that I just do not understand.  I don't have visions of popularity or riches.  I don't care about that.  I just have some one who  recognises my strange, but interesting traits and want to be with me, something that has yet to happen in real life. 

So I have a different feeling about actors then most.  I do not understand being obsessed.  Do not get that at all.  The character you watch is not that person, it is an amalgamation of that actors personal quirks and a writer.  That is why when I see an actor I like I do not want to know anything about him.  I do not want his own personal douche bag-ness to sully the character I like so much.  I really do not want to hear about his failed marriages and about how he was picked up for drunk driving because then it messes up his character for me.  What I find fascinating is that I tend to like the physical quirks and vocal intonations of an actor, so I like to research all the different projects they have been in.  With the advent of Netflicks I can have a movie marathon or a new TV show in the queue.

That is how I ended up writing a novel.  I really need to work on it, but the story came from a dream that came out of the blue when I was in college.  I was so taken with the images I saw that I started to write a story to explain what was happening.  I can still remember that original dream even though it has been close to 10 years later.  I never was able to write the dream down because I never had the ability to describe the images.  After I became home bound I decided to try my hand  at writing the pictures in my head down.  I am so bad at placing the commas in the right spots and the technical side of writing that I kind of gave up, but I wrote the First book down into the computer.  That process took more than 2 years.  I have always had a very active imagination and this has become my new way to cope.  I understand that it may never be read, but I realize I am fine with that possibility. I am grateful that I learned a way to cope with out drugs or insane behaviour.  This is terrible embarrassing to me, but through the stories I have been able to endure the lack of social interaction and loneliness.

So here is the kicker.  I do not have a need for a happy ending in any of my stories.  Why, when A). I had not experienced that in real life and B). my life is still in flux.  I do not know how to manufacture the feelings of a "happy ending".  and it took having to consider the ending of my book for me to realize I have no idea how to finish it.  I have found I can only write what I know and that is for the male character to say "no, I don't want you" to my female character, but I know that no one would accept that ending.  Hey, I wouldn't accept that horribleness either, So the book lays unfinished, until I can figure out a way for the two characters to be together without all the mushy gooey-ness that I have read in every book.  I may have dreams of fantasy, but they are nothing like the immature ridiculousness of a romance novel.  I have always been confused by that ideal.

And what is even more disturbing to me is that I don't want to think of anymore stories.  Now they just feel like a mean way of taunting me because I have not only lost the belief that I will ever be a function member of society, but I don't want to bend anymore and be a function member of society..  If I am honest, which tends to be a horrific mess, I do not feel capable of the sacrifice needed to be with another person.  Isn't that just a kick in the pants.  Ha!  That makes me feel better in an off kind of way.  I was in the screwed up category before I became sick, but now huge pockets of myself have shut down.  Moving to Virginia was the death knell for me and I knew it.  I fought for 2 years to stay away from my parents home because it is in the middle of no where.  I  just need more people to sift through and there is no single life in this area.  My fate feels so cruel, but I am trying my best to keep moving forward. 

What do I think of now?  My future has become a big blank spot.  The way I have cope since childhood has become a shallow fleeting exercise in futility.  I feel condemned to do the same thing over and over in a strange form of slavery. I am a very purposeful person.  I have always had my own distinct goals and wants to cling to, but now they are gone.  And I have to say to myself "Oh, Well." to survive.  I guess this is a form of mid-life crisis.  I learned along time ago not to judge myself with the yardstick of the world, but I chose instead to use the one that corresponds to my religion, the yardstick that measures family.  Well, that one is not going to work for me either, so I guess I can believe I can't be measured or I have to accept that in this world, at this time, I am a failure. 

Saying that seems like it should hurt, but instead it is strangely liberating, allowing me to be free of  my own expectations.

How I Think

Oh, The Renaissance Faire!  The one place a fat girl can get some respect!

After reading the comments on the last post, I feel I need to make some things clear about me.  I have never believed I was screwed up.  Isn’t that strange?  I only told a little of the abuse I experienced, so that you the reader would understand why I have modified my behavior.  I did not write the events to have you feel sorry for me or to have a pity-party, to me those events happened and they happened for a reason.  It doesn’t make sense to me that I am treated in a negative manner only because people are mean.  If that is the case, then humans are worthless and I do not believe that. 

I’ve known since I entered school that I think and feel in a different manner then the general population.  I know because of the reactions I get from other people.  I have a completely different take on the world and it is through others reactions that I have come to know what the basic population considers inappropriate.  I don’t know what being over-weight all my life has contributed to my problems.  In many ways I see it as a protection.  I don’t have to deal with the numb skulls of the world because I am abhorrent to them.  I have found myself grateful for not being placed in difficult situations because of my looks, for example I have never worried about any sexual abuse or advancements, a problem for any attractive girl.

I have been trying to think of a way to explain how I do see my space and unfortunately it sounds so condescending and snobby and pompous and mean.  I know this because defensiveness and anger are the immediate response to my words.  The reactions continues to surprise me.  It continues to frustrate me because all I want to do is connect to another person.  I know that is how I come off to others I meet and I really do not mean to.  I just don’t understand how others can’t see what I see. 

I have tried to soften my expectations of others towards me.  My last friend is still my friend because she is willing to go down into the deep end of the pool.  I have come to understand that this is a very difficult process for her and others, so I try not to demand the time it takes to become comfortable enough to open up to one another.  I am so disheartened by how shallow everyday life is and how shallow we must be to live in everyday life.  I believe that humans are capable of reaching for greatness, not as the world defines it, with money and power, but as a being able to feel the inner workings of the environment around them.  We have such potential to feel and yet most everyone I meet is bogged down with concerns I do not understand. 

It has taken me much thought and experience to try and come up with an explanation of how I interact with the objects in my space.  I hope this will make sense and give you, the reader an idea of what it is like to be me.  I see small threads coming off of the things in the world.  A person is a collection of emotions and wants which in turn is a thread.  Each of those threads represents a connection to something else.  It could be to an inanimate object, it could be to children or it could be to an emotion.  Normally I can tell what a person obsesses about because that is the strongest thread and most of the time, people are not concentrating on something positive like joy, and they are more likely to be in a negative state.    I react to those emotions, not to the careful constructed facade that average people used to navigate through everyday life.  I do not see the mask.  I react to the threads in a person and to those connections, so I know my behavior and what I say comes off sounding terribly wrong.  I have an example.  This event helped to crystallize my resolve in staying true to myself despite how much others hurt me.  I was able to be a Behavior Therapist for children with challenges, but were being main-streamed in a normal class.  I felt like I understood those children very well and I felt like I was helping them, but I wasn’t doing it in the way the other special Ed teachers wanted.  So I was attending the special Ed class after lunch and I let my student do what he wanted in that class.  He would manipulate the teachers to do his homework and I just thought more power to him.  We were sick of each other by that time of the day and the teachers expected this awful behavior out of the kids, so they got it.  Anyway, there was a boy in that class who I also dealt with in during the day.  I knew he had a big mouth, but I treated him like any other student and he always behaved very well for me, so I was surprised to hear that he would start brawls and bring weapons to school.  His family life was horrendous with his mother involved with multiple men.  He was only in 6^th grade and this boy had the most disgusting, dirty thoughts.  I could feel how deeply he hurt.  He wasn’t in the class because he had a brain problem.  He was there because of the screwed up way he had been treated and he did not trust adults.  I liked him, so during that 5^th period I would let someone else deal with my student and I would take on helping this disturbed boy.  I was also in his math class, so I knew the assignments and lessons of the day and would help him get his homework done.  I did not bully him. I did not yell, but I also did not give him the answers.  I tried to let him talk and I tried to let him laugh.  I thought as long as he got his work done that I was being successful, but others didn’t see it that way.  He had his feet up on the chair rail, not on the seat, but on the metal bar under the seat and this woman came in yelling at him to keep his feet off of the furniture and how dare he disrespect her by having his dirty feet on her items.  Then she turned on me for letting him do it.  My jaw dropped open from shock.  This boy was hurting every second of the day and he was attacked by an adult because of me.  This story sounds like a no-brainier.  It sounds like I am in the right and all my stories will sound that way because you are hearing my truth.  I do not know what the other adults in the room were seeing or feeling,  to them I was in the wrong.  I was accused of not doing my job because I did not yell at my students in front of the other children and therefore in front of the other adults.  I felt like he had enough humiliation to deal with and I would nod to him if he did something inappropriate during the class then talk to him afterwards.  I do not put on a show.  I do not have a facade.  I don’t know how to be fake and I don’t know or understand how to deal with those traits in other people.

I have a reason for my actions even if you don’t understand.  I see the connections.  I see the pitfalls.  I follow the threads and I see a problem about to happen, but nobody believes me because the problem is 3 thread connections away. 

How do I use the words needed to put what I see in perspective.  These are not concepts that I can communicate.  I am using the basest part of myself.  I don’t know why I can feel these things.  I don’t know why I know with such assurance.  I stick by what I feel and I see the line and I become immovable.  I realize I seem pompous, snobby and mean, but I know that is because they don’t see what I see.  I am just so shocked at how blinded the average person is to real connections, to real emotions.  I reach out all the time in the only way I know how and I am rejected.  I don’t care anymore.  I can’t live with the frustration anymore.  I am too sick and too tired to deal with the hurt.  The hope and belief that I would find someone who understood me is gone.  Life is pretty awful without hope, so to survive I have shut many of my feelings down.  That way I can live in a void and be fine.  And I am..., fine that is.  Fine for the situation I am in.

This has been an experiment, a way for me to connect, but I only have a little stat bar that says how many people looked at the page, to me the words that I carefully crafted have disappeared into a black void, no conversations have been spurned by the words, this blog as been a very lonely experience and I have been surprised by that fact.  Lonely in the fact that I have to continue living with the things I write.  Each time I come to this site I am faced with the posts I have written, staring at me, pushing me to remember when I just want to banish the truths to the back of my brain. I was encouraged by quite a few people to write a blog and one night when I couldn't take my thoughts anymore I did, hoping to feel some relief, but that is not what has happened. 

I Won 2nd place in the Costume Contest

I want to be as shallow as a puddle.  I want the world to just bounce off of me, to be able to feel in the moment and if that means turning off  what makes me Rebecca, then I am fine with that. 

I have plenty of fun harmless stories.  I am such a silly girl in many ways that I am sure they will provide some entertainment.  I'm not sure I want to lay myself bare anymore.  I don't know.  I feel so intensely that I would rather not feel anything at all then to feel the negative emotion that comes at me.

Of course I could be completely wrong about myself.  I have never had anyone stick by my observation.  I did get told I was right when having a heart felt conversation with a person, usually in the middle of the night clouded by exhaustion, but it is like I do not exist in the bright light of day.  But here is the kicker, I don't have any interest in trying anymore.  That maybe the wrong state of mind, but I can't help it.  The most wonderful person could be living 2 houses down and I will never know, because I don't want to go through the gut wrenching process it takes to know another person.  That means for all my complaining I am not going to do what is needed to progress and that idea is so appealing I plan to wallow in it for a while.

 

Love, A Four Letter Dirty Word

What is love?  Everyone in the whole world is screaming for it.  Can anybody define it?

So many words are used to try and explain that one little word.  Is love what I read in the "Twilight" Books of the world?  What I feel to be the teenage obsessive version or is it the happy ending of the movies with the main characters jumping into bed with one another. 

What is love, that I feel totally incapable of having it?  That is all my life has been about searching for that elusive feeling.  Others thought it was strange that I did not want the blistering heat of fame.  I never wanted that.  I wanted to be the type of actor that showed up in every movie and TV show as a little character.  I wanted people to think they had already knew me from somewhere.  All of my actions have been private and one on one because I just wanted a person that I could feel safe with.  One person that I could share my opinions with and get a conversation back.  One person who I felt heard me.  He didn't have to agree, but I need to feel connected.

I figured out pretty early that sex was a short-cut to that connection.  Sex is a strange monster, maybe a shape-shifter who starts out cute and cuddly, the problem is I would watch as it morphed into a savage soul sucking beast with sharp teeth and large claws.  I am not a prissy girl.  I hung out more with people outside of my standards and they would get destroyed by the mis-use of sex.  More pain and anguish followed the perversion then the joy of the act.  I had no desire to be broken into pieces so I did not enter the world I witnessed.  I wish I could say it was my amazing strength of morale fiber, but the reason I didn't indulge is because I didn't find anyone that I could trust.  There was no emotional connection to anything or anybody.

You know what thought keeps me awake, "What is wrong with me?"  I don't fit anywhere and that is wearing me down to the bone.  I have tried.  I swear to you that I have tried to fit into so many groups.  I love theatre, but I was not pretty enough to enjoy any important roles.  A little resentment, but I tend to be very realists in my logic.  It can be daunting to spend hours waiting to go on for one scene.  I knew I couldn't go very far because of my weight.  I was in band, a great place for nerds, but I wasn't ever nerdy enough to blend in with them.  I tried to be a proper "typical" Mormon, but the chasm becomes very wide when you are in a religion devoted to the family and you don't have one.  It is wonderful, but to be an old maid at 25 is rather daunting and now that I am upper thirty's there is no way or rather they are very slim, that I will ever have a family of my own.  I went to Fashion Design college where I was introduced to the Homosexual life style.  I lived with a gay man(sort of, we had an apt. together).  I watched their interaction and decided that I had no desire to be in the gay lifestyle.  I also figured out the materialist voracious appetites of the fashion world and I could not allow myself to be swallowed up in that world.

So here I am struggling to find a place.  I either reject or I am rejected. 

I read a comment to one of my first blogs and it said something like,"...I read about a girl desperate to be loved."  I felt insulted when I first read the comment because I do not act desperate.  I despise when others debase themselves for scraps and in many ways I would rather starve then bow my head to another in submission, but I am more than willing to give myself to those who  take the time.  I have had bright shinning spots of love given to me.  That is how I know what love is.  That is why I crave that form of love, not what the world says is love.  I want to be bound to another.  I want to know without hesitation that he will follow my lead as I would his.  I want my concern to be focused on another and his concerns focused on me, so that it is an active relationship.  I want too much.  I know I do.  I want accept that I want desperately to be loved, but I am not willing to give that love to just anyone.

I was listening to an LDS wedding, the kind done in the temple and it is doctrine that the two people are sealed together for this life and into the next.  That's along time.  I was listen to the words said in the ceremony and I felt myself physically jerk at the promise being asked because of the striking difficulty I was having with the concept.  The man asked the bride and groom if they were willing to give themselves to one another.  Are you willing to give up your time, talents and your will to the other person?  I felt slapped in the face because I knew that I would have to answer that question with a resounding "No!"  I felt that I was completely closed to allowing another person into me.  I knew that was a problem and I worked very hard to change those feelings.  I opened up and I was able to bend.

I believed that someone could love me, that it was possible.  I believed through all the crap that was happening to me, one person would see me and my talents and love me for them.  That did not happen.  I was not chosen despite all I did to change.  And I return to the question, "What is wrong with me?"

I am watching my life deteriorate before my eyes.  My emotional and physical health has shattered and I don't know what to do anymore.  I set up a book club back in Simi Valley and it was a magical circle in time.  I felt heard, even though my thoughts and feeling were normally contrary to the group and it was a special time to honestly express ourselves.  My mother has tried to start one here in Virginia and it really is the people who make a difference.  I sat in that room feeling frustrated and disconnected.  I went into the bathroom sat on the toilet and cried in desperation.  It felt just the same as it did when I was 15 at a church dance and all the boys I asked to dance with said No, with a couple of hell No's, sprinkled in.  The same rejection, the same frustration, the same disconnect.  I can't stand it anymore.  I don't have the strength do deal with the hurt anymore.

I am going to take a break from writing in this blog for awhile.  It was an experiment to try and connect, but this is so one-sided I don't think it is working.  I don't know if I feel safe in this forum.  I don't know if I want you to know the real pain.  I have had to go numb as a defense and I don't know if I can endure defrosting my cold heart.

Thank you for reading.

I Almost went to BYU

                                I wanted that cute face in a commercial!

I bet many of you didn't know that I was up for a full scholarship at Brigham Young University.  I don't like to discuss the events that feel like a failure or that hurt me, but this is quite an interesting way my life could have turned.

I actually wanted to act when I was a cute kid.  I didn't know about the heartless nature of the biz when I was young and resented my parents a little bit for not putting me into commercials.  I think I asked my mother once and since Dad was in show business he was disgusted with the idea,  I let it drop.  My school life was caught up in Band, but that fell apart in the 11th grade and I found myself without an elective.  I was picked to play a very small part in the school play the semester before and I decided to throw myself into Drama.  It wasn't much of a program, but I sucked all the knowledge I could from the teacher.  I was able to letter 4 times in only 2 years.  I was apart of every show with my finger in every piece of the pie.  Not only did I act, but I directed, helped the teacher pick out costumes, did the sets, helped with the props and with the lighting design.  I met some of the nicest people in that program.  I didn't feel like such a freak in the theatre, maybe because every one else had their freak flag flying.

For my graduation present my parents actually paid for me to go to a summer acting workshop at BYU.  My grandfather worked at the University's labs, so I could stay with them and he would drive me to the school, that way my parents only had to pay for the classes and not room and board.

This did put me at a disadvantage with the rest of the peers who share every minute with each other.  There are always clicks, little groups that decide the dynamics of the interaction.  This was my first time away from my parents, which wasn't a problem.  I tend to be independent to a fault, which happened in this instance.  The other students had paid to live in the dorms and eat at a special cafeteria, so for breaks I found myself alone.  The food was inexpensive and I plunged into BYU living by myself.  I do wish I had a bed to go to, but I shopped in the bookstore where I found something to read.  I lay on the grass listening to my Walkman and reading until it was time to go back to class.  Others very rarely wanted to do a scene with me, so I tried to find monologues that I liked.  It was very nice to practice in the empty black box theatre making  sure I had my lines memorized, while I waited for everyone to return.

After a week I got into a rhythm with the school.  I found another outcast in the class and we became friends during the break times.  I did stay in the dorms one night when I knew I could not get a ride to school.  I told the teacher and he was able to get me a bed rather than have me missing for a day.  It was horrible!  I laid in that hard, too small bad wondering if anybody could really sleep on such a torture device.  The bed was bad, but it really was the bathrooms that chased me away.  You could not pay me to deal with communal showers, no sorry, not going to happen!  Then the dorm was on top of the hill from where the class was.  I could not believe the hike!  Reality of living at this school was setting in and I had yet to experience snow.  People do not make a difference in my choices, sure most of the other students going to BYU would share my religion, but I didn't think that was necessarily a good thing.  I did not have a base to my own beliefs yet and going to BYU didn't excite me.

So I had this thinking when my teacher asked to speak with me.  He was professor of the drama program at the school.  He asked to see me during the lunch break, which we only had 30 minutes for.  I told him I did not eat with the other students and he followed me to the public cafeteria.  He asked about my family and what I was planning on doing with my life.  I told him what I could, I was only 17 years old at this point and not sure of anything.  Finally he asked if I would like to come to BYU with a full drama scholarship.  He had checked into my grades and this meeting had been an interview.  I was completely caught of guard that someone could give me such a huge gift.  I was very flattered and thought that something good had finally come of all my hard work.  He said he still needed to work things out and not to tell anyone what he had offered.  I was so happy that I had been chosen for once.

I am sure you are wondering what happened. 

They gave it to someone else.  The night of the closing awards banquet the teacher came up to me and said that he had to give the scholarship to someone else.  He had found out that her mother was dying of cancer.  Trump!  A dying mother gets a scholarship over a lonely fat girl any day.  I couldn't even complain.  How terribly childish would that be?  I was finally being recognized by people who did not know my past. Who had a clean slate with me and in their eyes I had been successful.  I had earned the chance to be in this program and it had all been ripped away by a girl with a dying mother.  I did not feel resentment, more like a profound sadness.

My heart harden even more that day and when the plane took off to take me home to California I was more than happy to never see that school again. 

After that summer, my mother forced me to go to the community college.  I also got an agent and began going on auditions.

A Story that has become Family Lore

I am sure every family has one story they tell whenever they get together.  Well, this is my story.  Every one of us kids was there to experience it and everyone of us has our own point-of-view to share within the story.  I wrote it down as a essay for school in 2001 and I have tried to keep a version of the story in my records.  Enjoy!

I Don't Like Jeeps

“Becky!  You better get down right…”, the words of my younger bossy brother were lost.  I literally was flying.  The problem?  I was flying out of a fast moving jeep.

            My father works as a paint foreman in Hollywood, Ca.  When I was around 8 years old, he accepted a job on location.  It was for the movie “Racing with the Moon” starring Sean Penn.  My dad was expected to go with the crew to Mendocino, Ca for about 6 weeks. There he would be a stand-by painter.

            My mother was happy for the money, but not with dad being gone so much, plus being alone with 4 kids doesn’t help.  There was me, Becky, the 8 year-old middle child and only girl.  The older twin boys Ben and Caldie, who were about 12 years old and my 5-year-old brother Charlie.  We kept mom busy.

            One day, mom put the 4 of us in our tiny Honda and started to drive.  I remember fighting over the front seat.  I always lost.  One of my favorite memories of that trip was a dense forest.  “Return of the Jedi” had just come out.  My brothers were convinced that we were standing in the exact spot a scene had been filmed.  Exact spot, no ifs, ands, or buts.  The exact spot.  Never did it occur to our child minds, that we could be wrong.  It turned out, my mother was taking us up the coast of California to visit dad on location.  We were so excited to stay in a hotel room, go on set, and to eat in restaurants for every meal.  Everything was new to me.  My 8-year-old senses were reeling.  I was having a terrific time.  Then it happened, mom woke up sick.  Not just feeling queasy, but ill.  We couldn’t turn on any lights or make any noise.  Dad thought it would be best to take the kids on an outing.

            We poured into a very old army jeep that dad had been given on loan from the crew.  I fought for the front seat.  Ahhhh, gypped again!  I decided to sit on the edge of the back seat and hang onto the crossbar overhead.  Off we went to conquer the local mountain.  Up, up, up, we trudged, occasionally I would look over and see the road give way to nothing.  A thrill of fear, terror and strangely, excitement would zing through me.  Here I was in the back of a vehicle that had no roof, climbing thousands of feet on a California mountainside.

 

This was the look of the jeep.  It was big and loud, but I remember that there was a roll bar between the front seats and the back.

            Finally the sun was starting to lower behind the treetops.  We started back to the hotel.  Here is where family lore takes over.  We began to follow the road down.  I was talking to my brothers, when Charlie noticed the jeep was gaining speed.  He began to tell me to get down on the floor, becoming more and more insistent.  Little did I know that the antique’s brakes had given out with the constant use.  Dad was controlling the speed of the jeep through downshifting. 

Three events came together at precisely the same time.  We were going about 30 mph when we came to a sharp curve in the road.  Charlie huddling in the corner of the jeep decided to tell me at that precise moment to do the same.  Incensed at my younger brother telling me what to do, I released my grip on the jeep’s crossbar to put my hands on my hips, planning to tell Charlie off, when it happened.  The speed, curve and my release of the bar sent me flying.  I was flung out of my seat like a rock from a slingshot.  Thankfully, I flipped and landed on the cushiest part of my body, my butt.  I began to scream.  Not because of my recent trauma, but because of my new view.  Absolute horror filled my soul when I saw that the Jeep was not stopping.  I watched the back of that old rust bucket disappeared from my view with my family inside.  I honestly believed they didn’t know I was gone!  I found out later that my first thought was correct.  They didn’t know I was gone.  A couple camping on an embankment heard my screams and rushed to comfort me.  I remember thinking, “They don’t look so bad.  I guess I will be going home with them.”  I was resigned to the fact my family wouldn’t be able to find me.  The couple had no idea what to do.  The three of us sat in the dirt on the side of the road, an old man patting the back of a screaming 8 year old.

            Meanwhile back in the jeep my brothers went quiet.  Nobody wanted to tell dad I flew out.  “Where’s Becky?” was asked.  Charlie broke down, “I told her to get down.  I told her she would fall out.”  Dad couldn’t stop.  No brakes.  He had to come to the base of the mountain before he could stop and turn around.  When Dad did gain control of the jeep, distraught Caldie pleaded, “No. No, don’t go back.”  He didn’t want to see what was left of me splat on the pavement.

            Eventually I saw dad appear from around the curve of the mountainside.  Relief flooded through me.  Embarrassed, dad jumped out of the jeep.  Together, we realized I had escaped major injury.  I only suffered a twisted ankle, plus some cuts and scratches on my back.  Dad picked me up, cradled me in his arms and at last I got into the front seat.  It was the only one with a seat belt, which was securely fastened around me.

            This event in the family has become one of lore.  To this day Charlie has to say,” I told you so!”  It will be told at every reunion and every family get together.  It will be passed to nieces and nephews, sons and daughters.  Many who hear the story are not surprised to when I say, ”I don’t like Jeeps.”