26 Feb 2012 - Uploaded a bunch of AFF posts, and started uploading the Facebook ones for 2008 and earlier. It seems easier (for readers, and for me) to put everything in according to date, rather than site. Luckily once I get past the Facebook stage I won't have any more problems like that - Facebook is the only second blog I've kept; aside from the years (2006-2009) that I used Facebook notes as a blog, I've only ever used one blogging site at a time.
27 Feb 2012 - All Facebook entries from the beginning (2006) through till the end of 2008 are uploaded.
Half of 2009 is uploaded.
2 Mar 2012 - All 2009 entries are uploaded. You can now read the blog through till the end of 2009!
13 Mar 2012 - Uploaded a couple of 2010 entries. Not many, it's been a really tired, ill week.
14 Mar 2012 - And a few more. The AFF blog is now done until the end of June 2010.
Since I couldn't sleep, I uploaded the Jan-Jun Facebook posts too. All posts for the first half of 2010 are now here.
24 Mar 2012 - We're done with the AFF posts through till the end of September 2010. I wanted to do the Sep-Dec posts too, but I can't stay awake.
This is a big milestone too - fully one third of the AFF posts are now here!
13 Apr 2012 - The AFF posts for October 2010 are done. I can't do more than that right now, I've been pretty sick and I tire (more) easily.
Later - Couldn't sleep, so the Nov and Dec AFF posts are up too, aside from Virtual Christmas Gifts, and I couldn't decide whether to put those in or not. I'll think about it.
30 Apr 2012 - Facebook posts for Jul - Dec are now uploaded. The blog is complete up to the end of 2010.
3 May 2012 - Happy birthday to me! Uploaded a couple of posts, including one that kept getting denied on Facebook and AFF both, and ended up never getting published until now. I wanted to do more, but I'm supposed to be up in 5 hours to take Mom to a pre-op in London.
Good news, though - the Facebook posts are all done, so uploading should be more streamlined from now on. At least until I get everything up to date and then start tackling the paper diaries, dating back to 1997. (I did have typed copies of them, on Bolt and Yahoo Geocities, but unfortunately both those companies shut down their sites without letting me know. Bastards.)
9 May 2012 - Still uploading, but slowly. I'm tired. I keep drifting off into my own little world. And there are a couple posts that I don't feel like I can upload because of privacy issues with friends and family. But January is done, and that's the best I can do for now.
Congratulate me, though, because we've reached the 200th post mark.
10 May 2012 - Still uploading. Wow, I really wrote a lot in February.
14 May 2012 - The AFF blog has temporarily disappeared - at least I hope to God it's temporary - so I uploaded the posts from my other Blogger page instead. It kind of throws off my schedule, but there's not much I can do about that. I can't believe how much easier it was to import - no copy-pasting or anything. It's a shame AFF won't allow it, but they like to pretend that no other web sites exist. *rolls eyes* One reason why I don't go there much anymore.
15 May 2012 - Been a busy girl tonight. Couldn't sleep (again). Posts are uploaded until the end of March 2011. I'm also starting to use this as my current blog (since all of Moonbeams has been uploaded) so you'll no longer be able to look at the top post to see what's been brought in in the last few days - recently written posts will be at the top (in chronological order) and recently uploaded (but not recently written) ones will be under that. Or you can just look at THIS post to see if I've uploaded anything new. I'm pretty good about updating you here.
18 May 2012 - Uploaded April 2011's posts. I only have one page of posts left now, meaning we're 2/3 of the way through AFF.
26 May 2012 - Uploaded May 2011's posts. That's all, I've been running around all week, and had 12-hour and 18-hour - and on one occasion, a 36-hour - days.
28 May 2012 - A couple of June's posts are done, but there are so many other things I could be doing on a beautiful cool evening. :)
Monday, 28 May 2012
Sunday, 20 May 2012
For The Moon Never Beams Without Bringing Me Dreams
In honor of this eclipse tomorrow that I would not have known about if not for Facebook - I shall tell you a story about my first job.
No, that's not a complete non sequitur. Keep reading.
When people ask me what my first job was, I know they're expecting to hear about babysitting, or dog walking, or waitressing. Truth is, I didn't actually do any of those things until I was 17 or 18, except for dog walking, and I didn't get paid for that. The story that I always tell people is about how Mom let me set up a little lemonade stand outside our front garden - which was more profitable than it sounds, because a) I live in England and virtually nobody knows what real lemonade is (our idea of lemonade is lemon soda made by Schweppes) so they were willing to pay a pretty penny for it; and b) I then moved onto selling home-made cookies, fudge, cake, flapjacks, pavlova, truffles, marzipan and anything else I could translate out of my Spanish kids' cookbooks (SO much better than English ones) as well as apples and plums and rhubarb and various vegetables from the garden. I won't say I made a packet, but I made what seemed like a packet to a kid. At least as long as Mom stayed inside. When she came out she always started giving people everything for free. *rolls eyes*
Even at six and seven I had a better head for business than my soft-hearted mom. I blame / thank Daddy for teaching me Monopoly as soon as I was able to talk.
Anyway, I digress. I tell the lemonade-stand story, because - well, it is technically correct. My first job working for someone else, however, was much less profitable and much more odd. At the age of fifteen, through a series of seemingly-incomprehensible events, I found myself working at the local university - University of Hertfordshire - under the grand title of Research Assistant. Although I didn't actually assist in research much at all - mostly I carried things, and copied down data, and helped develop a computer program for collating findings from labs around the world. I'm fairly sure the important title was just to make a geeky teenage girl feel important. Whatever. I ran with it.
What department did I supposedly assist in research for? Astronomy and Astrophysics, of course.
My love affair with the skies started when I was four or five. We lived in Spain when I was a kid, and somewhere between my fourth and fifth birthdays - at least that's when I think it was - we moved in with John, a boyfriend of my mom's. John worked in the yachting business, I believe designing yachts, but he was also a retired sailor who'd sailed around the world, and he taught me a whole wealth of things, including how to navigate by the constellations. Perhaps your average four or five-year-old couldn't memorise star charts for the Northern Hemisphere, or keep track of the phases of the moon and the tides, but you have to remember that I was born with an off-the-charts IQ and a thirst for knowledge. By the time I started school I could easily recognise Orion or Cepheus or Cassiopeia or Hercules or any of fifteen or twenty others. Moving back to England was hard for so many reasons, but the skies were one of the things I really missed. Even in a town the size of St Albans, where at least you can still SEE the stars (unlike parts of London), the light pollution makes it a vastly different experience from viewing them from a small island in the Mediterranean where the biggest town was a couple thousand people, and the air was dry.
I guess I kind of forgot how much I loved everything night-sky-related, until I met Julian when I was 12 or 13. Julian was a creature of the night, and he rekindled my love for it. In summers we would drive out to the country and stare through binoculars for hours. He built me a telescope for looking at the moon. He bought me books. One day he brought a huge package of those tiny glow-in-the-dark stars and we spent an entire weekend sketching out a map (an inaccurate one! LOL) on my bedroom ceiling, some of which still remains to this day. My parents didn't know about Julian, but they approved of me showing an interest in something that wasn't medicine, so they bought me more books. And I read, and started educating myself on the technical side of things, and learned, and loved.
And then Sir Patrick Moore came to town to give a lecture at the Alban Arena, and I knew I had to go. So Mom got us tickets. I must have been fourteen, maybe fifteen. And he's signing programmes in the hall afterwards, and Mom goes and chats to him, and is her natural charming, slightly flirty self - charming people comes as naturally to my mother as breathing, always has done - and hands him a letter, which is about me, and how much I love astronomy, and want to work in the field when I'm older. Plus all those other things like how smart and amazing I am - the stuff most moms like to tell anyone who'll listen. *grins*
And a couple of weeks later, I pick up the phone at home, and this very dry, very proper voice says to me, "Am I speaking with Miss Sandy Frost? This is Patrick Moore."
Oh. My. Gosh.
The long and short of it was that he found me a work placement. He talked to an old friend of his at the University of Herts, who I believe was the head of the Astro Dept - Professor Kitchen? - and they offered me a placement. Just because I wanted one, and they thought I was smart.
It never fails to amaze me how nice people can be.
So I went to work. Year 10s in this country have to do a two-week work study placement anyway, and usually the school arranges places with shops and nursery schools and offices that the students have to bid on, but they were happy that I'd arranged my own. (Or that fate and a gentleman's kindness had done it for me.) I went to work at the uni for two weeks to start. Professor Kitchen placed me with Dr Collett, and Dr Collett passed me onto Dr Tanvir, and Dr Tanvir liked me and decided to keep me. I can't even remember the amount of projects I worked on that summer. They taught me how to write computer code, and set me to work developing a program that linked to all the observatories around the world. They had me assisting post-grad students with their projects. The one I remember the best was with an astrogeologist who was investigating the volcanoes on Io (one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter; the fiery one) in the hopes of discovering whether Io or Europa (icy crust with probable ocean beneath) could be potential harbors for extraterrestrial bacteria. They taught me physics, and how to use a mass spectrometer to read age and distance, and they took me to the building site of the new university observatory. They encouraged me to study different specialties, and I knew within a couple of weeks that I wanted to study the formation of nebulae.
We had a total solar eclipse that summer, the first visible in the UK since the 1920s, and I got to watch it with some of the best scientific minds in the field.
It was the most glorious summer. I felt like I'd found a niche for myself, like I'd discovered that missing piece of my life. I even managed to wrangle myself an invitation to go to the Teide National Park in Tenerife - a place I'd been a couple years before, and fallen in love with - which is considered the closest thing on Earth to the surface of Mars, and is where all kinds of experiments are run. (Don't ask me what kind. I never got there.)
I wished that I could have stayed on staff there forever, because I was SO ready to be done with high school. But I had another year to go. And then Julian died. And I shoved myself into earthly things and never went back to studying the universe. Julian WAS the nighttime; he was the moon and the stars and all the secrets to life, and without him I didn't want to care about any of it. After a while I just kind of forgot. It was easier.
Will I ever go back? Will I ever study again, go to uni, perhaps do a degree? Probably not. Even if I wanted to, I'm not sure that I CAN. Since the brain damage, I don't learn easily - not only am I no longer a child genius, I'm not even sure that I'm smart enough to grasp the basic physics that I would need to know. And most of the time I can live with that. But just occasionally, just once in a blue moon - or perhaps less often - I feel them calling my name, calling, calling, calling me home, and underneath that siren song is the promise of knowledge, of all the secrets of the universe being open to me.
[True story or smoke and mirrors? You'll never know. :)
In any case, I hope you enjoyed my tale. Now go enjoy your eclipse, and spare a thought for this girl who wishes she was there with you.]
No, that's not a complete non sequitur. Keep reading.
When people ask me what my first job was, I know they're expecting to hear about babysitting, or dog walking, or waitressing. Truth is, I didn't actually do any of those things until I was 17 or 18, except for dog walking, and I didn't get paid for that. The story that I always tell people is about how Mom let me set up a little lemonade stand outside our front garden - which was more profitable than it sounds, because a) I live in England and virtually nobody knows what real lemonade is (our idea of lemonade is lemon soda made by Schweppes) so they were willing to pay a pretty penny for it; and b) I then moved onto selling home-made cookies, fudge, cake, flapjacks, pavlova, truffles, marzipan and anything else I could translate out of my Spanish kids' cookbooks (SO much better than English ones) as well as apples and plums and rhubarb and various vegetables from the garden. I won't say I made a packet, but I made what seemed like a packet to a kid. At least as long as Mom stayed inside. When she came out she always started giving people everything for free. *rolls eyes*
Even at six and seven I had a better head for business than my soft-hearted mom. I blame / thank Daddy for teaching me Monopoly as soon as I was able to talk.
Anyway, I digress. I tell the lemonade-stand story, because - well, it is technically correct. My first job working for someone else, however, was much less profitable and much more odd. At the age of fifteen, through a series of seemingly-incomprehensible events, I found myself working at the local university - University of Hertfordshire - under the grand title of Research Assistant. Although I didn't actually assist in research much at all - mostly I carried things, and copied down data, and helped develop a computer program for collating findings from labs around the world. I'm fairly sure the important title was just to make a geeky teenage girl feel important. Whatever. I ran with it.
What department did I supposedly assist in research for? Astronomy and Astrophysics, of course.
My love affair with the skies started when I was four or five. We lived in Spain when I was a kid, and somewhere between my fourth and fifth birthdays - at least that's when I think it was - we moved in with John, a boyfriend of my mom's. John worked in the yachting business, I believe designing yachts, but he was also a retired sailor who'd sailed around the world, and he taught me a whole wealth of things, including how to navigate by the constellations. Perhaps your average four or five-year-old couldn't memorise star charts for the Northern Hemisphere, or keep track of the phases of the moon and the tides, but you have to remember that I was born with an off-the-charts IQ and a thirst for knowledge. By the time I started school I could easily recognise Orion or Cepheus or Cassiopeia or Hercules or any of fifteen or twenty others. Moving back to England was hard for so many reasons, but the skies were one of the things I really missed. Even in a town the size of St Albans, where at least you can still SEE the stars (unlike parts of London), the light pollution makes it a vastly different experience from viewing them from a small island in the Mediterranean where the biggest town was a couple thousand people, and the air was dry.
I guess I kind of forgot how much I loved everything night-sky-related, until I met Julian when I was 12 or 13. Julian was a creature of the night, and he rekindled my love for it. In summers we would drive out to the country and stare through binoculars for hours. He built me a telescope for looking at the moon. He bought me books. One day he brought a huge package of those tiny glow-in-the-dark stars and we spent an entire weekend sketching out a map (an inaccurate one! LOL) on my bedroom ceiling, some of which still remains to this day. My parents didn't know about Julian, but they approved of me showing an interest in something that wasn't medicine, so they bought me more books. And I read, and started educating myself on the technical side of things, and learned, and loved.
And then Sir Patrick Moore came to town to give a lecture at the Alban Arena, and I knew I had to go. So Mom got us tickets. I must have been fourteen, maybe fifteen. And he's signing programmes in the hall afterwards, and Mom goes and chats to him, and is her natural charming, slightly flirty self - charming people comes as naturally to my mother as breathing, always has done - and hands him a letter, which is about me, and how much I love astronomy, and want to work in the field when I'm older. Plus all those other things like how smart and amazing I am - the stuff most moms like to tell anyone who'll listen. *grins*
And a couple of weeks later, I pick up the phone at home, and this very dry, very proper voice says to me, "Am I speaking with Miss Sandy Frost? This is Patrick Moore."
Oh. My. Gosh.
The long and short of it was that he found me a work placement. He talked to an old friend of his at the University of Herts, who I believe was the head of the Astro Dept - Professor Kitchen? - and they offered me a placement. Just because I wanted one, and they thought I was smart.
It never fails to amaze me how nice people can be.
So I went to work. Year 10s in this country have to do a two-week work study placement anyway, and usually the school arranges places with shops and nursery schools and offices that the students have to bid on, but they were happy that I'd arranged my own. (Or that fate and a gentleman's kindness had done it for me.) I went to work at the uni for two weeks to start. Professor Kitchen placed me with Dr Collett, and Dr Collett passed me onto Dr Tanvir, and Dr Tanvir liked me and decided to keep me. I can't even remember the amount of projects I worked on that summer. They taught me how to write computer code, and set me to work developing a program that linked to all the observatories around the world. They had me assisting post-grad students with their projects. The one I remember the best was with an astrogeologist who was investigating the volcanoes on Io (one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter; the fiery one) in the hopes of discovering whether Io or Europa (icy crust with probable ocean beneath) could be potential harbors for extraterrestrial bacteria. They taught me physics, and how to use a mass spectrometer to read age and distance, and they took me to the building site of the new university observatory. They encouraged me to study different specialties, and I knew within a couple of weeks that I wanted to study the formation of nebulae.
We had a total solar eclipse that summer, the first visible in the UK since the 1920s, and I got to watch it with some of the best scientific minds in the field.
It was the most glorious summer. I felt like I'd found a niche for myself, like I'd discovered that missing piece of my life. I even managed to wrangle myself an invitation to go to the Teide National Park in Tenerife - a place I'd been a couple years before, and fallen in love with - which is considered the closest thing on Earth to the surface of Mars, and is where all kinds of experiments are run. (Don't ask me what kind. I never got there.)
I wished that I could have stayed on staff there forever, because I was SO ready to be done with high school. But I had another year to go. And then Julian died. And I shoved myself into earthly things and never went back to studying the universe. Julian WAS the nighttime; he was the moon and the stars and all the secrets to life, and without him I didn't want to care about any of it. After a while I just kind of forgot. It was easier.
Will I ever go back? Will I ever study again, go to uni, perhaps do a degree? Probably not. Even if I wanted to, I'm not sure that I CAN. Since the brain damage, I don't learn easily - not only am I no longer a child genius, I'm not even sure that I'm smart enough to grasp the basic physics that I would need to know. And most of the time I can live with that. But just occasionally, just once in a blue moon - or perhaps less often - I feel them calling my name, calling, calling, calling me home, and underneath that siren song is the promise of knowledge, of all the secrets of the universe being open to me.
[True story or smoke and mirrors? You'll never know. :)
In any case, I hope you enjoyed my tale. Now go enjoy your eclipse, and spare a thought for this girl who wishes she was there with you.]
Friday, 11 May 2012
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Rubbing Up Together Around The Clock...
But lately we've been getting more rubble than rocks.
~ Elton John
[Not the actual lyric, but I always mishear it. I think I like mine better, actually. Sorry, Elton.]
I wish I still cared about blogging. I really do.
Come to think of it, I wish I still cared about anything.
Not suicidal, never that, just...not quite here. I keep thinking I'll feel better, and then something happens - the boiler breaks, or I get another infection - that thrusts me back to the beginning.
I tell myself to be social, and invite people on Facebook to come and get dinner or go shopping, and then fall asleep before I can go. I fell asleep in a chair in a waiting room in Luton yesterday, and now I have bruises all over my forehead from the metal bar I was resting against.
When I am awake, I do crave companionship, but unless someone's willing to live to exactly my timetable - and they're not - I get sick again, or fall asleep, before I can carry out any plans. And I don't like flaking on people, so unless it's a close friend, I tend not to make plans to start with.
Although then I wake up in the middle of the night, annoyed that I don't have anyone to booty call, and after looking through roughly 5000 profile photos on dating sites and not being attracted to any of them, I've shelved the idea of a FWB for the time being. I just can't fancy someone until I know their personality, and too few people seem willing (or able!) to fill out their profiles fully. They're not willing to spend a half hour answering questions about themselves, and I'm not willing to mail a score of men at a time and ASK them questions about themselves on the off chance that one of them interests me, so I guess me and the majority of men on these sites don't mix. And the ones that I do mix well with are usually in America or Australia anyway. Shrug.
I probably sound irritated, but honestly it only bothers me at night when I'm horny and it's too late to go out. The rest of the time, I barely even notice that my life is barren. I miss Oli and I miss K and I talk to LOML on occasion, and they're the only ones I really want around anyway. I don't have the energy to be friendly. I just want someone who'll take a nap with me.
My friends are still there, they haven't abandoned me or anything. I still have B and Sash and Zia in the area or in London, and Elle in Bristol any time I have the energy to go see her, and Babs is around from time to time, and any time I can force myself to go to a party or a local gig I run into old friends and acquaintances who are happy to welcome me. People are nice. The fact that I'm alone is not to do with people not being welcoming, it's just that I can't force my body to behave, and I can't force my heart to not miss K - it's bee nearly nine months since we talked and I still miss him EVERY day - and the majority of the time I can't even force my mind to be present on this mortal plane.
Even though I still resemble the sunny, golden, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed cherub that I was before - albeit a somewhat paler, darker-eyed, more serious version - I feel like little more than a wraith. Since childhood my life has been a balancing act, juggling life and death - for in my family, the living and the dead both have their place in the limelight - but since October, I talk more to the dead than the living. In some ways I feel like I identify more with them now.
To a teenager that would probably sound romantic, but when it happens it's not - it's just kind of strange and sad.
Yet for all my preoccupation, I do not WANT to die. I want to get well and live another sixty years in the sun. I cannot reassure you of this enough.I just don't feel quite alive, and certainly not the vital creature I was before this. The doctors just tell me that it will take time, but time has never quite behaved for me at the best of times, and now it has very little meaning at all. The best I can hope for is that one day I wake up and feel a bit better, and that each day after that is better still, and eventually I start feeling like a human doing again, instead of just a human being or existing (and light on the human).
I am not quite sure why I give you these updates. To let you know I'm still breathing, I guess. Although perhaps that is not so important; if I should happen to shuffle off beyond the veil, I'm sure Kidfos would let you know. Until then, you can assume that I remain...something. Just remain.
~ Elton John
[Not the actual lyric, but I always mishear it. I think I like mine better, actually. Sorry, Elton.]
I wish I still cared about blogging. I really do.
Come to think of it, I wish I still cared about anything.
Not suicidal, never that, just...not quite here. I keep thinking I'll feel better, and then something happens - the boiler breaks, or I get another infection - that thrusts me back to the beginning.
I tell myself to be social, and invite people on Facebook to come and get dinner or go shopping, and then fall asleep before I can go. I fell asleep in a chair in a waiting room in Luton yesterday, and now I have bruises all over my forehead from the metal bar I was resting against.
When I am awake, I do crave companionship, but unless someone's willing to live to exactly my timetable - and they're not - I get sick again, or fall asleep, before I can carry out any plans. And I don't like flaking on people, so unless it's a close friend, I tend not to make plans to start with.
Although then I wake up in the middle of the night, annoyed that I don't have anyone to booty call, and after looking through roughly 5000 profile photos on dating sites and not being attracted to any of them, I've shelved the idea of a FWB for the time being. I just can't fancy someone until I know their personality, and too few people seem willing (or able!) to fill out their profiles fully. They're not willing to spend a half hour answering questions about themselves, and I'm not willing to mail a score of men at a time and ASK them questions about themselves on the off chance that one of them interests me, so I guess me and the majority of men on these sites don't mix. And the ones that I do mix well with are usually in America or Australia anyway. Shrug.
I probably sound irritated, but honestly it only bothers me at night when I'm horny and it's too late to go out. The rest of the time, I barely even notice that my life is barren. I miss Oli and I miss K and I talk to LOML on occasion, and they're the only ones I really want around anyway. I don't have the energy to be friendly. I just want someone who'll take a nap with me.
My friends are still there, they haven't abandoned me or anything. I still have B and Sash and Zia in the area or in London, and Elle in Bristol any time I have the energy to go see her, and Babs is around from time to time, and any time I can force myself to go to a party or a local gig I run into old friends and acquaintances who are happy to welcome me. People are nice. The fact that I'm alone is not to do with people not being welcoming, it's just that I can't force my body to behave, and I can't force my heart to not miss K - it's bee nearly nine months since we talked and I still miss him EVERY day - and the majority of the time I can't even force my mind to be present on this mortal plane.
Even though I still resemble the sunny, golden, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed cherub that I was before - albeit a somewhat paler, darker-eyed, more serious version - I feel like little more than a wraith. Since childhood my life has been a balancing act, juggling life and death - for in my family, the living and the dead both have their place in the limelight - but since October, I talk more to the dead than the living. In some ways I feel like I identify more with them now.
To a teenager that would probably sound romantic, but when it happens it's not - it's just kind of strange and sad.
Yet for all my preoccupation, I do not WANT to die. I want to get well and live another sixty years in the sun. I cannot reassure you of this enough.I just don't feel quite alive, and certainly not the vital creature I was before this. The doctors just tell me that it will take time, but time has never quite behaved for me at the best of times, and now it has very little meaning at all. The best I can hope for is that one day I wake up and feel a bit better, and that each day after that is better still, and eventually I start feeling like a human doing again, instead of just a human being or existing (and light on the human).
I am not quite sure why I give you these updates. To let you know I'm still breathing, I guess. Although perhaps that is not so important; if I should happen to shuffle off beyond the veil, I'm sure Kidfos would let you know. Until then, you can assume that I remain...something. Just remain.
Friday, 9 September 2011
Birthdays, And How I Learned To Celebrate In My Own Way
Thirty today, I saw
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish.
~ Donald Justice
On the other site, I read a post today from Kel, one of my favorite bloggers, about how Sept 11th is her kid's birthday, and since 9/11 celebrating hasn't felt the same. A lot of people on her post were saying that you must still celebrate, keep thinking of it as a sacred day, but I'm not sure that you ever can get past a thing like that.
The two weeks around my own birthday are marred with tragedy in our family - personal tragedy, nothing on the scale of 9/11, but tragedy nonetheless. Until this year, I have never had a birthday that was happy. I knew from watching other families that birthdays are supposed to be times of celebration, but I've never known one that didn't involve guilt for existing and a mother who wished she didn't. Even the years that she was fairly stable, and made an effort, I always knew that if the world had gone the way it was meant to then my brother would be here and I would not.
As a kid, I tried to celebrate anyway. We had parties, balloons, jelly cups, played Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Laughed, danced, and hid the fact that ten days from now Mom would be wailing and telling her four-year-old (or six-year-old, or ten-year-old) how much she wished she was dead. And once or twice, in the earliest days, actually attempting it...but I digress.
It's not that I blame her. She tried. And because she knew that she'd never succeed in making my birthday what it should be, we had other times of the year that were really special. Halloween parties where we did all the things that you'd normally do on a birthday, as well as trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins. Christmas Craft Clubs, held every Saturday morning from Thanksgiving until Christmas, where my schoolfriends came over and each week we'd make a different Christmas decoration. (Paper plate Santas and manger scenes and baubles when I was five, stuffed felt stockings to hang on the tree when I was six, cotton sacks decorated with fabric paints and gutta and stuffed with candy or home-made pot pourri when I was seven...) Thanksgiving dinners, Valentines masquerades, Easter egg hunts in the garden or on the beach. Living with a bipolar (even if never truly diagnosed) mother meant that when she wasn't depressed and suicidal, she was on top of the world, rejoicing in the beauty of life and celebrating every possible occasion. And most of the time she was a good mother. A wonderful mother. We did all sorts of things, had all sorts of adventures, that most kids - especially most English kids - never dream of.
So with all that, the birthday thing shouldn't bother me, right?
Wrong.
I think part of the stress was that we always tried. Often trying to enjoy a thing, whether you like it or not, is infinitely more painful than just treating is as though it's nothing. The years I was twelve and thirteen, Mom and her then boyfriend agreed to let me have a huge party in a local hall, with fifty or sixty kids invited from school (and another fifty or sixty who gategrashed, LOL ) and a DJ. Nothing personal, nothing family-oriented, nothing that would mean I needed anything from my mother. That worked well. But by the time I was fourteen, I was missing two thirds of my classes at school, and drifting apart from a lot of my schoolfriends, and throwing a big party when the teachers were demanding to know why I wasn't attending classes seemed like a sham. So I said, no more birthdays. And none of the family accepted that, and the stressful cycle of trying and failing to enjoy ourselves started up again.
Then I started getting sick around or on my birthday. Stomach bugs. Appendicitis. Kidney infections. Pneumonia. Mono. People always asked how I could have such bad luck, but I never wondered. I may work in the medical field, but I also have a lot of respect for the effects of emotional state on the body. For the last couple years I've begged the family and friends to forget my birthday, treat it as just another day. They wouldn't. I explained the illness and the past tragedies politely, several times, to everyone who asked. They ignored me. I explained not-so-politely, and said that I really didn't want to be reminded of things that happened in the past. They persisted in asking me what I wanted to do, and showing up with presents and cards and telling me they were taking me to dinner, and told me what Kel's posters are telling her - that you have to push through the pain, and reclaim the day as your own. I threw a tantrum, scorching the earth with my anger, and asking everyone how they could be so goddamn disrespectful as to ignore my wishes when it's MY day. They told me I was being horrible and unreasonable when they were only trying to help. I bubbled over with rage and resentment for a couple weeks, and eventually shrugged and decided that birthdays are like funerals - they're for the benefit of the guests, not the host.
I gave up. This year I told everyone that they could do as many presents and parties and evenings out as they wanted, on the condition that they did it three months later, on the third of May. They looked at me strangely, and asked me a dozen times if I was sure, but they respected it. We had a lovely BBQ and loads of cards and gifts, and cake, and everyone sang to me. On my actual birthday, I went shopping alone and bought a couple of books and a Beyond Sudoku magazine and some presents for Mom, and everyone left me alone. I didn't get sick. It was a strange compromise, but one that worked.
My profiles online, store cards that give you gifts on your birthday, diaries - all but the most official documents - have my birthday down as May 3rd. I still identify with the Aquarius horoscopes, but for all other intents and purposes I consider myself a May child. February can never be a happy month for me, not after more than a quarter-century of misery. But birthdays can...you just have to think laterally.
The trees flare briefly like
The candles on a cake,
As the sun went down the sky,
A momentary flash,
Yet there was time to wish.
~ Donald Justice
On the other site, I read a post today from Kel, one of my favorite bloggers, about how Sept 11th is her kid's birthday, and since 9/11 celebrating hasn't felt the same. A lot of people on her post were saying that you must still celebrate, keep thinking of it as a sacred day, but I'm not sure that you ever can get past a thing like that.
The two weeks around my own birthday are marred with tragedy in our family - personal tragedy, nothing on the scale of 9/11, but tragedy nonetheless. Until this year, I have never had a birthday that was happy. I knew from watching other families that birthdays are supposed to be times of celebration, but I've never known one that didn't involve guilt for existing and a mother who wished she didn't. Even the years that she was fairly stable, and made an effort, I always knew that if the world had gone the way it was meant to then my brother would be here and I would not.
As a kid, I tried to celebrate anyway. We had parties, balloons, jelly cups, played Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Laughed, danced, and hid the fact that ten days from now Mom would be wailing and telling her four-year-old (or six-year-old, or ten-year-old) how much she wished she was dead. And once or twice, in the earliest days, actually attempting it...but I digress.
It's not that I blame her. She tried. And because she knew that she'd never succeed in making my birthday what it should be, we had other times of the year that were really special. Halloween parties where we did all the things that you'd normally do on a birthday, as well as trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins. Christmas Craft Clubs, held every Saturday morning from Thanksgiving until Christmas, where my schoolfriends came over and each week we'd make a different Christmas decoration. (Paper plate Santas and manger scenes and baubles when I was five, stuffed felt stockings to hang on the tree when I was six, cotton sacks decorated with fabric paints and gutta and stuffed with candy or home-made pot pourri when I was seven...) Thanksgiving dinners, Valentines masquerades, Easter egg hunts in the garden or on the beach. Living with a bipolar (even if never truly diagnosed) mother meant that when she wasn't depressed and suicidal, she was on top of the world, rejoicing in the beauty of life and celebrating every possible occasion. And most of the time she was a good mother. A wonderful mother. We did all sorts of things, had all sorts of adventures, that most kids - especially most English kids - never dream of.
So with all that, the birthday thing shouldn't bother me, right?
Wrong.
I think part of the stress was that we always tried. Often trying to enjoy a thing, whether you like it or not, is infinitely more painful than just treating is as though it's nothing. The years I was twelve and thirteen, Mom and her then boyfriend agreed to let me have a huge party in a local hall, with fifty or sixty kids invited from school (and another fifty or sixty who gategrashed, LOL ) and a DJ. Nothing personal, nothing family-oriented, nothing that would mean I needed anything from my mother. That worked well. But by the time I was fourteen, I was missing two thirds of my classes at school, and drifting apart from a lot of my schoolfriends, and throwing a big party when the teachers were demanding to know why I wasn't attending classes seemed like a sham. So I said, no more birthdays. And none of the family accepted that, and the stressful cycle of trying and failing to enjoy ourselves started up again.
Then I started getting sick around or on my birthday. Stomach bugs. Appendicitis. Kidney infections. Pneumonia. Mono. People always asked how I could have such bad luck, but I never wondered. I may work in the medical field, but I also have a lot of respect for the effects of emotional state on the body. For the last couple years I've begged the family and friends to forget my birthday, treat it as just another day. They wouldn't. I explained the illness and the past tragedies politely, several times, to everyone who asked. They ignored me. I explained not-so-politely, and said that I really didn't want to be reminded of things that happened in the past. They persisted in asking me what I wanted to do, and showing up with presents and cards and telling me they were taking me to dinner, and told me what Kel's posters are telling her - that you have to push through the pain, and reclaim the day as your own. I threw a tantrum, scorching the earth with my anger, and asking everyone how they could be so goddamn disrespectful as to ignore my wishes when it's MY day. They told me I was being horrible and unreasonable when they were only trying to help. I bubbled over with rage and resentment for a couple weeks, and eventually shrugged and decided that birthdays are like funerals - they're for the benefit of the guests, not the host.
I gave up. This year I told everyone that they could do as many presents and parties and evenings out as they wanted, on the condition that they did it three months later, on the third of May. They looked at me strangely, and asked me a dozen times if I was sure, but they respected it. We had a lovely BBQ and loads of cards and gifts, and cake, and everyone sang to me. On my actual birthday, I went shopping alone and bought a couple of books and a Beyond Sudoku magazine and some presents for Mom, and everyone left me alone. I didn't get sick. It was a strange compromise, but one that worked.
My profiles online, store cards that give you gifts on your birthday, diaries - all but the most official documents - have my birthday down as May 3rd. I still identify with the Aquarius horoscopes, but for all other intents and purposes I consider myself a May child. February can never be a happy month for me, not after more than a quarter-century of misery. But birthdays can...you just have to think laterally.
Catch A Falling Star And Put It In Your Pocket...
...Save it for a rainy day.
I feel like I should have a buffer of rainy day stars. Or posts. I did write a bunch awhile back, actually, but I seem to have filed them somewhere where I can't find them. Presumably while under the influence of insomnia. Just silly posts, things like lists of my favorite obnoxious T-shirts, and the things I love best about Autumn, and random thoughts that don't have to be tied into Events, either in the world in general or in my life. Things I can post whenever, just to let y'all know that I haven't deserted you.
Yeah, I'm still alive. Just about.
Been a while, hasn't it?
It's not so much that I don't have anything to write about, it's more that I can't quite get my thoughts and feelings out.
I want to tell you about heartbreak and idiot ex-boyfriends who come and seduce you and then afterwards admit to you that they're still with their girlfriend, and they're still not "supposed" to be talking to you. And also of the idiot girls who fall for their shit for the third time unlucky.
I want to tell you about the people who've jacked me around lately, and how mad I am that so many of the people who are supposed to be close to me totally fail to respect the fact that my time is precious - I have little enough of it - and when I get mad because I get stood up five times in six weeks, after frantically rescheduling things because you begged to see me, I'm not angry because we didn't get to have fun after all, I'm angry because the message behind your actions is that you think that YOUR free time is more valuable than MINE.
I want to tell you about how, more and more, I'm finding myself resenting people because they don't have the same value systems that I do. And how much I hate that resentment, because I don't want to be that girl who dislikes people for being different - but at the same time, I can't help being mad when I try so hard to do the right thing, make so many sacrifices for my loved ones, and they don't even bother to try. And it's all so confused and frustrated and I don't know what to think.
I want to tell you about my health, and how things are happening to my body that are scaring the pants off me, and so many of the symptoms that I'm getting are leading to one specific condition - but I don't want to talk about that condition until I'm a little more sure, can't even go and say to my doctor that I think I may have it, because it's a zebra diagnosis and I already have a reputation as being a hypochondriac, and if I say something and it turns out I DON'T have it then none of my doctors will ever take me seriously again. So there's nothing I can do but wait and watch and observe to see if things get worse.
I want to tell you about LOML, and his problems - but I can't do that, because I promised myself that I'd stop writing personal stuff about him in here. And may have to delete what I've written. Even though I've never mentioned his name. Because I know he would hate me talking about it, even while his life and problems affect me enough that I consider it part of my own life stuff.
I want to tell you about how the three men who mean the most to me outside my family have all dropped me like a hot brick this summer, two of them with little to no explanation, and how I feel horribly alone, even when I'm in a room full of people who love me. And how I don't know how to deal with loneliness, because it's not something that's ever really affected me before. Until now I've always thrived on being alone, and had enough inner activity to never feel lonely or bored. And now I don't know how to deal.
I want to tell you about how much I miss Kurisu-San, but God knows I've told you that enough.
I want to tell you about the utter shittiness that is hypoglycemic dysphoric disorder / neuroglycopenia, that has affected me since I was seventeen but has, for some reason, gone out of control this summer, so that when I get low blood sugar my mood takes a downswing that can be anything from mild irritability to black despair to extreme paranoia to suicidal thoughts to crazy rage, that makes me so upset and irrational that I don't realise I'm being irrational, that makes me wonder if I've suddenly had a psychotic break - until I eat something. And then I feel fine. Even though I was diagnosed by a specialist back in Sixth Form, I still feel like I'm going mad when it happens. How can a basically happy, well-adjusted (OK, stressed-out, but that's temporary) person suddenly become irate, paranoid, even suicidal, just because she skipped a meal? I don't know, but it happens. Craziness.
I want to tell you the fun things, too - the wonderfulness that is Ms Babs who I met two weekends ago, and how much I love Autumn, and how Michael at the bank finally sorted out my finances so that I shouldn't be totally screwed for the rest of the year, and might even have some money for college clothes.
But...yeah. I have all those posts in my head, but getting the words down, so that they sound right, is just beyond me right now.
So here. Have a taste of the best thing that happened to me this week.
No, I didn't make it - it's from Dixie's Cupcakery in town. They actually bake a full-sized Oreo into the bottom of the cake itself. Bliss. I should have only eaten half a one, though - I think my teeth are about to fall out. The ones I have left, anyway.
(Written two or three days ago, and somehow I forgot to post. Oops.)
I feel like I should have a buffer of rainy day stars. Or posts. I did write a bunch awhile back, actually, but I seem to have filed them somewhere where I can't find them. Presumably while under the influence of insomnia. Just silly posts, things like lists of my favorite obnoxious T-shirts, and the things I love best about Autumn, and random thoughts that don't have to be tied into Events, either in the world in general or in my life. Things I can post whenever, just to let y'all know that I haven't deserted you.
Yeah, I'm still alive. Just about.
Been a while, hasn't it?
It's not so much that I don't have anything to write about, it's more that I can't quite get my thoughts and feelings out.
I want to tell you about heartbreak and idiot ex-boyfriends who come and seduce you and then afterwards admit to you that they're still with their girlfriend, and they're still not "supposed" to be talking to you. And also of the idiot girls who fall for their shit for the third time unlucky.
I want to tell you about the people who've jacked me around lately, and how mad I am that so many of the people who are supposed to be close to me totally fail to respect the fact that my time is precious - I have little enough of it - and when I get mad because I get stood up five times in six weeks, after frantically rescheduling things because you begged to see me, I'm not angry because we didn't get to have fun after all, I'm angry because the message behind your actions is that you think that YOUR free time is more valuable than MINE.
I want to tell you about how, more and more, I'm finding myself resenting people because they don't have the same value systems that I do. And how much I hate that resentment, because I don't want to be that girl who dislikes people for being different - but at the same time, I can't help being mad when I try so hard to do the right thing, make so many sacrifices for my loved ones, and they don't even bother to try. And it's all so confused and frustrated and I don't know what to think.
I want to tell you about my health, and how things are happening to my body that are scaring the pants off me, and so many of the symptoms that I'm getting are leading to one specific condition - but I don't want to talk about that condition until I'm a little more sure, can't even go and say to my doctor that I think I may have it, because it's a zebra diagnosis and I already have a reputation as being a hypochondriac, and if I say something and it turns out I DON'T have it then none of my doctors will ever take me seriously again. So there's nothing I can do but wait and watch and observe to see if things get worse.
I want to tell you about LOML, and his problems - but I can't do that, because I promised myself that I'd stop writing personal stuff about him in here. And may have to delete what I've written. Even though I've never mentioned his name. Because I know he would hate me talking about it, even while his life and problems affect me enough that I consider it part of my own life stuff.
I want to tell you about how the three men who mean the most to me outside my family have all dropped me like a hot brick this summer, two of them with little to no explanation, and how I feel horribly alone, even when I'm in a room full of people who love me. And how I don't know how to deal with loneliness, because it's not something that's ever really affected me before. Until now I've always thrived on being alone, and had enough inner activity to never feel lonely or bored. And now I don't know how to deal.
I want to tell you about how much I miss Kurisu-San, but God knows I've told you that enough.
I want to tell you about the utter shittiness that is hypoglycemic dysphoric disorder / neuroglycopenia, that has affected me since I was seventeen but has, for some reason, gone out of control this summer, so that when I get low blood sugar my mood takes a downswing that can be anything from mild irritability to black despair to extreme paranoia to suicidal thoughts to crazy rage, that makes me so upset and irrational that I don't realise I'm being irrational, that makes me wonder if I've suddenly had a psychotic break - until I eat something. And then I feel fine. Even though I was diagnosed by a specialist back in Sixth Form, I still feel like I'm going mad when it happens. How can a basically happy, well-adjusted (OK, stressed-out, but that's temporary) person suddenly become irate, paranoid, even suicidal, just because she skipped a meal? I don't know, but it happens. Craziness.
I want to tell you the fun things, too - the wonderfulness that is Ms Babs who I met two weekends ago, and how much I love Autumn, and how Michael at the bank finally sorted out my finances so that I shouldn't be totally screwed for the rest of the year, and might even have some money for college clothes.
But...yeah. I have all those posts in my head, but getting the words down, so that they sound right, is just beyond me right now.
So here. Have a taste of the best thing that happened to me this week.
No, I didn't make it - it's from Dixie's Cupcakery in town. They actually bake a full-sized Oreo into the bottom of the cake itself. Bliss. I should have only eaten half a one, though - I think my teeth are about to fall out. The ones I have left, anyway.
(Written two or three days ago, and somehow I forgot to post. Oops.)
Monday, 5 September 2011
Time And Time Again I've Said That I Don't Care...
...That I'm immune to gloom
That I'm hard through and through
But every time it matters
All my words desert me
So anyone can hurt me
And they do.
~ Evita
The first time I ever got my heart broken, I was fifteen and I was acting and singing in my theater group's version of Evita. Not the whole play - young voices aren't capable of that, or they shouldn't be - but an abridged version. Still a challenge, and I loved it. I lost my love of performing right after that - perhaps because of what was going on in my life at the time, who knows - and it was actually the last time I ever set foot on a stage for anything other than speeches and lectures. But at the time, I loved it. For nine months I threw myself into being a different person. Being someone else got me through the first few months, when Julian's and my relationship started to go bad, and it sure as hell got me through the last couple months, when our life together - and his life, full stop - ended.
Perhaps it is not entirely coincidence, then, that every time that my heart's been bruised or broken in the last twelve years, I've immediately turned to Evita. Some of you have Joni Mitchell, some have Adele, some have Randy Crawford or Nina Simone or Billie Holiday. I have a whole host of Evas - Elaine Paige, Siobhan McCarthy, Elena Roger (not Patti LuPone, though; I'm sure I'll draw a bunch of hisses, but I don't think she was good in the role AT ALL ) - and yes, Madonna. I thought she did it brilliantly, although I accept that a lot of people disagree. The movie version is usually my first stop, since our theater production was more like the movie than like the Broadway / West End play. Plus, it's easy to get hold of.
When Richard brought Kerry home, and the two of them treated me like I wasn't welcome in my own house. When he fucked me and then refused to talk to me for several days. When Curt told me he loved me and then decided he liked my friend better. When Siji dumped me - twice, actually - for his ex. On these occasions, and probably a couple others that I've forgotten about, Buenos Aires in the 1940s is where I immediately head. It provides a sanctuary.
I've worn out my video of it in the last year or so. It's been played a heck of a lot. Time to get a DVD, methinks.
It's funny, though - I spent so many months being Eva, escaping from my own life into the life of another, that even half a lifetime later I can remember what it feels like to become a person who's known what it's like to be betrayed and emotionally bruised, but who also knows that she's better than that, that she's worth more. Sati forgets this sometimes, but Evita remembers what she deserves out of life. OK, sometimes she thinks a little TOO much of herself, but she makes it work for her. The music plays in my head, and I remember what it feels like to have that confidence and self-worth. And I can feel my shoulders straightening, my chin lifting and my head being held a little higher. And if I also feel myself becoming a little harder, a little more cynical...well, those will probably be temporary, and even if they're not it's a small price to pay.
That I'm hard through and through
But every time it matters
All my words desert me
So anyone can hurt me
And they do.
~ Evita
The first time I ever got my heart broken, I was fifteen and I was acting and singing in my theater group's version of Evita. Not the whole play - young voices aren't capable of that, or they shouldn't be - but an abridged version. Still a challenge, and I loved it. I lost my love of performing right after that - perhaps because of what was going on in my life at the time, who knows - and it was actually the last time I ever set foot on a stage for anything other than speeches and lectures. But at the time, I loved it. For nine months I threw myself into being a different person. Being someone else got me through the first few months, when Julian's and my relationship started to go bad, and it sure as hell got me through the last couple months, when our life together - and his life, full stop - ended.
Perhaps it is not entirely coincidence, then, that every time that my heart's been bruised or broken in the last twelve years, I've immediately turned to Evita. Some of you have Joni Mitchell, some have Adele, some have Randy Crawford or Nina Simone or Billie Holiday. I have a whole host of Evas - Elaine Paige, Siobhan McCarthy, Elena Roger (not Patti LuPone, though; I'm sure I'll draw a bunch of hisses, but I don't think she was good in the role AT ALL ) - and yes, Madonna. I thought she did it brilliantly, although I accept that a lot of people disagree. The movie version is usually my first stop, since our theater production was more like the movie than like the Broadway / West End play. Plus, it's easy to get hold of.
When Richard brought Kerry home, and the two of them treated me like I wasn't welcome in my own house. When he fucked me and then refused to talk to me for several days. When Curt told me he loved me and then decided he liked my friend better. When Siji dumped me - twice, actually - for his ex. On these occasions, and probably a couple others that I've forgotten about, Buenos Aires in the 1940s is where I immediately head. It provides a sanctuary.
I've worn out my video of it in the last year or so. It's been played a heck of a lot. Time to get a DVD, methinks.
It's funny, though - I spent so many months being Eva, escaping from my own life into the life of another, that even half a lifetime later I can remember what it feels like to become a person who's known what it's like to be betrayed and emotionally bruised, but who also knows that she's better than that, that she's worth more. Sati forgets this sometimes, but Evita remembers what she deserves out of life. OK, sometimes she thinks a little TOO much of herself, but she makes it work for her. The music plays in my head, and I remember what it feels like to have that confidence and self-worth. And I can feel my shoulders straightening, my chin lifting and my head being held a little higher. And if I also feel myself becoming a little harder, a little more cynical...well, those will probably be temporary, and even if they're not it's a small price to pay.
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