Pieces of a Hole: Mandy

Well... If anybody ever reads these sporadic entries of mine, please forgive me for trying to get the stupid things out first. This is really all just bottled up stuff. I really don't think I've ever gotten over anything.

Maybe I'm throwing out puzzle pieces for someone else to put together. The things that make me, well... me. Maybe I spend too much time dwelling on past mistakes or the past in general. Psychoanalyzing myself... But life feels like solitary imprisonment to me. Imagine sitting in a room with nothing to do but think back, knowing that tomorrow when you wake up you'll still be in that room. All you can do is listen to the comings and goings of people, perhaps listen to their stories and wish you were free.


This is a mental picture of my second true love, Mandy. My first true love was Stevie Nicks, but that's something different altogether.

Mandy was... ethereal. Different. Of black and Irish descent, with the best physical characteristics of both. She was a little darker than me, with freckles, green eyes and reddish hair that frizzled up at the ends if she grew it too long. Small and compact with a body of tightly coiled muscle that was covered in scars, both self inflicted and otherwise...

She was incredibly intelligent. She was also wise beyond her years in a way that I couldn't understand until much later. She never had a childhood. She also didn't afford herself the luxury of being young and naive. She was always the quickest with a joke and the first one to flash a smile or laugh at the silliest of things, but her eyes almost never had any humor in them. Or much else.

Mandy was a victim of severe emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her mother. She said that her mother had treated her like that for as long as she could remember, until Mandy put a stop to it herself. I never found out how she did this, but knowing Mandy, it had to be pretty brutal. When I met her mother, Mandy would walk into their townhouse and speak, her mother would look at her with this mixture of fear and awe, speak and then quickly leave the room. She was the first of a long string of Mothers that hated me for one reason or another...

But whatever damage she did to Mandy couldn't be fixed or repaired. She had scars on her back from where her mother had beaten her with everything from extension cords to metal coat hangers. She had scars on her legs where her mother had dug her fingernails in while Mandy tried to crawl away. She had multiple cigarette burns on her chest. Thin scars on her stomach from a razor. A scar running down the back of her neck where her mother had smashed a bottle over the back of her head, the broken part slashing it's way down. A hole through her left hand from being stabbed with a pencil. A crescent shaped scar that ran beside her right eye from being punched with an iron, leaving her eye perpetually red. She had spent many a week with no food or light, locked in the basement of that house.

She was only 15 when I met her. She told me she loved me after I saw all of those scars and didn't flinch. When I learned what had happened to her, I wanted to do... anything. Tell someone. The cops or SOMEONE. I wanted to do things to her mother in return. Mandy laughed at me. She said "Why bother? Fight's over. I won!" But she lost something.

She would leave most nights and look for people to fight with. She would show up bruised and bloody with the biggest grin on her face. She called it "playing". A lot of people were afraid of her, the tiny girl who wore long sleeves even on summer nights. We would walk past guys standing on corners and they'd shut up and stare at her as we passed by. She would keep chatting away, seemingly oblivious to it all.

Mandy was the person that got me interested in psychology, sociology and philosophy. She was also the person that started teaching me that the world was a lot deeper than our normal, everyday lives. She taught me origami and got me interested in different genres of music. She forced the extremely thick southern accent I used to have out of me because "it makes you sound like you escaped here from a plantation!"

We talked about starting our own family when she turned 18. She said that we could start with various accounts that her Father left to her. She also told me that in eight months that I wouldn't have a choice in the matter...

The last thing she said to me was "Don't look like that. You act as if this is the last time we'll see each other!"

I went back there five months later and discovered that she died in a car accident two days after I last saw her. No one told me. Her mother had moved and didn't bother to tell me. Our friends thought that I had known, but couldn't make it back....

No one in my family cared and I had no friends back home, so I swallowed it all and tried to carry the weight on my own.


It was this incident, along with the deaths of the other three friends in our little group, that led to a long string of dark years that ended in my first mental breakdown and a short stint in a mental institution.

But that... is something for another day.

I owe almost everything that I am to two people. Mandy is one of them.

I still miss her greatly...

Dream Theatre

Ive been meaning to catalog all the dreams I have. It's best to get them jotted down as soon as you wake up.

But then.... I've been meaning to write, period.

It's just... I've gotten to the point that any and everything that comes out of my mind is sheer negativity. No one to talk to, no friends here, nothing new and exciting, day in and day out the same grey shit.

But then I realized that it's gotta come out somewhere. I could prolly update this thing 50 times a day and no one would notice it.

And let's be honest. I'm not doing anything else with my time anyway. Watching grass grow? Yeah, there's a fun ass hobby. Fighting dialup? Sooooo boring.....




Anyway, dreams. I'm going to jot them down and analyze what I feel are the subconscious components of said dream. Maybe it'll relieve some of the sheer emotional angst that I've got built up. Like chipping flakes out of a brick wall.



So today's dream.... was rather short and bland. I was in my old apartment in the city with my Ex. No, not the last ex, but the one before her. Angela. This in itself is impossible because those apartments are gone, and by the time I moved there, Angela had long since fucked around on me and ran off to New York.

Anyway, it seemed like she was just moving back in the apartment after a long absence. The place was full of old dog shit, which is a mental reference to the last apartment we shared, which felt more like a poorly run kennel than an apartment sometimes. You could barely walk downstairs. That's a story for another time...

Long story short, I tried to have sex with her. At this point in my life, I don't know if that's something I would actually do without a spacesuit on, but anywhos... things were going well (I have magic in these hands! MAGIC! *cough*), until she started crying and talking about how she was so wrong for what she did to me.

This, of course, is because of my inner need to hear various people from my past say one of two things: That they were wrong for what they did to me, or that they did those things simply because they wanted to do them. This need sounds silly as fuck when I write it out. Not normal at all. I just respect honesty, I guess. Honesty. Not blame shifting, Fisher-Price childrens' psychological tactics and mind games. It pisses me off when someone does something damaging to another person and when asked why, they feel the need to give you explanations with more layers than an uncooked onion. I think this harkens back to a time when we were all punished and too scared to give an honest answer for percieved wrongdoing. Example:

"HOLY SHIT, JAY! WHY DID YOU BURN ALL THE GRASS AROUND THE HOUSE!?!?!"

"uhh... because I wanted to?"

"DON'T GET SMART WITH ME YOU LIL SKINNY MOTHERFUCKER! *bashes him in the head with her walking cane*"

next time:

"HOLY SHIT, JAY! WHY DID YOU DYE THE NEIGHBOR'S DOG ORANGE?"

"*fake tears* I.. I dunnnoooooo wwwaaaaahhhhhh"

"THATS RIGHT NOW GO APOLOGIZE AND WASH IT OFF!"

The above things may or may not have happened when I was younger... okay, yeah. They happened. But think about it. Even if you react with an honest answer to so-called "authority questions" as adults, it only pisses people off more. Tell a cop that you were speeding because you were bored or you have to pee really bad or because you wanted to. He'll drag you out the car so fast.... Start babbling and apologizing? He'll prolly feel all manly and give you a warning.


Boy, did I just get off track.


The Dream. Angela started going into this story about the funny shape of another guy's dick. That guy happens to be another old friend of ours. This part, of course, is because in the back of my mind I prolly think she fucked him too. Along with the phone book-like list of men and women that I KNOW she fucked while we were together.

The dick talk was too much for me, and I forced myself to wake up.


Oh, the entire reason I had this dream was probably because I'm lonely as shit. Friend wise, relationship wise, companionship wise, sex wise, or otherwise.

Be Careful What You Wish For... You Might Not Accept It.

A week ago... or was it two weeks? Anyway....

A week or two ago I had one of the most interesting conversations that I've had in a very long time.

One of the things I was asked was if I believed in the Law of Attraction. You know, not the thought that thinking positive thoughts brings positive things. I kinda feel like that's a lie. Sorry.

But the thought that you can virtually will the things you want into coming to you. "Ask, and you shall receive." That kind of crap.

Of course, a lot of people feel as if this is all a big joke. But those people are also disappointed that the million dollars they asked- no, I'm sorry. TOLD "God" to give them didn't magically appear. Neither did that car. Hallie Berry didn't show up at the supermarket so you could hit it off with her, either.

Those people miss the point that you'll never get anywhere trying to attract material things, but I digress... I mean, hell. You wanna try using your brain to manipulate and rearrange air molecules into a dollar bill or psychially influence a movie star to show up at your local Burger King, then go right on ahead. I'm told they film commercials in Okeydoke, Idaho all the time. lol



What's got me thinking about all of this right now is that.... well, for one, the cooling fan on my laptop died and I have nothing to do until the replacement come in. lol

Also the thought that I've always gotten what I've wanted or needed. I've just always felt like I wasn't worthy of whatever it was I got.

AND THEN I CHOOSE THE THING THAT I KNOW WILL FAIL OR BE HORRIBLE FOR ME!

Sorry, caps lock.

I've let a lot of relationships slip through my fingers like soap because I didn't feel worthy of whatever standards I imagined them having.

Either that, or they turned out to be crazier than the thought of snake nipples.

And it never fails. Dodging a long distance affair with an asian chef that I met on a online video game who loves manga, computers and has a british accent? Come on, now!

Or Melissa, who... even though I broke her heart TWICE, still treats me like her best friend and is teaching her two children to call me "Uncle Jay".

I could go on and on... but I won't. lol

I will say that I stayed in the relationship that I was in because of guilt, though. Silly, silly me.


As much as I moan about being alone (and I know I moan at an olympic level, thanks), tonight's realization makes me feel rather foolish. It's probably the closest I've come to being humbled by the powers that be in a long, long time.

Yes, I'm arrogant enough to want to apologize to some people for being so stand-offish emotionally. But they'll be okay. No need to make myself look stoopid as well as crazy.



If there's a God out there granting wishes like some damn genie, I wonder how many times (s)he has been confused and dissapointed after hearing me beg for companionship, giving it to me and me brushing it off? Or when I get pissed and curse him/her out about it? Shouldn't be such a flakey bastard anyway, God. lol

But.... I also wonder if said "God" is proud of me for noticing such a glaring and obvious a thing.

People and Anime

Oooooookay. After my last post of emo-ey goodness and a brief hiatus from e-life, I have returned.

And to distract my self from various lovey-dovey feelings that I don't trust and am not comfortable with, not to mention the fact that I didn't buy cigarettes, I have decided to start delving into why I love one of my great loves: Anime.

Why anime, you may ask? Or you're not asking?

Well, I've always gotten crap from other people about my love for "those cartoons". As in, "You need to grow up and stop watching.... those "cartoons". Or, "You mean like Pokemon? My kids used to watch that all the time! haha!!!"

I'm kind of embarrassed for those that have that kind of mentality. But it's not their fault. Day in and day out, they've been bombarded with shows such as Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Power Rangers, etc. that don't exist as a means of mental stimulation or entertainment. These shows only exist to program the need to have a product to impressionable minds. This has gone on with anime since the '80s, back in the age of Voltron and Robotech (Macross).

The other thought of the uninitiated mind is that anime is nothing but robots, ninjas, naked girls and bloody violence that you can't get out of American cartoons. The thought of a cartoon showing such things has somewhat of a perverse attraction. But once again, this is the Euro-American mentality at work.

What a lot of people DON'T see is that the best of Anime tells stories that are so rich, mature and complex that they are by nature designed to go over the average watcher's head. And no, beating a villain (who will later be a good guy), losing to a new villain, training for 200 episodes and beating said villain with your new technique does not equate to great storytelling. Okay, fine! I admit that I used to enjoy this brand of Anime (DBZ, Bleach, fucking Naruto), but there was copious amounts of marijuana involved. And no, it DOESN'T matter how flashy the fights or new techniques are. These stories are all the same, no matter how many times someone is rescued, how many times someone is injured, or HOW many times someone "dies".

The greatest of Anime will more than likely not even be seen by the casual watcher. If it IS seen by the casual watcher, it's meaning will be GROSSLY misinterpreted.

How can one watch Elfen Lied and not see that it's an incredibly deep and involved study on the total array of negative human emotions, what shapes them, and their effects on others?


How can one grow up using the internet and not relate to Serial Experiments Lain?


How can someone claim Death Note is boring? It's one of the greatest studies of power, responsibility and morality I've ever seen or read! Not to mention one will be hard pressed to find a greater story of cat and mouse.


Do people have to have tits and ass bounced in their faces, blood and guts and fights to be entertained?


Is it so distracting that people miss the point so easily?


It's like people don't read the stories, they only see the pictures. When did thinking become the most horrible thing in the world?



Gods, I need nicotone.

Oh shit. It's a Bitterness Post™!

Yeah, yeah. I know I said I was gonna do this MAJOR upgrade with this thing. Dialup wouldn't let me. But then, the more I look at it, the more the theme seems to fit me. And besides, I don't want to get into the habit of changing it once a week. I know I would.

And no, I'm not about to post about Obama's State of the Union address. My only concern is that I tried to sleep through it (SLEEP!) and my mom proceeded to turn the television up. I haven't seen her give a shit about a president since the Reagan Era. But anyway...

It's been a long week. A week full of crap that has left me stomping down my insecurities. Despite the front I've mastered... It makes me feel so fake sometimes. But I've almost come to accept the fact that if you walk around with your feelings on the outside, people tend to back off. People tend to only bother with "feelings" when you're dealing with their feelings. If you give too many of yours, people tend to just want you to shut the fuck up. They'll even look at the state you're in and give you some cliche' of a response. If this cliche doesn't give then the reaction they expect, then they deem you unfixable and label you as someone in need of therapy.

But of course, if THEY have the problems, they expect you to be there. To be understanding. To not... give them cliches. But if they don't work for them, why do they always expect them to work for YOU?

Ergh... okay. I have what can only be deemed "abandonment issues". I'll be the first to say the root of it comes from being the abused and neglected child. The thought of "nobody really loves me" is learned behavior. Reenforced parent programming. If the human mind is a computer, then none of us can escape our parent programming, no matter how hard we try. But I do try... But a lifetime of moving from place to place, being used and exiled by family, dead friends and lovers, betrayals, and bad relationships have left me with the feeling that I'll always be left and people will always have something better to do than deal with me.

I feel like the toy that people only play with until the toy that they REALLY want is in their grasp... then they put me back on the shelf. And there I sit until someone else picks me up to play with. It's left me so untrusting... I don't like thinking about things in those terms. Some people may think I'm standoffish or I just don't care if they come or go anymore. I just feel like if you're gonna stay, you're gonna stay. If you're not, then you were gonna go eventually anyway. Or sooner or later someone will come along and you'll choose them at the most crucial of moments... friendships, relationships, et. al.

The fact that I spent half my life taking care of people who I felt were my friends, only to have them drop me and/or leave when I needed them the most makes me feel stupid. I do my best not to think about what my life would be like if I hadn't invested so much time and money into making sure the people I cared about were okay. It's a thankless job.

The fact that I'm 31 and live with my mother now, when I spent so much time being a surrogate parent to others in the past... even when they were older. It really doesn't seem fair, but I'm working on it. It's just that doing it the honest way is like getting water from a stone.

And yes. It also makes me feel inferior. Like I lost at life or some shit. I'm not dead yet, but it feels like it sometimes.

Death is the failure of your life's greatest ambition. Your Personal Hell isdealing with the consequences of this failure. My life's ambition was to never come here again. To never step foot in my mother's house. Maybe I should have aimed for something more materialistic and used others as stepping stones on my path to greatness. Like I feel everyone else did to me. It seemed to have worked for them... Too bad I'm not like them.

I hate the fact that in not wanting to feel so alone and the comfort of being understood, I've kept in contact with my exes. They always find me... I always revel in the fact that I can talk freely about the things that interest me and get feedback. It's something that I can't do here. But I have to hear them go on and on about how shitty the people they left me for are treating them. About how great a person I am or was... how our relationship was sooooo great. Then I get to watch them jump through hoops and damn near kill themselves to make their relationships or marraiges work. While whoever the dude is works, comes home, barely notices them unless they're hungry or the house isn't clean... So they don't act like wives to husbands... they act like replacement mothers. That's their lives.

And I don't need a mother. I've never had one. Don't plan to pick one up. I cook my own food. Clean behind myself. I've always treated the people I care about as equals. There IS no gender role playing. No "You do this because you're the woman, I do this because I'm the man". No "I work and pay bills so I do what I want, YOU just... do everything else my mother used to do." Whatever happened to the concept of two adults just being two adults? What happened to BALANCE?

Do you know how frustrating it is to be told that because a relationship had no problems, no arguments, no fighting, no second guessing... that there MUST be something wrong somewhere? Why is it that people are only satisfied when a relationship is something that they're killing themselves working for?

Why am I friends with nearly all my exes? I hate feeling like women will settle for the shittiest relationships as long as they feel like they're financially secure and they have to work at making it work.

I don't have it in me to treat a woman like shit. To use her as a maid/slut/cumbucket. I don't need a slave. I want a companion.

But whenever I've treated a woman as an equal, they've simply dumped me for someone who'll treat them like the maid/slut/cumbucket. So they can be babymamas or single mothers in a married household. So they can complain about the way they're treated and work themselves to death making it better.

So where does that leave me? I simply can't do it.

And when girls start popping up out of nowhere once I start making money again, how am I supposed to trust that?

FUCK I had all this shit to say, and now I'm spent.....

Title Goes Here

Well....

Weekend's coming up. I really don't have much going on, except trying to upload websites to my server via dialup.....

So one of the things I'll be doing is customizing this thing. I've been putting it off and procrastinating, but the fact that I'm just letting it... sit here is really starting to annoy me.

I may even dabble into finding some people and trading readership. I only have one reader so far, and to be honest, even if she is reading this thing I'm prolly far more a fan of hers than she is of mine.

I do love writing, and I do have loads of crap on my mind that can only be exorcised by getting it out. One of the things that keeps me on the internet is the fact that someone, somewhere will hear what I'm saying. But to be honest, a lot of the reason that I stopped updating my livejournal, my old geocities page, my myspace page, my old blogger, whatever whatever is that I can get a tad too... personal at times. If I'm down, then I'm horribly down. Have to vent somewhere, so I did it over the internet. Some people felt that I was crying out for attention and made certain comments... It's just that a lot of the time it's just me and the internet ot me and four walls. I have to get it out, so out it comes.

Not to mention the fact that I can be TOO emotionally honest. It runs people off, yah I know, k?

So I guess I'll be doing more witty socio-political commentary and sharing my own personal philosophy. Jacyneomics and such... My favorite people and things and why I love them so... Updates on money making ventures that I'm running, but only if I'm successful with them (generate these revenues!).

Maybe I'll make another account to keep all of my personal, lovey dovey/emo mildly psychotic-sociopathic crap to myself. But making things private defeats the purpose of wanting to be heard and understood, doesn't it?

I have a lot more to say on the nature of things, but time is short. Gotta get to work. And besides, I have a little too much of the wrong kind of material in my head to be writing about right now. Mind is wandering....

Updates soon.

ttyl

Another blog post wasted on a message board.

....I remember saying that it was gonna get ugly in this blog really soon. Well, if you just happened to chance upon this page, then yeah. I haven't touched the layout of it. Pretty ugly, yah?

I knew you'd agree.

Anyway, here's another potential blog post that I wasted on a message board. I have no idea what my problem is. I love to write, if only to get the thoughts out of my head. Why do I procrastinate on coming here to do it? Or, hell.. even my old myspace account. I've even been guilty of spamming my own facebook comments just to clear some space in my head.

What's bad (downright horrible) about it is that I know that those forms of written communication (facebook updates, message board posts) are made to be read in short little jots. People don't read them if they're too long. They scan them if they're over 3 sentences. Not everyone has this obsession with reading it all. I do it to the point that I call it digesting a post/book/whatever.

So why do I do it?

I guess I suffer the same problem that fictional villains do. It's the thing that makes them explain their "master plan" in full detail to the story's protagonist, even though said villain knows that the hero will use this information to ruin said plan, punch said villain repeatedly and kick him in the nuts.

I want to be understood. Even by people I may not know or particularly like.


Oh shit, I forgot to post the post!

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nah, don't feel bad about it. I really don't think the majority of people are stupid, though. It's like different levels to it.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine a few days ago, we were talking about our shared habit of getting music/games/movies/whatever off the internet, deleting what sucks and going to buy what we like. (support quality, no matter the genre.)

We got into people who bootleg this type of stuff. I know I could make a killing doing it, but getting new releases sometimes up to 6 months before they come out seems so natural that I can't imagine someone paying for something I put no thought into. But it never fails, I have this cousin that'll come to family get togethers with his chest puffed out like "Look at this bootleg movie I got." Everyone's like "whoooaaaaa that just came out in the theaters LAST MONTH!" And they buy it, calling him some kinda genius.

I sit quietly and think "I saw that 3 months ago..." They think I'm jealous because I don't buy his stuff. With a little effort, that could be MY money. But it all seems so dumb... like buying bottled water.


On the other hand, take this forum. for every rehashed, chopped up and pasted together idea that comes through, you'll have 10 people (like me) that are new to it all and will say "holy shit this idea is revolutionary let me get started RIGHT NOW!!!" Then you'll have 20 people come in and go "LOL NOOBZ THIS IS TEH OLDZ!"

Does that make me dumb for not knowing something obvious? Or me smarter for knowing more than others? Nah, just different levels of knowledge.

I know I just wrote a lot of crap and decreased the chances of this being read (and wasted a good blog post). But I say all of that to say this:


For every obvious thing you feel you know, there are at least 20 people who don't. Find those people and either share your knowledge, or exploit them for their lack thereof.


Thanks, threadstarter, for this great idea. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go try to sell some flatscreen TVs.