This could possibly be one of my longest posts on RPC to date, just speaking in terms of sheer vertical space taken up (and it also took me over three hours to write):
Shrooblord said:
But I look for someone to share my more intimate side with. I am incredibly emotional, but guys are always telling you to, always expected to by society, by nature, to 'shrug it off' or let it slide 'like water off a duck's back' (one of my dad's expressions). I see girl friends hug each other profusely, walk arm in arm, hand in hand - sharing physical contact of simply a friendly nature -- one I can never experience... because I'm a 'guy'. Only my hypothetical girlfriend would share with me such contact - and believe you me, I'd treasure it, as well as all other contact with her, like nothing in this world (I have done before with my girlfriend I had then).
And although what I describe are mainly physical aspects of the relationship, I wish to be able to express my emotions as well. These things are intertwined - because they are so close in spirit, I imagine, they can be so close in form, without fear of getting in each other's space, because they know each other's space - because they have shared that with one another. I simply cannot 'suck it all up'. I long for someone to share myself with in such a way I have not been able to with anyone in this world, save for maybe my parents. But also my relationship with them, of course, could never be alike the one I long for. But maybe such a wish is ... only fantasy. I hope it not so.
I'm trying to imagine what it would be like, as I've only ever seen it in the third person. A friend of mine who used to be incredibly depressed even had this sort of bond with her friend, and that's often my point of reference. Whenever I would hang out with them I'd feel the closest thing to loved - but never quite, because while we were able to communicate silently very well on an emotional level, they weren't very intellectual/rational, and that puts up a barrier between certain kinds of conversation and affects the way in which you deal with your problems. They would get into fights, incredibly stupid ones where I would end up being the mediator, and they never seemed to understand my suggestions, they would become confused, as if they'd never considered anything remotely close to the idea and it confounded them, sort of like if someone asks about something astronomical and you can actually give them a correct answer, they almost ignore you; they'd rather leave what they thought was only their imagination as their imagination. "Leave us to deal with our stupid and nonsensical issues in stupid, nonsensical ways." There is no attempt even being made to reach some kind of a greater understanding or solve the issue properly.
It's often the case I find where - and this is a partial reference to something recent on RPC - less-rational people will make themselves believe that the other party doesn't understand them if they evidently aren't quite understanding what the other party is saying. They feel misunderstood because they're so used to thriving in their own sea of emotion that they refute the credibility of allowing anything that doesn't jell with their own personalised illogic aid them. Logic is a binary system that doesn't make decisions for you, rather, it helps you make better ones, and the most obvious one to me is to not do anything that can fuck you up even worse. And yet, people still do, both happy and depressed. The difference is, content people have the mental 'resources' to spend, whereas the depressed do not, they're in a dire need to escape their situation. I understand giving up hope and spending the rest of your days shooting in the dark, but to make that your primary course of action, to demand sympathy for your failure to succeed in a game of chance, to me, is reprehensible. I can empathise with their situation as a whole, I can bond with them over it, I can even understand their aversion to trying something different. If they're going to straight up deny my help because they'd rather just wave their hands in front of their face and back up, never even allowing a single part of themselves to consider it - in short, offer me no respect whatsoever, simultaneously invalidating any experience I may have ever had relating to it - then they are no better, no smarter than the idiotic jock who smirks at you for using big words or will only like you for liking the things that they like. I'm not going to taunt them like I might someone less defenseless, but the amount of admiration I hold for them is roughly equal.
I feel like a bit of an alien though, never having had someone to hug or confide in (in person, that is, and even online to some degree - I'm still afraid to fully express myself towards people). To be fair though, up until I was eleven or so, I was very unapproachable and weird.
Shrooblord said:
I have asked you about your vocal training before, Ad, in light of this.
It's helped me, but from experience, I'm unlikely to be comfortable unless I get pitch-altering surgery, something I've been researching heavily these past few weeks (and much less-intently a few years ago). What I've discovered is that a standard procedure from what seems like the most promising doctor will raise your voice around a fifth or sixth, however, it apparently doesn't actually increase your high range. How this makes any sense I don't really know - how can you alter your default speaking pitch and timbre so much without it modifying your range?
That upset me slightly since, as a singer, I would've liked to be able to sing in a more
naturally female way, something you can't simply achieve through vocal technique. But today I've been thinking about it, and the feminising timbrel difference this kind of a surgery will have on your voice must lend itself to something, maybe make your existing range have some kind of a (probably) more feminine tone. I also can't possibly imagine that it would have
zero increase on your high end, but I'll be messaging the doctor shortly to see if I can get a better understanding as to how the hell that works. Regardless, simply having a more naturally female speaking voice would do me wonders. I don't want to have to speak at an unnaturally high spot, sacrificing so much potential charisma and animation, when I could for a few thousand bucks instead have it repositioned surgically. I'd live in a dumpster for a year if I could in order to make that happen, and that would save me far, far more than a mere $2000-7000.
Shrooblord said:
The one thing I do find myself wondering, sometimes, is how much of a guy am I, really? Sure, I got the parts - I feel I fit the role, too. But this more gentle side of myself, that conflicts so with your typical 'guy attitude' - what people may label 'effeminate' - does it show that I am more receptive to things other guys ignore? Things women do not? I don't get women at all - I still have that defining guy-trait of not understanding girls in the slightest at times - but at the same time, I sometimes get them so well, because I understand their way of thinking at the time - my way of thinking.
This has been rather cathartic for me. I never put into words these feelings inside me, but it's made me realise that I feel like I'm, perhaps, some hybrid. I don't want to get weird about it... label it... I hate labels. All I mean to say is, I guess, please try to understand me. I am still the same Shroobie, after all. I'm just coming to terms with part of my identity that has - for better or for worse - before tried to hide.
Identity is as much a part of us as our orientation, it's who you are, obviously. The brain is what gives us our identity, and it's an organ with no stark physiological differences between the genders, so your question is actually a very legitimate one, free from the realm of opinion. Orientation is only understood through words. Identity requires more, that being not only a label, but a physical appearance as well, which could very well and more than likely be the one you were born into.
On that note, seeing the decision to want your body to match your identity as ridiculous is no different from seeing a gay person wanting to be called gay as ridiculous. Those desires are not caused by very different things, they both relate to hormonal imbalances and a number of other early-developmental issues relating to the brain, and your brain is the ultimate judge of your inner-identity; hormones are only advising your brain with extreme bias. Identity is almost as strong a force as sexual attraction, and suppressing that in someone is how you drive them literally mad.
-- If it sounds as though I'm explaining this to absolutely nobody, that's because it is moreorless in response to something a pretty well-known and influential member said here a couple of years ago on the topic of transsexuality as a whole which was insulting, ignorant and downright nonsensical on every level, and for the same reason the mindset described in the analogy I gave regarding orientation would be. Me bringing this up now is hardly a contending point though, because their head could very well have loosened up after all this time in the same way I'm no longer personalising the definition of 'gender'. I only felt the need to point that out specifically, since it's been bugging me ever since.
Shrooblord said:
I really do not wish to take out this one thing you said and blow it way out of proportion, but as your friend, truly - I mean it when I say this -, as your friend, it brought me a grave shock to the heart when I read this. I know a girl who does this to herself - and I really, really shouldn't be saying this, so I'll leave it as impersonal as it gets. She's truly beautiful, in soul and in mind - but if you could see her arms... my god, if you could see her arms. The poor girl - what she does to herself, what nightmarish darkness must go through her, I cannot imagine. I fear for her life - I fear, one day, she won't be able to face her shadows, she won't see the Sun behind the temporary clouds... and she'll go too far...
In most cases, the people who do it do it as a form of self-therapy. While it's plenty obvious that people get the idea to do it from seeing others do so (unless they were creative on their own), people do it because it
works. Not necessarily in the sense that it helps put them in a better place, but because it makes you feel something. You made a decision that will leave a mark for some time to come, if not permanently. Committing to something like that and knowing that it affects no one but yourself, not even your own social interaction, is something more often done by people who have willpower.
Sounds an awful lot like suicide, doesn't it? It basically is, it's a decision you cannot erase or pretend never happened. The difference is that you get a second, third and a fourth chance, and the permanent repercussions are so small that they make next to no difference in the way you live your life. That is, unless it reaches the point where you've completely covered yourself in them - but again, it's still the same thing, just with larger repercussions that will be harder to not have play a role in your life. To actually contemplate suicide requires an almost distinctly different mindset however, in the same way that tauntingly wishing death upon someone is not the same thing as actually wishing death upon them (sort of).
Shrooblord said:
Please, I say this, you must understand, because you are my friend. And I hope to all benevolent forces possible that you need not experience such darkness. I don't want to be in fear for you. Not for my sake, but for yours. I don't wish that sort of a life upon you and, instead, I hope you can have quite the reverse. You've been through so much - I imagine there can be only more and more you haven't told us. Your tragic encounters have sometimes left me crying. They have. Writing this post has left me almost in tears again. And admittedly, yes, I am emotional and somewhat melodramatic at times - but these tears came from a broken heart. For you're such a kind, lovely soul. How tormented it is by a wicked, crazy world. And how strong you stay in spite of all of it! Resolute, even. If we were a Medieval batallion, I'd gladly call you my king.
Just know that there are other kind souls that will shield you, support you, heal you. I hope I may count myself one of them. Let me extend a helping hand. If that's all I can do, give me that, at least.
Find that creative mountain, Addy. Go stare into the ocean and the stars. Breathe. There's clean air all around you. And if you wish to cry - if ever you wish to cry -, you go right ahead and cry. Let it all out. And remember this, always: you are beautiful. You are.
I'm in an oddly neutral mood right now (if I were feeling more emotional I would probably have a more emotional response), but thank you, very much. I can't express how inspired that makes me feel. Our battalion will certainly be so in a couple of years though, a battalion of art and expression, that is! :bigup:
Jewish Candy said:
So, this is a comparatively minor quotidian convergence zone, but it is a quotidian convergence zone nonetheless so in it goes.
Writer's block. Not so much fiction, but essays. There are so many things I am itching to write about. Prescriptivism. Waxing and waning institutional control of language. Psychiatry and how it reflects the political landscape. The emerging democratisation of 'labels'. Code-switching and how its use can be radical. Style-policing. Acrolects. 'Academese'. Academic gatekeeping. Gatekeeping in general.
But far, far more than that. The above is coherent, the connections are obvious, but it's a drop in the ocean. There's so much more, SO much more. I hate how it all forms a web in my mind, my mind can preconsciously grasp how everything fits together, and it is impossible to put to paper. That's the problem. I can't separate them, but I can't combine them either. Everything is too interconnected and... it hurts. I guess it hurts emotionally because it's unsaid.
I was always good at essays in school because I had a knack for the language. And more than that, I was good at distilling and expanding concepts depending on what was required by the question. That's what essays are; judging where to go into detail, how to go into detail (densely, with filler etc.) and where not to. With most subjects I can still do that. But the things I want to write about? I struggle. I struggle even to begin typing. There's nowhere to begin. There's no code to be switched to.
I cannot dance as an outlet for emotion. It is an outlet for nothing, which is important. And art faces the same problem as writing, though crafting a successful sentence costs me next to nothing. I am a terrible poet.
I might pull out my Fortson's IE book and try some essays from that, try to at least practice the form with a subject I enjoy and feel comfortable with. I often forget just how passionate historical linguistics makes me, and how little pain is associated with it. Perhaps because it is literally fantasy: painstakingly sourced, surprisingly useful fantasy. There's something childlike, something magical about it. Well, I suppose that applies to the scientific method in general. The scientific method in the ivory tower. And once I'm done with IE I will move onto the language map of Australia, at fucking last, where Pama-Nyungan won and the politics is inescapable.
But everything is political. Grass is political. Time is fucking political. I just have to gently learn how to verbalise it.
Everything is political? Everything is an essay. As far as I'm concerned, you just wrote a dialogue-styled miniature essay on how difficult it is to know where to start an essay. Which topic do you feel strongest about? Start with that. What about the topic do you feel strongest about, and what viewpoint do you have that you really want people to hear or consider? Maybe start moulding it around that. Start out as if you're doing what you're already used to doing regularly: trying to explain something to someone through a forum, even if it's in the form of venting. Collect a number of good points that came to mind that you'd thought of while doing this pseudo-vent, and slowly but surely fact check, rationality check, and convert into essay-format.
Not sure if any of that was helpful or any less than patronising given that I myself rarely evolve past making forum posts (which sometimes end up being shittier versions of essays), but, well, writing actual essays on philosophy/perspectives isn't really my passion at the moment. I love to write, clearly, but becoming confident enough in what I have to say so as to feel it's publication-worthy is not something I'm wanting put so much time and effort in to right now.
Jewish Candy said:
I cannot dance as an outlet for emotion. It is an outlet for nothing, which is important.
Care to explain this? I'm curious what you mean.
ops2:
MLII said:
alright while we're doing great big clumps of sad here goes
idk it's just a lot of things have been bothering me lately like as a sort of group? i think the main problem would be my gender identity. at this point i honestly do not know any more.
i guess at a base level i'm female, and my peers consider me so (and continually misgender me because i'm too fucking nervous to tell them my pronouns) (one of them has gone off my completely just because i like girls so) and i guess i feel closer to female than male but then is that because that's how i was raised? is it a product of literally everyone saying i'm a girl? i just don't know whether i feel that in myself or not. sometimes i do but sometimes i don't and i don't know if that's normal or if i'm just pratting around trying to be a genderless being floating through space, if i'm no better than those people on tumblr who identify as glitter and use sparkleself pronouns. X:
Believe me, I could not feel for you more right now, I've been like this for the last five or six years, and I still don't know for certain. It's a stressful issue that can really hamper your motivation and make you feel so confused, largely because any ultimate decisions you can make as a result of it are, well, expensive and permanent. If you could just go ahead and live the way you wanted, wouldn't life be so much easier?
I guess the thing we can be thankful for - and it makes me legitimately happy - is that we live in a time where we can do something about it, and we
can live the way we want to. Those before us, even twenty years ago, had far fewer resources at hand and basically had to either deal with mediocre, hardly passable solutions or suck it up. This doesn't only go for medical technology, it goes for things like our social environment as well, the LGBT community and acceptance. You're looked down on by the vast majority if you don't acknowledge it as an unadulterated way of life, and rightfully so.
Remember too that those tumblr people are only reinforcing that, despite often missing the point. If you feel strongly enough about it to actually write up posts about it here with real questions as to what you should do, your feelings are perfectly valid.
MLII said:
speaking of which the way this girl's treating me is fucking me over. she raised a huge fuss bc i liked her selfie on facebook and that's Erm apparently, and she made a huge deal over me being a Well You Know But You Know It's Alright A Lot Of My Friends Are last time i saw her. i want to be her friend i don't want to fucking sleep with her?? the only person making this awkward is her.
also she'll say hi if she sees me and it's just her or her and someone else from our class but when she's with her other friends she'll literally ignore me?? like even if i speak to her? thanks hollie i wasn't aware i was only good enough for you half the time
An extremely common thing with some people actually. It doesn't necessarily mean they don't value you, it could mean that she enjoys your company for different reasons than she enjoys those other friends'. Sometimes two groups don't mix so well, just like with me and my friend's other friends that I'd brought up a page or two ago. Though, as I've gotten older I've had less trouble inserting myself into a social situation, as opposed to waiting for someone to come up and talk to me, so it's become less of a problem, even if only by a bit.
MLII said:
i'm starting to get a lot of shit at college for basic things (a girl in my creative writing class found my ao3 and straight up told me she was judging me) it's my hobbies and appearance etc. i can barely walk into my creative writing class without somebody pointing out something?? then there's james who's a dick to begin with and likes calling girls sluts and famously said "i'd rather die than fuck a tranny". he also called me a bitch who needs to keep her fucking mouth shut because he was screaming at archie and i told him to calm down.
aranormal:
He sounds like a stupid cunt and you should ignore him… unless it's in your power to make him look like a fool, that'd be just as good!
MLII said:
also i'm not doing well in my classes to begin with- i got a d on my politics mock, a u in my graphics mock and last time i handed in coursework for performance studies i got a c which isn't bad but 2/3 of my teachers dislike me (one of which because i'm A queer and B related to my brother) so i'm kind of worried about bias.
i got an A+ in creative writing but that's beside the point
Which, while practically speaking can be a hamper for getting into University I suppose (or however that British stuff works), it isn't a disagreeable position, the school system is really stupid.
People seem so set on believing that in order to get where you want, it's inherent and therefore ethical that you have to go through a bunch of shit you don't want to, but that's honestly a load of crap. People should be recognised through their ability and their ability alone, and if that means all they're good at is writing (for instance), then that should be their contribution to society, and they should be able to make a living off of it. I don't have an issue with what schools teach, especially since it's free (though for the love of god, please let there be more art studies), but it should give you nothing more than knowledge itself. If you don't have a passion and as such have nothing to work hard at, work hard at school, you have all the time in the world to do that with nothing to lose. Completing it will give you the knowledge you need to get a decent-paying job anywhere.
^This is totally hypothetical by the way, the world doesn't work like this even though it really should.
Shrooblord said:
Bloody fucking Hell. I think I've adequately set the tone now.
My roommate's been up all night since 23:30 playing goddamned League. What's so bad about playing LoL in the depths of the night? An sich, nothing. But if you're my roommate, you're gonna be playing with your friend.
On Skype. Talking.
I've asked the fucker three times now. It's three AM and I haven't had any good shut-eye because of it. Now I stormed down and sort of lost my temper. This time I demanded he let me get my sleep. He agreed and then sighed under his breath to his friend, thinking I wouldn't hear. Then it took ten more minutes of talking before he says "GG". The match is over.
But I made a mistake. Instead of asking a full stop, I sugested he went into his room and continued there. He proceeded to make the loudest departure I ever heard, complete with ramming the chair into my drumkit, which is temporarily here after a nearby gig, (thanks), fist-slamming on the table and throwing things I couldn't make out with forceful noise and smashing. Then he ripped the plug of his laptop out of the outlet, went into his room and turned his light on. But he didn't turn the one off that shone directly into my face. Oh, no. That would be kind. That would be considerate. That would be respecting my space.
And that's the last thing you should do, respect Shrooblord's space. And now he's bloody well talking at full volume just to spite me.
I need a hug. Legit, I think I may cry.
I've got to move. What a tosspot.
What a fucking motherfucker. Let this song adequately describe the situation, with you on drums; they're speaking to him too:
Who is he and why did you get a room with him? Is there more to him than being a selfish asshat, at least to you?
And out of curiosity, was his weirdly violent reaction done with that sort of neutral "I'm committing to doing this and making a point without saying anything" expression, or was it with him yelling and swearing too? Did you try and stop him?
