#literally from January to December terrible shit has happened in my life
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A representation of how 2020 has been
#literally from January to December terrible shit has happened in my life#fuck 2020#2020#this shit sucks
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So Aaron asking Ben to move in and this plot about his dad seemed to be more about the parallels with Liv’s drinking problem then any real character development for Ben or their relationship. Surprise, surprise.
I had a few people jumping on a twitter response of mine last week, don't really do twitter much and wasn’t hoping to invite a conversation from Ben fans, Ben/Aaron fans, but anyway I was completely baffled, fascinated and mad and had to get my thoughts down.
Firstly my comment was about how weird I find it that on top of having this abusive father his whole life, Ben was so happy to forgive and forget the bullying that Aaron put him through, that made him want to die, within a day and a vague apology wanted to date him and it was brushed under the carpet. I got two different responses from the fans that I want to look into because it has been on my mind all weekend.
1) About 2 or 3 people commented that I have clearly missed some episodes
This is hilarious to me, not only have I never missed an episode, but I have over analysed all Ben and Aaron scenes a thousand times over, without ever watching back I remember a great detail of what was said, weird dialog, acting/directing choices and facial expressions.
But mainly on this I am just hugely confused by what scenes they actually think I missed? There have been very little actually story about this bullying backstory full stop, no real content and no real resolution or explanation as to how come Ben got over it so quickly. Given that I was referring to the first week or so on screen, it literally went like this. Ben having no words in the Hop whilst Liv was acting like Aaron goes their all the time to see Ben at the Hop. Ben orders a jacket potato and chilli whilst Chas awkwardly tries to suggest that Aaron gets back on the dating horse, hint hint hint to this random man who we know nothing about at this point and if he is even gay/into men. Ben with Al and Kayak’s getting introduced to Aaron. Aaron going back on his own to ask about Kayak lesson when Ben flips with the you don’t remember me, now I can hit back and you made me want to die etc. Ben’s car breaks down, Aaron says he can help, gets his number to text about parts or something. They go for a drink as you do with your school bully. Aaron explains vaguely about having a tough up-bringing and struggling with sexuality. Ben has no reason to really trust him at this point or take his word for it but decides to awkwardly start trying to flirt and talks about the bullying he suffered as “reminiscing”, (weirdest line to use in context, I certainly don't reminisce about the kid that used to call me names at school let alone actually kick my head in on the daily). Then Aaron goes to the Hop and asks about a lesson, clear indication of a date. This was all over a few days episodes, but one actual date time-wise. That is is, whole story wrapped up. No Ben talking to other people in the village that tell him to give Aaron a chance, no forced to work together, share friendship group, locked in a room together or whatever contrived plots soaps like to use to get people talking. No longer story of getting to know each other, Aaron proving he had changed. Just one conversation and it was all fine. Like what was the point?
Then from that point on we got a couple of episodes were Ben turned up out of nowhere, no build up, no aftermath, again no discussions with other people in the village, friends, co-workers, so we never saw his motivations or reasons for wanting to be with Aaron he just showed up apologizing for their disaster pint or Aaron apologised. So much so that Ben was only in 11 episodes from September to January and many of those were like one or a couple of scenes, which is so poor when you compare to the other new characters introduction, interactions and multiple mini stories that played out.
The 4.5 months Ben was off screen was also used as a reason some how to explain how the lack of actual relationship discussion makes sense, like they talked again when he came back, (about his sister being an alcoholic), as if that suddenly makes it ok that they haven’t address the bullying or that argument again before Ben became a literal cardboard cut out glued to Aaron’s side.
2) There was one person who replied saying it wasn’t a date at that point with the first lot of pints, which those terrible pint plots arguably were meant to be a date, but in any case they were still planning to meet up just the two of them, Ben kicked off after Ben didn’t turn up after divorce papers and Kayak lesson etc. So it still doesn’t make sense to want to get so pally with your ex bully. Through-out this point Aaron was pretty hot and cold and damn right rude at times. Yet Ben kept following him around and showing up wanting to talk and try again and they suggest a pint several times. One person did not like my response about him following Aaron around as if it was Aaron following Ben around because Aaron was the one that suggested the Kayak lesson to begin with. But this person clearly hadn’t seen the scenes where Ben kept showing up out of nowhere wanting to get in Aaron’s orbit, Aaron largely seemed uninterested and said about them being friends beginning of December, (I think), which was never shown on screen and apparently didn’t happen according to January scenes at Aaron’s birthday when Ben said the friendship thing hadn’t worked out.
3) There were the comments of the conversations on his return in May and the scene in the Hop discussing the bullying over some table football, you know do completely casual. Again ignoring this does not change the facts of how this story started and how poorly it was executed regarding the bullying. Also in my opinion that chat was way little too late, they were official at this point and had only really been seen discussing Liv, her drinking problem, Liv being missing, Ben’s alcoholic dad and oh the mystery guy Ben put in a taxi. Therefore no actual relationship or feelings chat anyway at this point, other than I’m miserable and we apparently have a laugh despite the fact we haven’t seen that onscreen. So why would I expect any in depth relationship story. Even the Aaron Ben fan said they “try” with the Hop chat. And like fair play, if you are happy with such shit a story and effort, then go live your best life hun. But wow really, what are you liking here?
In actual fact Aaron still seemed quite offish on many occasions with Ben and snappy upon Ben’s initial return once again and yeah he was worried about his sister but why would Ben want to be around this permeantly, with someone he barely knows still, and would have possibly been triggering for him but yet he is promising to support him no matter what, you aren’t on your own Aaron, you have me, we and us etc. .
On the point of proving Aaron had changed the show has made a point this last year of many characters talking about how aggressive Aaron is, Liv about how he pushed her instead of Luke that whole time and calling him a control freak and lots of nasty names. Mandy calling him a bully when Paul first died before she found out the truth. Luke calling him a violent thug or something whilst Ben was there and talking about bad boys and stuff moments later, Ethan and Charles talking about him being scary and the same from Vinny at as well. On top of the Pollard nonsense plot with the brooch and Ben was well aware that he was up for a bulgary/assault charge of which Ben had no real reason to believe he was innocent again he didn’t really know. He had only just re-connected with him after months off screen following the toxic argument, which also never got resolved, no sorry I didn’t realise Liv had a drink problem, I get your concern now, sorry for what I said, sorry for how I treated you, which as much as I don’t like Ben I feel he sort of would have deserved after how Aaron spoke to him.
Finally, and I realise no one is going to read this haha. In one of my responses to these people before I gave up and said we are never going to agree, let’s leave it. I said content wise the story has been poor, there has been such little effort with the writing and Ben isn’t really a character right now, still only serving for other Aaron related plot and after 10 months on the show has only one small chat about gay marriage with Charles and the weird gay app conversation with Vic, Ethan and Luke outside of Aaron which is just not a proper character on a soap that it is 6 times a week. Funnily enough, I got no response on that, no comeback or pathetic or disillusioned excuse. So do they all know how bad the story is and choosing to fight on the missing episodes I haven’t seen, whether those pints were dates or the fact they spoke after Ben’s disappearing act, which does nothing but really prove what a nothing of a character he actually is more than anything as there is no way I really believe it was all just down to COVID when other plots didn’t suffer the same way.
I will shut up now!
#emmerdale#emmerdale thoughts#aaron x ben#anti ben#anti ben tucker#anti Aaron x Ben anti Benron#antibearon
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January 21, 2021: The Wages of Fear (1953)
What exactly is a thriller, anyway?
Now, I’ve repeatedly considered having thrillers take up their own month, considering that they’re considered one of the core eleven film genres. However, they intersect so commonly with other genres, that I’ll be incorporating it into other months this year.
The definition of the thriller or suspense genre relies on surprise and intrigue. The audience is made unaware of certain information, giving a sense of mystery to the movie’s setting. The protagonist is often also unaware of these certain things, although that certainly isn’t a requirement.
Sometimes, they’re as innocent as the audience, if not moreso, and may be getting manipulated during the course of the story. Escapes, chase sequences, clear or hidden dangers, all of these meant to build suspense and unnerve the audience. It doesn’t have the overt scares of a horror film, and its action scenes build up to a feeling of building dread. They’re adrenaline-raising, heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat films.
We’ve already covered one of the most prominent subgenres, the spy movie. We’ll cover more during Horror October, naturally, and a couple more this month. Comedy April’s even going to have a comedy thriller or two, while Romance February will pack an erotic thriller in there. Oh, and let’s not forget Crime July and Drama December. Like I said, they’ll be all over the place. Today, though, we cover one of the seminal French action thrillers, similar to our last two entries, but MUCH older. Enter Jean-Georges Clouzot.
Clouzot is one of the old-school French directors, even though he debuted quite late as compared to most, in 1942. A French Alfred Hitchcock, Clouzot’s first solo film was The Murderer Lives at Number 21. And surprisingly, it’s known as a comedy-thriller, and made a splash in theaters when it debuted in 1943. Which is interesting, given that whole World War II kerfuffle at the time. His most famous film, however, came in 1955, and was called Les Diaboliques. And THAT’S a psychological thriller that may end up on my list for October.
But two years before that, he made an action thriller. You know where this is going at this point, so let’s get on with it! SPOILERS AHEAD for The Wages of Fear!
Recap
Before we start, a tiny disclaimer: GIFs were...impossible to find for this one. HOWEVER, I miraculously found a recolored copy that I was able to convert into GIFs. I prefer the black-and-white version, which is how I watched it, but SACRIFICES MUST BE MADE
We start in Las Piedras, a small village in a Spanish-speaking country somewhere in Central America. A group of men speaking French, English, and Spanish are relaxing on a saloon porch, trying to beat the heat. These men include Mario (Yves Montand) and Bimba (Peter van Eyck). His girlfriend (?) Linda (Véra Clouzot, the director’s wife) works as a servant in the saloon.
Eventually, the men are told to leave, with Bimba being told to go to the airport to pick up mail. Arriving on the plane - other than a man with a whole-ass GOAT, which must have made for a fun flight for EVERYBODY involved - is a rich-looking man in a white suit and a fancy fly-swatter.
Our man, who’s French, runs into Mario, who is also French. This is Jo (Charles Vanel), who, despite looking rich, is out here looking for something monetary. Mario, after being weirdly cold to Linda, leaves for his home where he lives with Luigi (Folco Lulli), who speaks Italian. A real polyglot of a movie, this one.
Over the course of a montage of indeterminate time, we find out that there’s no work in this town for the various men, who are stuck in this town because of the desert surrounding it, expensive tickets, and no jobs or employment opportunities. We also find out that since there’s oil, there are Americans.
The Southern Oil Company, SOC, dominates the town due to nearby oil fields. They aren’t the best, though, and they tend to treat the townspeople pretty terribly. Jo inquires for a job there, to no avail, and reconvenes with Jo. After treating Linda and Luigi, to be frank, like ABSOLUTE shit, Mario...WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND
HOLY SHIT, MARIO AND LUIGI LIVE TOGETHER. REALLY?!? Holy shit.
Jo’s a dick, it turns out, which causes a rift between the two Frenchmen and the others. After literally getting the entire saloon angry with his antics, he threatens the nice Luigi with a gun, causing a tense atmosphere with everybody. After literally handing Luigi a gun to shoot him, the dejected man leaves the bar, dejected. Like I said...Jo’s an absolute DICK.
The next morning, something’s happened. The oil field has caught on fire, killing some of the residents who worked there. This causes some anti-foreigner rhetoric, which’ll probably spell trouble for our mostly foreigner cast. The foreman is Bill O’Brien (William Tubbs), who’s asked to handle the situation by his bosses. The only way to put out the fire is to generate an explosion triggered by nitroglycerin. Which seems...backwards, but I don’t know how oil works. They need to transport the nitroglycerin to the field, but the job is too dangerous for unionized workers. Therefore, the idea is formed to bring in some of the unemployed men, especially those that hang around the saloon. And, of course, that includes Mario, Jo, Bimba, and Luigi.
Speaking of Luigi, sad news. Looks like his construction job has resulted in cement powder depositing in his lungs, giving him 6 months to a year to live. Shame, he seems like a very nice guy. And so, considering that this job is dangerous, but follows a lot of money...he doesn’t have much to lose.
One of the people at the briefing immediately backs out upon learning about the job. He notes that this job infects men with fear that they can’t recover from. For that fear, the wages are $2500 per person. Only four people can do this job; two per truck, with one driver and one passenger. After some trials, Mario, Luigi, Bimba, and Smerloff, a German, are chosen. Jo isn’t good enough, much to his own dismay. However, as Bill and Jo are old friends of sorts, they make a deal; if one of the men doesn’t show up, Jo can take his place.
That night, the men (sans Jo) gather in the saloon. One young man, an Italian named Bernando who wasn’t chosen, gives Linda a note to mail to his mother. Sadly, there’s a reason for that that I won’t show here. But while they tell him that there’ll be a next time, he insists that their won’t be. I’ll let you fill in the tragic blanks.
The next morning, Smerloff doesn’t show up, having last been seen with, uh...with Jo. Wonder where Smerloff went. Well, predictably, Jo ends up replacing him. Jo and Mario go first, after winning a coin toss. They drive off hauling their truck loaded with nitroglycerin, and you can feel the fear begin to set in for Mario. As they drive through town, Linda tries to say goodbye, only for Mario to literally push her off the truck, MAN, I don’t like this guy.
As the truck drives, they encounter their first obstacle: Jo. As he’s driving, fear would appear to set in for him as well. He overcomes a couple of large puddles, but begins to shiver and sweat, saying that he’s sick. But no, he’s definitely just nervous, and they stop the truck in a forest of sugarcane so that Jo can take a break. However, they have to get going quickly, as the second truck is close behind them.
In the second truck, Bimba and Luigi talk a bit, with the affable Luigi doing most of that talking. But when Jo and Mario stop for a second time, they tell the pair off and drive past. Because of this, they hit the first real obstacle: a stretch of rough and bumpy road called the washboard. To get over it, one has to go 40 mph to get over the bumps. If not, then the truck will feel the bumps, and the nitroglycerine will explode. Luigi and Bimba get over with some difficulty, finding out that the gas in their truck contains water, and needs to be changed.
As for Jo and Mario, Jo’s nervousness costs them time and energy, as he refuses to speed up to the proper speed before getting on the washboard. They have to back up (inside their own tire tracks), and Mario officially takes over the wheel. And he starts going fast...too fast.
They almost collide with the other truck, but Luigi and Bimba speed up in time. Next obstacle: a road under construction. A K-turn is needed, and that turn requires a flimsy wooden construction to be driven on. It isn’t easy, the very competent Luigi and Bimba manage it all right. Jo and Mario get there, and Jo, predictably, FREAKS OUT.
Mario, on the other hand, is overly reckless. In order to get over the rotted out road, Mario has to drive to the very edge of the construction. Jo, who was guiding him from the back of the truck, ends up tumbling over the side. While Mario thinks he’s dead, Jo instead takes the opportunity to straight-up run away, although Mario does see him. This is a problem, as the truck begins to slide on the wood without Jo’s help. But Mario, ever-resourceful, figures it out. But...
OH SHIT! Mario gets off the construction just as it’s starting to collapse. He makes it forward, and passes the cowardly Jo, who tries to get back onto the truck.Mario, UNDERSTANDABLY PISSED, almost leaves him behind, but finally stops so that he can get rejoin. The two get into an argument, where Mario calls Jo out for once being brave, but now being a coward. Jo tells Mario that he has no imagination, and that Jo’s “died fifty times since last night.” I love that line, honestly.
Back to Luigi and Bimba. They talk about life after the money, even though we’re aware that Luigi doesn’t have much of that left. It’s then that the next obstacle appears: a talus slope, from which a giant rock has fallen, and blocks the road. Bimba has the...bright idea (?) of using the nitroglycerin to blow up the stone. Which I feel like is an...idea.
They make a hole in the rock, then siphon some nitro out of a container. The others catch up, and back the trucks away, leaving Bimba by himself to do the deed. And it is...ABSOLUTELY NERVE-WRACKING HOLY SHIT. After setting up a Rube-Goldberg device and pouring the nitroglycerin into a hole in the rock, Bimba lights a fuse and sets it to blow.
But because they fear they;ve parked too close, Luigi runs back to put out the fuse! Too late, though, as the nitro blows, and rocks fly, almost falling on the trucks in the process. As for Luigi...he survives! Knocked out by the shock from the explosion, but not injured. In the process, the rock is finally destroyed, and Mario and Luigi finally reconcile as friends.
Back on the drive with Luigi and Bimba! We find out that Bimba’s a German, whose parents died at the hands of the Nazis. He himself was in a work camp for 3 years, which is why he is as brave as he is. Behind them, Jo and Mario talk of France, and Jo rolls a cigarette.
...FUCK.
Luigi and Bimba are gone. Like that. This, of course, freaks out Jo, who runs away from the truck. Mario catches up, and beats Jo for his cowardice. They return to the truck, albeit very reluctantly on Jo’s part. They make it to the site of the explosion, where there’s...no sign. No sign of the truck, of the guys, nothing. Just a busted pipe spitting up oil, creating a massive puddle.
Jo goes into the shallow pool to guide Mario through it, but gets stuck in the pool in the process. Mario runs over his leg, and the truck itself gets stuck in the oil. Mario gets out of the truck and helps Jo, whose leg is FUUUUUUUUUCKED up. I mean it, it’s like a busted sausage link, like a sock made of MEAT. It’s not OK, is what I’m saying.
Mario, using a cable, an iron rod, and his wits, manages to pull the truck out of the oil pool. He gets Jo, and the drive continues. Jo, in pain and possibly bleeding out, is close to falling asleep. To keep him awake, the two talk about Paris. Day turns to night, and Mario continues to drive. They finally make it to the burning oil field...but too late for Jo.
Mario’s finally able to get out of the truck, and stumbles towards the fire and collapses. Not dead, just exhausted. He gets all of the money promised to the four, and leaves in the now empty truck to go back to Las Piedras. Free of nitroglycerine and free of fear, he gleefully drives back. In the saloon, the patrons celebrate Mario’s survival while listening to Blue Danube, and so does Mario! And Mario is driving...carefree. And recklessly.
...That’s The Wages of Fear. See you in the Epilogue.
#the wages of fear#le salaire de la peur#henri-george clouzot#yves montand#charles vanel#folco lulli#peter van eyck#action thriller#365 movie challenge#365 movies 365 days#365 Days 365 Movies#365 movies a year#user365#my gifs#mygifs#moviegifs#action january
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(( You know, using the year to research for this blog has been kind of fun in a lot of unexpected ways. ))
(( It started out with me trying to figure out more about the viking age and the local folklore of Scandinavia specifically. That’s where it all began since I wanted to better understand what I was writing.
So I start noticing a few repeating patterns cropping up; ‘’And then Chri.stianity changed this concept and we don’t know what the pre-christian context is anymore.’’
But I didn’t want to read the bible so I decided to push it aside for a while. And then I started to build a narrative around the witch hunts and demons and started to read up on Demonology and the witch hunts. And realized demonology was in large part just a thinly veiled excuse for medieval priests to be xenophobic and sexist.
And so I decided; I should probably look into that! Since so much of folklore is connected to Chr.istianity, I have demon characters, I use the witch hunts, I can’t ignore it. I might as well read the bible to understand the context behind the changes, maybe it’ll give me some answers?
It took me a while to do so, but I did it. I read the entire thing. I McFreaking did it.
Aaaaaaaaaand I learned nothing from it. I didn’t understand what I was reading, but I was... less than thrilled about what I read, no denying that. Well, ok, I learned that the devil wasn’t a part of the Old test.ament. The Old tes.tament doesn’t mention demons at all! The New Tes.tament, however, do mention demons a few times.
Sa.tan didn’t become the character they became in Ch,ristian belief before year 500 with little to no basis on what the bible said.
But the bi.ble said nothing that would clue me in on the local folklore, at least. No, I needed to go further into the history. I needed early history on Chr.istianity and how the O.rthodoxy was established and how it spread across Europe before I got some clues on that.
So I decided to look at videos published by Yale for a semester they did on how to read the old testament, to actually understand what I read. And I’m so glad that I did, holy shit, all those nuances flew right over my head as a modern atheist reader. And then their course about the historicity of the New testament. Very fascinating, actually.
It was about how the early church tried to find their footing, learned that the Ne.w-Test.ament is terribly A.nti-J.ew. That the Ch.ristian faith mainly used the Je.wish Bible to springboard a path to make their NEW RELIGION more valid in the eyes of the Romans who squinted hard at new religious movements.
Then I went down the rabbit hole of ‘’historical J.esus’’ for a bit, and that was kind of fun. Pfft. But basically, what I came to conclusion is that: J,esus might have existed, we don’t know, but for arguments sake let’s say he did. That in old Roman beliefs, and in a lot of places around the world, was that people could be raised to the status of Divinity.
A lot of roman emperors had been made Deities that way. That gods could have children with humans and those children could become gods too. That this was a thing that could happen, and was a commonly held belief that wouldn’t be difficult to understand for the average person at the time.
But since I’m getting tired of reading about Ch.ristianity, I jumped back to viking age. Which is just more Church history, electric bugaloo part 2, if we’re going to be completely fair. It’s not like there’s a lot of history to go around that’s not centered around the religious shift.
The myths are highly Chri.stianized too. So we kind of just have to take them for what they are. BUT. There are hints to the pagan past there. So I read about Seidr. (From a modern practitioner, so there was a lot of New Age themes in there, but I’ll read up more factually academic oriented book on Shamanism soon. )
But you won’t believe how many doors just learning about shamanism does to the reading of the myths. Seidr\Shamanism with a dash of Animism is the very foundation, the building blocks to the myths. One has to understand shamanism and animism in order to understand the myths on a more intimate level outside of a modern person’s perspective.
And I was so delighted to realize that for 1. Freya gets a much greater importance in the grand scheme of things. She barely has a presence in the myths, so this discovery was GREAT!
2. It sets up the world view as a much more focused way.
3. It showcases gender in a very different way from what is usually considered the ‘’popular’’ image in modern day and age. Women were practitioners, religious authorities, they would be REALLY important people in the local tribes.
4. Odin is a practitioner as well. Which, I don’t know about you, but I can dig that and the implications they bring.
Then we can move on to the demonization of pagan concepts with that as a springboard. I had this realization earlier, reading about demonology, but pagan concepts were just twisted into becoming demons for people to stop connecting with them.
Pagan holidays were changed to have a Chr.istian meaning. Jòl\Yule In Scandinavia was in January or February. Then some king decided that he wanted to move it to December to celebrate Jesus together with the rest of Europe.
Which in later years resulted in them demonized the ANCESTRAL SPIRITS who would come from the afterlife, to the mortal world, to celebrate Jòl with their living relatives. Eating the food that was left as offerings so the ancestral spirits could have their festivities, eat and drink, while the living slept.
...By turning them into criminals, suicide victims, people who hadn’t gotten baptized, those in Purgatory, and all the others the Church didn’t like. Saying that they will take your soul or kill you if you weren’t careful. Which I’m still not over.
But we can’t talk about the Christianization of the Vikings in Norway without mentioning Saint. Olav Haraldson, or Olav the Holy.
Olav was a rather interesting figure. You can literally not read up on Folklore without him popping in to say hello. So why is that?
Well, essentially, he started out as your average person, born by a king in Norway. What was then expected by the sons of a King at that time, would be to go on a viking raid, so he went to England and terrorized King Æthelred for like... 20 or so years. A king who had been dealing with Vikings terrorizing England for over 50 years.
Olav, funnily, became friends with the King. Was baptized by the King, and swore to be his loyal body guard for as long as he lived.
Then he went back to Norway, bringing with him a Bishop from England to help him make the case for Chri.stianity in Norway.
He went to all of the Kings he could gather, went to the local governmental bodies and stated his case. And it wasn’t difficult to convince the local Kings to accept Chri.stianity as they most likely had been exposed to Christianity in one way or another. Whether it’s from foreigners entering the shores along the coastal lines, or from having gone on Viking Raids\trading with others.
Olav, of course, killed people who didn’t agree with him in a good old fashioned ‘’BELIEVE OR DIE’’ crusade, but shhh.
So when he died, at the battle of Stiklestad, the Bishop he had brought with him made him a Saint. Yeah, we’re returning to that dude.
The Bishop made him a Saint for ‘’taming the vikings’’ and ‘’showing them the light’’. And so, Olav was then turned into a propaganda figure to further the Christian agenda. All with a great divine story and all, with the inclusion of tying in the story beats of Jesus’ life to his character for extra effect.
He was deemed THE ideal leader. The image of HOW a King SHOULD be. The image of a righteous man who did right before God. (Which, funnily, made the Swedes take over the throne as a consequence because no one could measure up.)
They said that when he died, his killed who had gained some injuries through the fight, was the first to notice Olav’s divinity. That his injuries had healed completely. And that once he realized he had battled and killed one of God’s chosen ones, he fled to Jerusalem to repent for his sins.
Then 1 year later after he had been buried, they dug his body up and placed it within the church Nidarosdomen. And the moment his body found its new resting place, he healed the ENTIRE TOWN from all their sickness and pain.
Yeah.
So after that, people began to use Saint Olav’s name to replace the old faith by retelling the old stories. You can pretty much in large part pinpoint where some pagan themes got altered during those retellings.
The Jotun, who were intelligent chaos spirits challenging the order the gods represented (which is... eh, the duality aspect between chaos and order is a christian concept, but it’s what we got) became stupid Christian hating Trolls. Just as an example. Some myths were basically copy pasted with his name inserted into them.
Olav took over the role of both Odin and Thor. And was considered superior to both. He was better at killing the jotuns than Thor was, so Thor gave the mantle to Olav himself...
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Which got me to the Paganism side of things. Where I found a statement that went something along the lines of ‘’Maybe the Landvettir\the spirits are being hostile because of how forcefully Ch.ristianity came, forcing a new way of life. Severing people’s spirituality, their connection with nature, the spirits? And then went on to disrespect them at every turn, treating the land spirits as demons for the crimes committed by humans.
And, like... I like that, it makes a lot of sense, actually.
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Moving on to a different but related topic; witch hunts and the Scandinavian Devil.
The Scandinavian devil most likely originated as a pagan concept like most things. What that original source is, we’ll never know. But what I find hilarious about the old concepts of the Devil is that they’re represented as ‘’eeeeeeeeevil’’ for...
1. Giving people money and food.
2. Gave women and other outcasts more autonomy and power.
3. Was the midwife to women who gave birth outside of wedlock. And encouraged women to kill said children, children who likely would be unwanted, would ruin her reputation, would push her out of the local community. They basically offered a late abortion through infanticide is what I’m getting at.
4. Taught people how to read and write.
5. Made people question the church’s power structure.
6. Created a space and community where outcast of the society could throw away social expectation.
7. Sexual liberation. (Though the Scandinavian devil was highly sex repulsed and fled from even sexually obscene language. This is more of a... the devil from other places in Scandinavia thing. )
8. Taught magic.
9. Told their followers to be unpleasant and harm others who slighted them.
10. Took your soul, your heavenly ticket to paradise.
The devil wasn’t a saint, but I just find it hilarious that all of the things they did were deemed bad when in a modern context they were doing really good things.
Which then connects them to witches. The church thought women got kids with the devil. Then they realized, wait, Demons can’t get kids. It’s a succubus\incubus, who helps the devil get the kids. By using the sperm of human men, corrupting it, and then inserting it into women.
And the Succubus\Incubus is their right hand man. Yes. Logic.
And so on, so on. That’s not even touching the anti-semitism that went on during the time, but I’m focusing more on the folk lore aspect of things at the moment.
I dunno. I just find it interesting how it all connects and I’m not even half done researching everything I want to research.
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2019
a whole summary of this difficult year
2019 was full of unexpected good and bad surprises along with lessons and experiences.
january
spent good time with mocha, wayo and brian
had such a good time with guildies from our game
met up with some other ppl from the same game and didnt feel too good bc i was never good with crowds and/or groups that were already well established
tried tinder for the first time because i thought it would be nice to put myself out there for once
feburary
continued my tinder journey and actually had fun with it. it was pretty scary at the same time because it was such a new experience talking to other people and to have them notice you? because i always knew and felt that i wasnt really the desirable one.
actually hooked up with a guy from last months meetup and hung out twice. thought it was going somewhere because he, too, showed signs to progress further ((was wrong because he lied and showed red flags later))
one major red sign to me: no response after genuinely saying thank you for rides and dinner. im the type of person who always says thank you because im honestly grateful for the little and big things. he basically shrugged it off.
also, a huge liar. yah, big no
i brought him to my friends birthday bc they and himself wanted to meet each other, it was fun while it lasted but stuff happened
towards the end of the month, i cut my ties off with him for being awfully mean to me and also cut ties with my “friends” for having really bad assumptions of me.
i was frustrated with myself at that time bc his cats gave me a bad breakout and i felt super ugly. also i wasnt sad over him, but over the fact that i let myself be treated like a second option. eventually i learned that it was good that i didnt let things go further and that i only deserve the very best.
even though i was hurt, i thought it was a good experience, esp since i havent really been in the “dating game” for years. like it was a just a small step to putting myself out there once again
a week later after that a classmate asked me out and got tons of compliments from him and wondered “the universe really works in crazy ways”
march
met some cool people through the same mobile game on a discord server and they were much better than the first group.
also met this really funny dude in the same group. like he was so fun to talk to and he understood my dumb lingo
remember when my classmate asked me out on a date? it turned out a bit weird. but considering this was my first date in YEARS i thought it was a cool experience. got some carne asada fries outta him
i had the dude i was talking to call me so i could leave the date tho LOL ((he helped me lots, esp how to deal with awkward situations with my classmate. also at this point, i really liked talking to him but i wasnt rly sure if i wanted to date other guys bc i had been hurt previously)
this month was pretty much dedicating most of my time talking to him and i enjoyed it alot
also went to pubs for the first time to hangout with my coworkers. such an interesting place
april
tried rollerskating for the first time ever, ended up with a bunch of bruises but it was cool!
also tried 7leaves for the first time and instantly fell in love with mungbean
also went clubbing in sf with my friends and it was such a fun time like i had SO much fun
i got auctioned off of SAD! that phase was just a crazy ride. while there was many that dm’d me, there was only one special person that i only replied to and continued to talk to him on a daily basis
((honestly, i was scared that i was taking things a bit further with him because a part of me was like “are you ready for this?” and “have you really recovered from that guy?” or “can you give this guy your all?” just alot of overthinking))
spent 4/20 at sf with my friends, and overall had a GREAT time. took too many hits and drank so ya gorl was crossfaded. not sure if i wanna do tht again tho
unfortunately woke up with a swollen face and it lasted for a LONG time.
may
so my face is still swollen, still bad, red as a tomato and at this point i was really hesitant to meet up with the guy ive been talking to. i mean!! my skin was SO bad. i felt like i was gonna make a fool out of myself by scaring him away
but,,,, he was still willing to see me despite my appearance and : ( he was so accepting and typing this makes my heart ache bc he is SUCH a good man : (
i met up with the guy towards the end of the month in sj and first thing he does when i walk up to him is give me this great warm hug and so many smooches !!!!!!! like my heart is melting
eventually we became official !!! he got us an airbnb for the night and we jus spent time cuddling on the bed and honestly i : ( i like him so much
june
my birthday wasnt rly that like “wow” it was actually kinda annoying
my bf flew up to sf where we met up, explored the city and slept the night in at an airbnb. next day went to oakland where i introduced my friends to him!
went to my first festival with several with my friends, including ppl from our same guild from our game and it was SO fun
rolled for the first time and it was SUCH an experience. redosed like twice and ended up hallucinating which is something ill def not do again
also i really wished my bf was with me at that time : ( while i had an extremely fun time, i wish i shared that moment with him : (
july
went to vegas for my cousins 22nd bday. shit was wild
also rolled there.
also threw up for the very first time
a fight broke out at the club and that shit was fuckgin CRAZY and it was RIGHT next to our table
also used alot of my money for the whole trip in which nobody really told me about so …. i was like ok.. fuck …
also my skin was still bad during these past months so it was pretty hard masking it
like really hard. with someone with terrible eczema, its just extremely hard to hide it
august
bf flew to sac!!! he met my mom for the first time and we explored the city and stuff
and went on an ikea date! and! honestly i just really loved spending time with him :c
we also spent time with my friends! they came over also! and ate some fuckgin bomb ass waffles
and then took bus down to la to meetup with some friends from our guild towards the end of the month!
it was pretty nice to be able to stay with my bf in his apartment !!!!!
also some scalding tea but thats rly for another time
to make it super short tho: our friend that we’ve known much longer than the girl he met (less than 3 months) dropped our friendship SO quick lol
september
cousin bonding @ beach, too cold for tht doe
towards the end of the month, my bf flew me down!!! so i spent the weekend with him and like always, only had a good time with him!
AND ALWAYS EATING GOOD FOOD!
october
during this fall semester, i took online classes and one of them was a 8week class. there was a topic about mental health and how we can take care of ourselves better and i just thought it was such an important thing to cover. i feel like its not talked about enough
november
spent thanksgiving with my family down in morgan hill and ate good food! honey ham has a special place in my heart.
went black friday shopping first at walmart, lowkey disappointed in myself because i was bummed out the apple watches were sold out. the materialistic part of me jumped out oof
slept at my cousins then went to the mall! didnt get anything besides really good bulgogi fries. i hated going into stores tho cuz everything was literally crowded. hated it !!!!!!!
went to a small festival in sacramento with my friends at the end of the month and this time is 7 of us (than the usual 5)! it was sososo fun.
also took my coworker with me, it was actually amusing to see bc our group were all asian and he’s the only tall white guy
made hotpot at home and we also went out for milktea and waffles again! sooo good.
december
flew down to see my bf again and only had a good time! went to this garden with beautiful lights and ! ugh! SO pretty!
cried in his bed before my flight back, cried on the plane, cried at home and cried before i slept. i miss him
also racked up alot of hours so i could pay for my tuition and my family’s bills. kinda sucks bc im pretty tired but i gotta do what do i gotta do.
christmas was a bit lonely bc my mom went to the philippines and i dont rly talk to my brother but my kuya came the next day and we ate n watched stuff
overall, it was a whacky year. but im so glad to have met ed. he means SO much to me. a part of me was so hesitant to date him because i mean, he’s man with his life set. i dont have a car, im still in school, i have this part time job where im giving my mom all my paychecks and which the only money im keeping is just my tips (not much), i still have issues with myself and other conflicts and honestly theres much to do, learn and grow from. but he’s so supportive, understanding and loving and i love and appreciate him from the bottom of my heart. most of the time i wonder if im doing and if im being enough for him. i worry about that alot but he’s so patient with me. i laugh alot when im with him and i feel so happy.
did i mention that we are long distance? him being in la and me in sacramento. so the only thing thats connecting us is facetime. maybe once every two months will i see him in person but yep. when i had my first panic attack, i really wanted him right next to me. at that moment i felt even more sad because of course you’re gonna want you’re significant other during a moment like that. but anyways, i always miss him and i always want him next to me and i always love him. i want to hurry up and get my education done with so i can be with him. not to sound like omg im so madly infatuated with him type of thing tho. he’s someone who understands me and knows how to love me.
i hope 2020 treats me well despite all the challenges ahead of me.
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January Jewels 2020
I’ve purposely put off writing this monthly wrap-up because, well, christ. January was a terrible month. I don’t need to go into the details of why, but the consensus from everyone that I’ve talked to fully agrees with me on this. What the hell happened? Starting a new decade is supposed to be great. In any case, I’ll always have high hopes for the future. And I’m just thankful to begin a new month. Here’s what went down in the pit that was January 2020.
First things first, I recapped how my 2019 resolutions turned out. Why don’t more people do this? Where’s the accountability in reviewing your past resolutions? They’re not fucking birthday wishes, they’re intentions! More people need to follow through with this, even if the results aren’t what you hoped for.
I made my 2020 resolutions.
I fell absolutely in love with this sketch.
I did two podcasts with Nathan - one where we talked about the pope incident and one where I absolutely scream at him about Hillary.
I read Jenny Slate’s new book as well as a tiny little book about how to live a good life.
I ended up buying another J. Crew swimsuit (the same one I bought a few months ago, but this time in red) and I have no regrets.
In love with Trader Joe’s (dairy free) coconut whipped cream, I can’t stop using it in hot chocolate.
I rewatched (or watched for the first time, I truly can’t remember) The Staircase and it’s so good. I’m pretty sure Marla got me MP3 copies of this years ago and I did watch it, but I completely forgot about it in detail. Such a good watch. If you’ve already seen it, do you know about the owl theory? It’s a wild one, but, like, I think an owl did it now?
I’ve been using a small bottle of OUAI’s Wave Spray and if I can figure out how to not overspray it, it’s a great product. Once you use it though, your hair only looks good that day. After you sleep on it, your hair looks like shit. (Is that true of all hair products? I have absolutely no idea.)
Bought this Banana Republic top for $13 on sale and I love it because it does not feel like it cost so little.
I don’t know if it’s a Canadian brand but I have found a wicked alternative to Dollarama: Buck or Two. I went to one in Brampton and they’ve got everything.
I watched most of the SNL with Jennifer Lopez and wow did it suck. 99% of the sketches were basically “She’s pretty. That’s the joke.” Fucking hated it. They do this a lot of the time with certain actresses and I can’t ever tell if it’s because the actress loves doing these sketches or they’re afraid she can’t be funny. Whatever the reason is, blow my brains out, please.
I went to the Ear Inn in the city and it was lovely! Super old place. Service was great. Burger was great.
I went to Glossier with the intention of buying the cheek stain and then decided against it. It’s not a good product. I literally pinched my cheeks and got a better rosiness.
I came across probably my favourite winter children’s book of all time, The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. Look at one page of this magic.
I was so happy to hear about this matter finally being settled in New York.
I went to The Dutch again for Restaurant Week for their steak tartare and it’s just heaven on a plate.
I rewatched the great What Lies Beneath and man, it’s still just such a great movie.
As you may have heard, Papyrus is going out of business, so I’ve popped in twice to see what the closing deals are and they aren’t worth it yet (only 30% off! C’mon! I won’t get out of bed for at least 60%), so I’ll keep stopping in every so often until they’ve become desperate.
Love this part of a recent SNL (below). (If you can’t see it in Canada, search for “white male rage SNL.”
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I finally went to Boulud Sud for their pasta happy hour and man was it not worth it. The place has a terrible setup if you’re sitting at the bar, the food was absolutely nothing special and had ridiculous portion sizes. It’s also a bad sign when the bread is tastier than the entree. Super disappointing.
I tried on the bras and underwear from LIVELY in Soho and even though it’s priced reasonably, I couldn’t find anything I loved. I have a feeling that I could be into it though, so I’ll go again sometime in the future for sure.
I’ll forever love the lunch special at Pil Pil on the Upper East Side. I know I probably bring this up too much, but man. Love tapas.
I can’t stop buying sunglasses for sale at ALDO. And I won’t.
I finished season one of The West Wing and it was really good. I keep forgetting about it, but I should stick with it. People, like, loved that show, didn’t they?
I started using Sol De Janeiro’s Bum Bum Cream… on my butt. That’s what it’s for, no? So far, I mean… it feels smooth? It’s not at all greasy, which I like. Seems weird to have a cream just for your butt, but who am I to criticize.
Ate the fish tacos at Summer Salt and they’re good! It’s insane and great that they sell margaritas at a fast casual place, too.
Very into this Pat McGrath mascara that I got as a Sephora reward.
Love this Wells For Boys sketch (below) from a few years ago that I just saw for the first time (thanks for showing me, Irene!)
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I haven’t been there in years, but I went to Sweet Afton for happy hour in Astoria the other day and had the pickle martini which actually wasn’t terrible. Love that place.
Tried the lunch burger at Peter Luger finally! And yes it was a good burger (love that they use American cheese and the bun was very good even though it's not a potato bun). Steakhouse burgers are always hard for me to rate since a steakhouse burger is a real *entree* unlike the regular, everyday burgers that other places have which are not as big and overwhelming. An everyday burger is easy to rate since it's either great, overrated or shit. A steakhouse burger has nuances, how juicy is too juicy? How's the quality of the meat? What are the ideal toppings? Should someone shoot me for my extensive burger thoughts? Yes.
I went to see a free orchestral performance put on by Julliard at Lincoln Center and it was great. It reminded me so much of going to my brother Gary’s recitals when I was a kid, just loved it.
Had dinner at Portale. The pasta was insane. This place might be a rival for L’Artusi! Dare I say it! Every bite was phenomenal. MUST return. (Noteworthy: it also just got two stars in the Times.)
LOVED this piece about Ricky Gervais and the Golden Globes. Favourite line: “The least risky thing in the world is announced apathy.“
Maybe you don’t know this, but 90% of post offices in the U.S. have bulletproof glass between the workers and the customers. It’s obviously because awful things have happened, but I’ve been going to this one post office in the city on 23rd street that doesn’t have the glass and the workers are SO MUCH MORE PLEASANT. I wish all locations were like this one. Just a thought.
Just bought another one of these UNIQLO shirts that I love in dark grey.
Every January I make sure to:
Mark down all holidays/birthdays/anniversaries (Valentine’s Day, Daylight Saving Times, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving)
Check expiration dates for passport/license/health card/insurance and write down any important renewal dates
I’ve watched the first two new episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and it fucking blows. There was only one thing I laughed at (when a server thought Larry was “oggling” her but he was really just keeping an eye on her tray with pigs in blankets) but OTHER THAN THAT, what a piece of shit season so far! I fucking hated the part in one episode where he videotapes the consent given between him and some woman as they’re making out. ALSO, and this has happened a few times over the seasons, he’s recycling fucking Seinfeld jokes. FROM THE SHOW. Talking about when it’s too late to get “Happy New Year-ed”? Are we kidding here?! Fucking lazy as hell. I might just stop watching.
I watched the new Taylor Swift documentary on Netflix and it’s really good. Even if you have zero opinion on her, I really liked it. (It also introduced me to this great song.)
Things that I’m looking forward to this month: seeing a Raptors game at Barclays Center, finally sitting down and watching season two of Shrill in its entirety, reading Joan Rivers’ book Enter Talking and and maybe going to another Restaurant Week lunch before the end date. February, please oh please don’t be as terrible as January.
If you’ve got any interest in reading last month’s roundup, you can see what went down in December over here!
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Personal post so pay it no mind
Just wanted to kind of sit back and recount all of the shit that has happened to me over the last maybe two months. In no particular order
Started a new relationship (that was fun)
That relationship ended (less fun when I found out he was a serial cheater in the past and was ending things because he now had feelings for his coworker. Like guess I’m proud of you for coming out and saying it instead of trying to hide it but that’s still really shitty)
Found out I had a fracture in one of my lower vertebrate that caused me to have so much trouble at work that I was crying in pain every shift. Lost so much money due to that and almost my job.
Job had me so high stress during December (I wait tables, so it was rough) that I finally snapped and ended up in UAB’s psychiatric ward overnight on suicide watch. I broke down in my car on the way home from work and just didn’t know what to do. On a slight note, this was conveniently timed one day before the ex told me about his coworker thing
Didn’t have health insurance during the month of January (because I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything but sleep and go to work during the months of November and December which made me miss open enrollment) and managed to get the nastiest case of strep I’ve ever had in my life
Had to get rid of the smaller one of my snakes (that one I don’t want to talk about but it fucking sucks)
Developed feelings for someone that I know will never go anywhere. Or more like re-discovered old feelings towards them that started a long time ago. Also dealing with the fact that I’ve loved someone for almost two years now and they’ll never reciprocate that (relationships are so messy ffs)
Last night my dad collapsed and had to be rushed to the ER in an ambulance. My mom heard him fall and found him. His blood pressure was 60/20 when he got there. We are pretty sure we know what it is... it’s his drinking. And I know in my heart that he’s not going to stop. I’m facing the knowledge now that my time with my father may be more limited that I thought.
I wanted a family by now. I feel alone. I have almost no one. No siblings, no close family other than my parents, certainly not anyone I can rely on. Every time I feel like a break is coming another wave of unbearable tragedy hits me and knocks the breath out of me. I have no money, no one to go home to, hell I hardly even have someone to TALK to about any of this because the people I consider my best friends are all going through their own shit and don’t have time to coddle me through mine.
I’m trying so hard but I have... just I have nothing left. I have nothing. My credit is terrible, fed loans is hunting me down and I can’t pay for my classes. I can’t get a better job right now because the task of doing so literally feels insurmountable. I need my family to be okay but they’re not going to be. I just need... something. Anything. I just need one good thing in my life. I love my friends but I can’t make them fill that kind of role.
Anyways, please ignore this, I just needed to get a lot of this shit off of my chest
#personal#silverpersonal#me#ranting#tw:suicide#ive really had a difficult couple of months and if life was a video game right now is when i would quit and make a new save file#just fuck#i need help
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Now that I am finally through the 12 book odyssey that was catching up/rereading the October Daye series here's a post of my general thoughts. (ADVANCED spoilers. Like I don’t hold anything back, lol).
A. Just for fun, my favorite books tended to be the ones where shit (especially Lore Shit) went down in a Really Big Way. My top 5 for that...
1. The Winter Long (#8). I don’t think you can beat this one in sheer fuckery. Two MAJOR twists that basically change everything up to this point in the series, and they’re both dropped pretty casually. One, Simon Torquill is maybe not as evil as previously thought? and is also Toby’s step-dad? Whoops? And number two-- fucking EVENING, the fucking throwaway character killed in book one-- isn’t even dead AND she’s a fucking Firstborn and also a total piece of shit. God. It was a ride re-reading book one because there are so many hints (my favorite line: “no one knew her true face” YEAH OCTOBER, YOU SURE AREN’T WRONG). I pointed it out but even the Shakespeare quotes of books 1 and 8 foreshadow this shit. That in particular was 999-level fuckery.
2. The Brightest Fell (#11). I was not expecting this book to gut punch me so hard. Like, everything goes to shit, obviously, and the consequences of that stretch well into the next book. But then to give Simon a genuine redemption arc, to invest in that so emotionally, and somehow find a way to end it in a WORSE way than him just dying? That stuck with me. I was so fucking upset I just couldn’t do anything of value for like a day. So that’s how you know it’s good I guess! :D
3. An Artificial Night (#3). God what do you even say about this one. It’s where shit really starts getting real for the whole series. It’s creepy and more fantastical than the first few books and you learn more about The Firstborn and what they’re capable of. There’s a lot that’s just viscerally traumatic too. Literal children being twisted into horrific monsters. And if I’m right, I think the whole series is going to loop back to this one in a big way. There are so many... mentions and (dare I say) hints dropping even now about Blind Michael.
4. One Salt Sea (#5). I mean, a lot of stuff happens in this one that ultimately ties into book 12, but a really major character gets killed off, Rayseline is taken out of commission, the Undersea gets introduced, and you learn what the hell is up with the Selkies. I really truly believe the epilogue chapter of this one is some of the best writing in the series, it’s so well put together and has such great beats. Idk like it was a tossup between this one and Ashes of Honor (#7), but while the latter had some of my favorite bits I think this one had a lot more.
5. Night and Silence (#12). Maybe it’s cause it’s the most recent one and the most fresh in my mind, but DAMN. Kinda like The Winter Long this one had two big twists, and while they weren’t as major they really defined the book. The whole Janet thing I really and truly did not see coming and has some BIG implications for everything we know. Amandine’s a changeling! What the fuck! Gillian being very decisively rewritten into the series (and turned into a Selkie) was ALSO not something I saw coming in any way, shape, or form. This one really fired me up wondering where things are going next.
B. I mentioned it but GOD the Simon thing made me so viscerally upset! I don’t think I’ve run into a series that approached a redemption arc that way. You take a character who’s pretty much evil, then start making it way more gray. Was he a bad guy? Yeah... but he had a reasonable motive. Is he still a bad guy? Yeah kinda, but he seems to genuinely want to change, and actually assists the heroes without ulterior motive. OK, so then he comes back a few books later as the deuteragonist and gets a whole lot of character development, and he starts to improve. You even get a concrete indicator that the horrible shit that corrupted him is going away. And then, when he ultimately reaches his goals? He’s forced to give it all away, to turn back into the monster he’d been, in order to do the right thing. Fucking unreal. I’m fully aware this is to make the whole “finding Oberon” stakes more personal but it hurt, man!
C. My vampire crack theory is pretty much dead, so rest in peace, that.
D. OK so what is with the month names? Seriously. You can explain it away a little bit with the whole “fae like to honor people but don’t like to reuse names” shit but there’s absolutely no way it’s that simple. They’re all female characters who are related, however slightly, to the Torquills. I made that observation pre-book 8, but dismissed it because Toby wasn’t technically related to them. ONLY AS OF BOOK 8 SHE IS, SO CHECKMATE. THERE’S SOMETHING HAPPENING, DAMN IT. Anyway I like making lists, so...
1. January -- January O’Leary, She’s September’s daughter, and she gets killed off in book 2. This might be enough for me to dismiss the month name thing except the epilogue of 11 brings her Back to Fucking Life, so honestly all bets are off imo, she was absolutely brought back for a reason.
2. February -- no one.. yet.
3. March -- no one.. yet.
4. April -- April O’Leary, January’s adopted daughter. She’s a cyber-Dryad and we see her perspective briefly when January gets resurrected. I’m not sure what else to say about her in relation to this?
5. May -- May Daye, October’s blood clone (basically). I mean, her whole existence is pretty weird. You could make the argument her name is just a coincidence (she was once a night haunt named Mai), but there’s absolutely no way I’m buying that.
6. June -- no one.. yet.
7. July -- Gillian Marks-Daye. October’s daughter. I mean. I was going to say “no one”, but she just got decisively re-written into the series. “Gillian” is the feminine form of “Julius”. I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be the dark-horse contender for this slot. No way that’s a coincidence.
8. August -- August...Torquill? She’s Simon’s biological daughter and Toby’s half-sister, so.... She was ALSO introduced pretty late, unlike most of these entries, so I am still convinced this is A Thing.
9. September -- September Torquill. She’s Simon and Sylvester’s sister. Also like, decisively dead I think. She hasn’t shown up in the main series (only mentioned), but I think she shows up more in the short stories? I don’t know enough about her to say much.
10. October -- October “Toby” Daye. Like. That’s the name of the series. She’s the main protagonist, dawg. She’s Simon’s step-daughter. What more do you want from me.
11. November -- no one.. yet.
12. December -- no one.. yet.
E. So where is the series going? Obviously next book is about The Luidaeg finally calling in the Selkies’ blood debt or whatever, which we knew was coming for a long time. But #12 just made that way more personal with the whole Gillian thing. I have no idea what’s going to happen with that. Beyond that? There are some loose ends here and there, but the big thing is Oberon coming back. That’s pretty much a given. If I’m right, I think the consequences of Book 3 are going to start showing soon, but idk if it will be in relation to that or not. I’m sure she can come up with way more to put into the series (maybe a book around Toby and Tybalt getting married? SOMETHING THAT EXPLAINS THE MONTH NAMES???), but that’s all that’s really evident to me.
F. So, the characters. They’re probably my favorite bit of the series. The Luidaeg and Tybalt are undoubtedly my faves, but I’ve really enjoyed seeing how Toby, Quentin, and May have grown over the course of the series. I know I mentioned this previously, but I really like how the series’ initial allies end up... not being allies, so much-- whether by getting killed off or severely disappointing Toby. Sylvester, Evening, Luna, Lily, and Connor all pretty much disappear or greatly alter their role in the story.
Yet the main cast, the “found family” the series focuses on? Pretty much none of them started out even liking each other that much. Quentin is a snotty noble kid, Tybalt is straight up an antagonist who HATES Toby, The Luidaeg is just plain terrifying, and May is some bizarre doppleganger that (seems to) randomly show up. Yet over time they’ve forged into such a strong and really likeable crew. Idk, it really gives me the feeling that it’s not just FOUND family, but EARNED family, and I really like that.
G. While we’re discussing characters, I want to talk about The Luidaeg in particular.
I think she’s probably one of my favorite characters of all time. That’s a high bar but she is just so damn INTERESTING. Morally gray for sure, but not in a traditional way.
Like, she clearly has her own agenda. She’s probably the oldest character in the series, and she’s fucking terrifying. People use her name to warn their kids at night. We see samples of her powers and the things she knows, and she’s basically a walking eldritch horror. A great deal of the series is her calling in and collecting debts from the main characters so she can use them for one purpose or another. She’s the fucking sea witch. Right?
Except... the series humanizes her so much. She is clearly kind and compassionate and does her best to hide it. While she initially intimidates the main characters, Toby gradually realizes she’s lonely and seems to enjoy their company. Every single bit of her backstory you get adds more context to her behavior. She’s protective of children because hers were slaughtered like animals. She speaks in riddles because there are so many things she’s forbidden to say. She asks for terrible prices because she HAS to help anyone who will ask her to, and there are certain things she doesn’t want to do (and often, it’s because said things would harm others). This is also why she’s so standoffish and avoidant of others-- because they take advantage of her. Despite all the horrible shit that’s happened to her, she still does her best to be kind and do the right thing. And her ultimate goal, I feel, must be a good one. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
There’s more. A lot of what she does is clearly calculated to achieve a particular result. She mostly shows kindness to certain members of the main cast (Toby and Quentin in particular) and very few others. It’s always interesting to see how she interacts with other characters, because it closely mirrors her initial behavior. Yet even then you see little things, like how she took in Poppy as an apprentice. One of the few times you get her perspective, it’s when she realizes Amandine is abusing and literally killing child!October, and you see how horrified she is, enough that she steps in and puts a stop to it. Does she have a use for Toby down the line? Yeah, obviously, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t do the right thing for the right reasons. I suppose it’s possible she’s just manipulating everyone, but the stories like that and her blood memories make me feel otherwise. Also, the amount of human profanity she uses is pretty funny, since so few characters use it.
Honestly this may seem like an odd comparison but she reminds me of Akane from Zero Escape. She’s playing the long con, and a lot of what she does seems strange and mysterious until you get more context. And she clearly has some ultimate goal she’s working toward (probably something to do with finding Oberon), but we won’t really know what that means until it happens. It’s probably going to be an emotional rollercoaster.
There’s more to her than that, but I find it hard to articulate. I just really like her! Pretty much every scene she shows up in is interesting, because she has intriguing lore, dialogue, or insights. She’s almost certainly a big focus in the next book and I don’t know if that means I’ll love her or hate her at the end, lol.
H. Much shorter note, but Toby/Tybalt? How DARE you make me care about a M/F ship THIS MUCH. They’re just so good. The ultimate slow burn Enemies to Grudging Allies to Friends to Lovers. It’s such a ride and a treat to read. Their early interactions are fucking hilarious on a reread. And I find myself caring so much about what happens to them.
I. I think this is my last point, but I REALLY appreciated the LGBT rep in the series. There’s obvious stuff like “all the fae are bi unless stated otherwise”, but there’s a really good amount of overt rep. May’s a lesbian, Madden’s gay, Quentin’s bi, and no one bats an eye. It’s AWESOME. Also, making Walther (a certified badass and cool character) a trans man was just wonderful. The fact that he goes on right after the reveal to do one of the biggest Lore things (curing motherfucking elf-shot) is the best. I really like Walther and we need more characters like him.
I’m probably missing SOMETHING, but idk. These were my main thoughts on the series as a whole. I’m interested to see where things go.
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Of Politics and Road Trips
Welp, it seems like the time has come to address one of the gnarliest and most frequently asked questions of all time. To be clear, that's gnarly for me and to me, respectively. I’d also like to memorialize a recent road trip. Before I start, though, let’s get grounded in the current context: it’s late summer IN MARCH; We are headed intro autumn, and there has been enough early snow that Mount Hutt was open for skiing (what?!?!). I started my new job at Jade Software; the kids started a new school year in January, with Anily headed off to her first year of high school (5 years of high school here); both kids have changed to a new soccer club, which is much closer to the house (thank god); Anily made the A team; James is playing soccer and basketball and ridiculous amounts of Fortnite. It’ll soon be a year that we’ve been here. We are right in the middle of a full 12 weeks of visitors and trips from/to the US. And in case you were wondering, the cat has managed to escape through open windows and doors a few times, but he’s always come back so I guess he’s ours for real :-)
I still haven't submitted my dreadfully complicated tax return. I am seriously procrastinating, and having visitors and reasons to road trip is helping/hurting.
So! BFGFAQ (big fat gnarly...you get it): It’s the political one. From the Kiwis this usually comes in the form of “are you a Trump refugee?” or “what do you make of what’s going on over there?” And even if it’s not an explicit question, how can I possibly answer the most frequent Q of all time -- “why did you move to New Zealand?” without considering how the political landscape of the US factored in? I mean, you don't just up and move across the globe and leave a great place and a fabulous life without at least a mental checklist of pros and cons. At least, most of us wouldn't. And if you’re a grown-up (which we sadly have established that I am) and a contributing, aware, member of society (which I would argue that I am), your list must include considerations of the way your taxes are spent and people are treated in the place you live and how the outcomes of those things impact your lifestyle, your life, and the lives of other human beings. Right? Right!
MAJOR UPDATE: A handful of days after I posted this, someone (likely an asshole white supremacist) shot and killed people in a CHCH mosque. The city is still in lock down as I write this. It is terrible and sad that things like this happen anywhere, ever. And I just want to say that as you read the ideas below, I’ll be watching closely the response of the NZ government.
If there’s one thing that moving around the world to a place you’ve never been before, with a small family and no friends, and taking up a real life with a paycheck and a rent and a job does really well, it’s create an opportunity to reflect on the differences between where you were and where you are. It also is extremely useful for considering, in a very real way, how the values you hold are (or are not) reflected in both a political system and a local way of living. You really notice how political decisions, socioeconomic forces and cultural norms trickle into investments, infrastructure, bureaucracy, language, aesthetics, and interactions that impact you as you move through your day-to-day and learn how to get things done. And because you’re an observer who is trying to become an insider, you may operate with less bias and pre- disposition to judge, more of a natural curiosity and interest in gathering information and then assimilating it and deciding over time. Chalk one up for perspective! Happy to say this was the kind of experience and growth I hoped we’d all get through this adventure.
Now, from the Americans this question usually comes in the form of something like “OMG, are you so glad you’re not here for this?” or “are public healthcare and lack of gun violence really as amazing as they seem from here?”. Because, like me, most people I talk with on a regular basis feel something like this:
t least you do now, thanks to Willie Wonka’s and friend above, and this:
So while I am not here in NZ without political bias or personal ideas of what’s right, wrong and important, I am more open minded to considering what’s good for this country and this context, and I have a stronger appreciation for the complexities of things all across the board since I’ve now gathered more data and had more experience.
So, my American friends, in the interest of helping you draw some of your own conclusions, here is a segment I like to call Fact, Figures and Feelings:
America is amazing. You have SO much of everything. Including great food, tons of money, vast political power, and a really noticeable amount of homeless people. I mean! When I was in San Jose I felt so conflicted by both where to go for every meal and the fact that to get where I wanted to go I was uncomfortable with my own feelings and anxiety about possible conflict with the homeless and mentally ill folks I passed constantly. And it was often while I was walking into a convention center full of people trying to give away millions of dollars, listening to speakers who had made millions through technology. And while the dog adoption station on site and the furry friends in it made me feel a little better in the moment, could there be anything more cliche? Embarrassing. And yet is it fundamentally bad to have cute dogs making rich people feel good and maybe getting adopted? No. But it maybe uniquely American.
Know what else you have a lot of, USA? DRAMA. Seriously. The NZ morning news is usually about 25-50% reporting on the shitshow that is US and Brexit, and it turns out that when people say “if you get homesick, just listen to the news” they are correct.
So what about NZ? Well, when you live in a country with SO MANY FEWER (like so many!) people and a much smaller GDP, your reality is very different. Not so loud. Not so busy. Not so many options. Much much simpler and frankly, it feels more sane. But we know the Mexican food sucks. So... six of one/half dozen of the other? This is what I am saying: I cannot tell you if Enchiladas and Aveda products make up for dealing with the opioid crisis if you’re seeing it every day, or if leaving Tito’s vodka and a much higher salary on the table is balanced out by the fact that police here in CHCH carried guns last week and this is how people think about it:
FUN FACT: During the “summer holidays” (December-Jan), the morning news show on public radio literally went off air. They replaced it with special summer programming, mostly dedicated to personal profiles and reviews of music and activities. The only headlines they read each day were almost entirely about the US (shut downs) and UK (Brexit). Apparently it’s possible for time off to extend to politics and news. WOW. Just notice how you feel about that.
Now, NZ is certainly not the rainbows and unicorns utopia we liberals like to think a place with a public healthcare system and affordable education and far fewer guns will be -- there’s a growing imbalance in the distribution of wealth, the abortion laws are archaic, affordable housing is a big issue, nurses and teachers strike because they don’t get paid enough.
Politics was not the only motivator for our move, but we considered it -- sure seemed like a nice time to be out of the US, and it is. It’s certainly not a clear #NZFTW-100% -they -nailed-it situation, though. Every place and every system has its bad sides, and I have a lot to learn to really decide how the pros and cons balance out. All I know is that it’s really, really nice to be in a place where the political conversation is much simpler and more focused on politics and their outcomes on people than on hateful rhetoric. I am disappointed when I think of the lost opportunity due to the amount of resources you are wasting on unproductive, unkind conversations in the USA, when you have so much. I feel bad for not being there to help stand up for the rights of people I believe in, but when you don't wake up angry every day at the headlines and the people you share space with, when the dialog is a little more open and productive, when the headlines are not so likely to be violent and sad, you start with a much better mental health baseline. You just can’t eat a great caesar salad whenever you feel like it, and it’s expensive as hell to leave the island and you don’t get paid enough to be able to do it often, which may really stress you out. For now, I’m really ok with it. But over time will the flaws in the NZ system (every system has them) outweigh the positive? Do the opportunities in the US outweigh the negative?
In the interest of letting you form some your own opinions: Take a look at the the top headlines of 2018 in New Zealand. They include a pregnant PM; visits from Ed Sheeran, the Royals, and Obama; a handful of natural disasters; a bunch of news about other countries and sports; and the BIG BIG Drama which “unfolded over several deeply uncomfortable days” and ended in a minister being briefly admitted to a mental health facility and broad discussions about mental health. Consider if the US was as concerned about its politicians’ mental health when they did crazy shit :-).
Oh also, this is my CEO at work on Friday (hee hee):
So far this year Lime Scooters (people get hurt on them, and people break the rules and double ride with no helmets -- gasp!) and the potential of a capital gains tax have been in the news pretty much daily. And that’s about it. Boring? Yes! Nice? Also yes! Did you know NZ is the only country in the OECD to not have a CGT? Are you impressed with my knowledge of initialisms? Worldly is the word you’re looking for to describe me.
I know, it looks like I am pooping on a trail, but I am actually doing squats mid-hike IN A SKIRT. Probably gives me enough credibility to become a world leader, or at least present these numbers for your consideration:
Now that you have something to think about -- because you weren't already thinking about politics enough (sorry!) -- let’s turn to a less political, but more important spiritual and philosophical topic: The Art of the Road Trip.
Pro tip: It’s easier to be a Road Trip Rembrandt with the right tools -- like these:
Mountains + Vans = Roadtrip Masterpiece
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the things we’ve been doing a lot of is road tripping. Not so different from Seattle, eh? True. But since we can surf so close to the house and we have such a beautiful country to explore and a slightly less active social life, the road trips are more frequent and more varied. As we are all happiest when we’re in the flow and hitting the right balance between challenge and success, I guess it makes sense. Because if I do say so myself, we are damn good at the road trip, but there’s no way to have 2 to 6 people in a small space with a lot of stuff and a windy road ahead and podcasts and music to choose without challenge.
#vanlifeisthebestlife.
Here’s a map of where we’ve been on our travels thorough the country so far:
So what’s the art of the road trip? Composition:
And the science? One part great music, one part planning, and at least two parts having a sense of humor and joy about all the chaos.
Like when there’s no where for you to sit:
My most recent road trips were extra awesome due to the fact that Leslie Lapham (AKA Alex, AKA LL) was here and we took off on a few fun adventures. Now, Leslie is great for a lot of reasons and it was super fun to have her here for 5 weeks...and one of her best qualities, she takes great pictures!
Here’s what I like to say about our first trip: it started with a bang and ended with a bee sting.
Here’s the bang -- this is what happens when some dickhead decides to pass you on the right at high speed on a highway while you are TURNING RIGHT into a campground:
So, that sucked. Especially because aforementioned dickhead did not stop to see if we were ok, just left us there in the dark on our own. Luckily the Taupe Donkey was still drivable and packing enough duct tape to make it work. So, off we headed from Kaikoura to make ourselves feel better in the vineyards and wineries of Marlborough.
The Cloudy Bay Winery was not a bad place to spend an afternoon!
Watson’s Way (not pictured) was a really weird place to spend a night though -- we were basically parked in a gravel parking lot in someone’s yard. But man, did we have some good food!
Although oops, I accidentally tried to take a grapevine as a souvenir. And I swear this was before I even did a tasting!
After wine tasting and an amazing dinner at Arbor, we headed to the Marlborough Sounds, starting at Havelock, the mussel capital of the world!
We did a cool tour on the mailboat, which literally delivers mail, packages, animals, groceries, and god knows what else (possibly the odd tourist by accident?) to the residents of the remote 300 or so bays in the region, which can only be reached by boat.
We ate a lot, of course. But we ordered more than we could eat.
After that we headed south on the inland route and camped overnight at the Tasman Lakes National Park.
There were eels, pretty views, and random dock yoga.
And last but definitely not least, we topped off the trip by meeting Jason at the always fabulous Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools. What a drive to get there, too! I did get stung by a bee while I was soaking, which was a total and pretty painful shock, despite the signs warning people to watch out for bees. Little fuckers!
After that, back to co-working and a couple weekends in CHCH:
Then...Lois!!!
Now this blog is not about all the visitors and it’s already so long I dare not start going on about having Leslie and Lois here together. Suffice it to say we had some fun times, some great food, and after 8 hours in the emergency room we did a quick road trip to Oamaru. There were PENGUINS!!!!
There were penguins!!! We saw them waddle onto the beach at dusk after swimming 50K through the ocean all day. Alas, you cannot take pictures of them, so you’ll have to settle for 3 Generations of Wachsmuth Women in the Wild until next time. XO.
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i just need to vent for a hot minute. and yes, i am tipsy, don’t judge me.
we got talked to about “potential life altering changes” today. which idk why my parents worded it that way, it makes it seem so much more terrible than it is. but... my cousin who is moving a few states away... the house they were wanting to move to is disgusting and terrible, but their house here already sold and they are closing on the 8th of january. so if they can’t figure out something else with the new house or find a new one, they’d be homeless. so my mom and dad are wanting to offer to let my cousin and her four kids stay here while her husband tries to figure out something down in where they’re moving while he works.
and like... of course i don’t want them to be homeless. and i’m more than willing to share space with them. it’s just... our house is tiny. it can barely fit the four people who live here already. there’s no way five more people can comfortably live here.
and idk if it’s me always feeling to need to be my best for people outside of my immediate family, but... like. they’ll see me when i’m gross. when i’m sad. when i’m drunk, bc that’s inevitable.... (tho... my cousin has seen me drunk... and i’ve seen her drunk.... so like..)
and Christmas is in a little over a week and i’m just so... this year is going to be so hard. me throwing a fit about traditional polish Christmas eve dinner made my mom want to do it again, and i feel guilty for it. she didn’t want to do it. she was thankful that we didn’t have to do it this year. but.. i need something i can hold on to. this year’s holidays are going to be so hard... they already have been. at least on thanksgiving i was able to cook up so many things it distracted me, but we’re needing to do family Christmas early and it just... idk.
everything’s weird. nothing in my life adds up.
for Christmas, i want to switch to the good timeline. because clearly i’m in the bad one. so much shit has happened.
like, hey, remember when the world was supposed to end in december 2012?? i kinda think it might have, at least for me. that’s... really when everything absolutely went to shit. i mean, my life was hell before, but after that?? it seems like every year that follows is a hotter plate of shit than the last... and considering i almost killed myself in 2013, i think that’s saying a lot... it has literally gotten worse than that. i think it’s bc others around me are suffering. it’s not just me. and that’s what hurts the most.
my head hurts so bad right now. it can’t just be from the alcohol, i really didn’t have that much. it could be from the new hormone meds to fix me. it could be from tapering off my one antidepressant, which when i went off it for the first time, that was literally the only time in my life i’ve had a migraine so bad i had to miss school. it could be from stress. it could be from taking a nap too late in the day with my contacts in.
my brain feels like it’s going to explode for so many reasons. nothing ever gets solved. i just get more shit to worry about. this entire year has sucked so badly. 2019 better treat me fucking right. i’m so sick of all this. something’s gotta give. somethings gotta get better. it can’t keep being shit like this.
except... i have a nasty feeling it won’t... my cousin will be leaving no matter what, taking away a third of the family i have left close to me. my other cousin will continue to be put under enormous stress, making us all worry about her. her daughter will continue to be... well... i’d be willing to bet half my savings account that this july when she turns 18, she’s going to leave and we’ll never hear from her again. i don’t want to keep that money, but i have a bad feeling i will. continuing to cope with?? all the shit my family has been through this past year?? finding new normals. i hate that. i hate that i’ve had to do that so much from the time i was 11. things never get easier, you just get used to a new normal. and my friend is also moving away. so that’s like. another shitty thing. i’m happy for her and her husband, but i literally have one irl friend near me then. i have one friend. that’s it. like shit, people wonder why i never do things and it’s like?? i have two friends and they’re both really busy... and then of course all the bullshit on here. i literally had to force myself to sleep this afternoon so i could stop thinking about it. everything is upsetting. everything reminds me of what happened. my only escape is to be unconscious or like... so busy i can barely think at all.
and really? that’s not unusual. i’m always running away from things. idk why i thought it would get better with age.
but... i do hope 2019 will be a good year in spite of all of this. maybe the shit will keep happening, but maybe i’ll finally be able to handle it and not crumble at everything. maybe i’ll see some self improvement. i’ll work more towards my goals. i’ll get healthier, physically and mentally. hell, maybe i’ll even learn it’s okay to love myself. who knows. possibilities are endless.
but for now, i’m just so fucking exhausted.
i would like to catch a break please. i would like things to stay consistent for a while please. i would like to stop literally worrying myself sick over others please.
thank you.
#stuff sarah says#vent#ignore this i'm out of here for a while again#idk#life is just ggghfhhghhhhhhh a lot rn#too many things... let there be less things... please
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Sammy’s Avenue Eatery, 23 November 2018
“When people are hungry, you feed ‘em.”
OK, so about three years ago, I was working at UCare - “UCare, health care that starts with denying you your oxygen!” - and it was a slow afternoon one afternoon. Most afternoons were slow and the mail room was overstaffed for what we needed, so I logged a lot of time on Facebook and I saw this joint, Sammy’s Avenue Eatery, and I thought their sandwiches looked pretty good, so I made it a point to go there.
... aaannnddd I never did.
I was broke as shit at the time, working fourteen hours a day six days a week between two jobs (and still being broke all the time) and feeling like shit because I was a terrible letdown to my then-girlfriend (the one from this episode) because I was always tired and just wanted a goddamned beer and two cigarettes. Eventually things improved but not by much and yadda yadda yadda, a whole bunch of shit happens, and going up to Sammy’s Avenue Eatery has been low priority.
But I never forgot it. It kind of even nagged at me. And today, with it being almost fifty degrees for what is surely the last time this year if it isn’t the next to last time this year, I made it a point to go to what is likely going to be the final Sandwich Bully episode for 2018 - unless y’all want to come pick me up in your petite bourgeoisie automobile with “the heat” on in December and January.
So I rolled up on the corner of Emerson and Broadway and walked in and looked over the menu and waited for the nice lady to finish making a chai latte for this other lady and I asked her which she preferred, the Hot Roasted Chicken or the Turkey Bacon Club.
She said honestly that she preferred the chicken but they were out of that so turkey and bacon (I had to specify because I’ve had exactly one experience with turkey bacon and that shit is fucking gross and it’s so gross that I’m compelled to put up a picture of my first ex with a caption mocking her voice in which she chides me for having high blood pressure but that is seriously some SD&A shit and - Hm? Oh, Sound Design and Assembly. That was my old record review blog but I didn’t review records so much as I bitched about pop culture and waxed poetic on having picked up nookie the night before.)
Wait. Where are we?
OK, let’s start that over.
She said honestly that she preferred the chicken but they were out of that so turkey and bacon (I had to specify because I’ve had exactly one experience with turkey bacon and that shit is fucking gross) it was and I grabbed a cranberry ginger ale and I found myself engaged in a conversation with her. Lot of personal stuff that isn’t my business to put up here but I guess maybe I can talk about the political side of it and that part was refreshing because nobody was bringing out words with “-ism”s on the end, we were just on the same wavelength, talking about how Minneapolis government is mishandling or outright ignoring a bunch of problems and how there are easy - very easy solutions to them. The homeless encampment whom the city couldn’t decide to house in either a warehouse or a vacant fucking lot? Well, hell, how many boarded up houses are there in north Minneapolis? I figured put the homeless at least in the warehouse out of the elements. The woman I was talking to told me they had plenty of empty houses in this neighborhood. A solution I never thought of. And even thinking about it now, I realize that there’s a lot of red tape and the banks own those empty houses but why does the bank own an empty house? Why is it held by a private entity and not by the state? What are the escheat and adverse possession laws in Minnesota? (And that’s over thinking it but that’s because capitalism doesn’t provide for simple solutions without the transfer of liquid assets.)
And enough of that.
Anyway, at one point, this dude comes in and says he doesn’t have time to stop in and eat at the moment but he was just wondering what the soup of the day was for when he came back later and the woman said it was alright if he didn’t have time to eat, she’d fix him a “little” to-go cup (it was more like an eight ounce cup and I don’t know how metric people measure soup; by volume - 237mL - or by mass - 227g) and she handed it to him and told him to have a good day and he said thank you and he walked out the door and she stared out the window and she said, “When people are hungry, you feed ‘em.”
No conditions, no clauses, just simple straight to the point action and solution.
And she told me about how she wanted to start a homeless shelter, not like the ones downtown where you have to "tell ‘em everything about your life just to get in the door”, she wanted to start one where if you were tired, you could sleep, and if you got caught fucking up, you got kicked out. Simple as that.
And my brain goes to how dangerous that would be because what about all the rapists and murderers and then my privilege checks itself and I got to remember that homeless folks aren’t homeless because they’re murderers and they do just want a warm place to sleep and a little something to eat.
She told me she wanted to open a soup kitchen, too, and told me that one place downtown was in such a great location because it was centralized and somebody could even walk for forty blocks to get there, and they would, too, because, as she put it, “hunger travels”. I know that. I remember the time, it was like ten years ago or so, that I was with Georgie and we were starving and I walked two miles in a snowstorm to the food shelf and I lied on the paperwork and told them our twenty eight year old roommate was our four year old son because I thought I could get us more food that way (and, hey, there were three people in the house). I remember being dismayed at what we got and dutifully trundled it back home. I remember all that.
Maybe it was meant to be that I didn’t get to Sammy’s until today to have this conversation. Maybe as a (timely) reminder to be thankful for what I do have, maybe as a reaffirmation of my beliefs, maybe to just talk to somebody over lunch, which I never get to do because I live alone and work alone.
ANYWAY!
How was the sandwich!? How was the fucking sandwich, Charlie!? Remember how this blog is called Sandwich Bully? And it’s about sandwiches? And how it’s not a place for you to peddle your bleeding heart commie* beliefs or pontificate on how we need to be good and charitable toward our brothers and sisters!? HOW THIS PLACE IS MEANT FOR SANDWICHES!?!?!? TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING SANDWICH, CHARLIE!!!
It was good. As I was grabbing a pop, the woman (I know her name I just don’t know how she spells it) told me that if I wanted to bundle the sandwich and drink into a combo, that she had chips and I told her nah, I had to watch my salt and she said she knew that was right. I watched her slice my tomato right out of a whole fresh tomato which I’ve seen maybe only Trieste do - slice fresh to order. And she asked if I liked onions and I said I did and she asked if I liked pickles and I said I did and then she held the pickle slices over the container and gave them a little wiggle and told me, “Getting the salt off them for you,” which was cool. Aint ever had anybody do that for me before. And then we set to talking while I ate at the counter and you read about all that.
Well, let’s start with the size issue. I ordered a half sandwich (around seven dollars) and it was big enough that I feared what I might have gotten if I had gotten a whole one (around eleven dollars). Trust me, I beg of you, please trust me, I am on my knees begging you to trust me: Order the half sandwich. That is the reasonable human serving size.
The tomato was crisp (natch) and the pickles and onions added necessary sour and bite. The cheese, I don’t know what it was but it was white and it was creamy and, tag-teamed with the bacon, it kind of overpowered the turkey but the bacon-cheese combo overpowers most things. The mayo on the sandwich was applied to the bread pre-grilling which, a few years ago, I would have said “ew” to but recently I had the revelation that mayo is just eggs and oil (no, not that part) which are both things that are perfectly alright to be applied to direct heat (that part) and I’ve been waiting to try frying my grilled cheese with mayo on the outside but I never buy bread and I never buy mayonnaise - Why buy mayo when you can make aioli? - so I finally got to try this technique at Sammy’s and I have to admit I didn’t notice anything inherently distinguishable about it but, again, bacon-cheese combo. Overpowers everything but...
OK, probably the last time we get to do this this year unless somebody wants to drive me somewhere during December and January so we have to make this one good.
Let’s see, let’s see, let’s see...
[clears throat] But the real blackout drunk correspondent of Armenia Decides, 2018... No no no.
[clears throat again] But the real evil twin unplugging the good twin’s life support so she can assume her identity and run off with her husband... No. Come on, man, you got this. You have literally nothing else.
OK, I think I got it.
But the real guest star in the dangers-of-huffing-gas-as-a-pregnant-teen episode of this highly rated Saturday morning teen show never to be seen again as, metafictionally, her character had been shipped off to an island of misfit one-off characters, each themselves never to be seen again, turned cannibal after the last hunt didn’t yield the boar’s head required to appease the god behind the sun, he who in-turn took his great veil from the white ball in the sky and scorched their crops in anger and now, teen pot dealer and teen wheelchair basketball player and teen army brat and teen with an eating disorder and all the rest, none of whom were ever seen again, are forced to turn on each other for survival, their malevolence a dance for the god behind the sun’s enjoyment, for when enough blood is spilled he veils his white ball and grants them rest from the heat, but now, a new arrival - The Pregnant Teen Gas Huffer... is the house sauce, which I suspect is a honey dijon vinaigrette. It was sweet, a little complex but not so complex that I couldn’t guess what it was while I was eating it. It stood out and balanced the savory fattiness of the bacon-cheese combo.
The lettuce?
We don’t have to do the lettuce thing, do we?
I mean, it’s probably the last time this year.
Overall, not a bad bike ride, it was a pretty decent sandwich - it was good but I’m not falling over stupid for it. I mean, hey, it filled me up and I ordered the half sandwich. If there was a quarter sandwich option, I’d go for that. It tasted good, too. She asked me how it was and I told her it was wonderful and she said she was glad I liked it and I told her I was glad she made it.
I guess that there was a sense of openness, of community to the place, which we’ve been over before: I prefer to go to places that feel worn in and homey. Places like Band Box and Ideal where the proprietors and the patrons are literally neighbors, where people have been going for years, people who are eating there now worked there in high school because their parents knew the manager. Sammy’s has that vibe.
It’s kind of like Nye’s.
I liked Nye’s (yes, past tense) when you could walk in and say hi to Phil, sit down, and have an ice cold Żywiec and there was a college football game on you could ignore and it was red Corinthian leather booths and tacky martini murals on the walls and mirrors behind the bar to make the liquor selection look more impressive (or whatever the mirrors are back there for) and it was locals in there.
Last time I was in Nye’s, there was no Phil, the new guy didn’t know what Żywiec was, the interior designer clearly got all their ideas from IKEA (still love you, IKEA, but you are not meant for a bar), and the only patronage in there were literally tourists asking about the history of the Mississippi River.
I can’t fuck with that scene because it doesn’t feel like it’s a part of the community that supported it through the years. Ownership changed and nobody gave a fuck about preserving the community aspect of the place, it’s clearly a cash grab more cynical and distasteful than when they made Game of Death with B-roll of Bruce Lee and two actors who looked nothing like him.
Sammy’s, on the other hand, feels like it’s part of its community. Established in Near North, playing a role in Near North, employing Near North, feeding Near North.
GO.
GIVE.
THEM.
YOUR.
MONEY.
* I was once briefly involved with a Randian Libertarian who called me literally a “bleeding heart commie” because I told her Atlas Shrugged was “right-wing oriented”. Ah, to be young again.
#2018#near north#club sandwich#turkey bacon club#escheat and adverse possession#community#metric soup
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It’s gonna be the future soon...
So, I think that it’s close enough to definite now that I can say something solid about it.
Very close to 10 months after my old, awesome company was acquired by this... other... company... that we had an extremely not-awesome experience with... unless something goes terribly wrong with my pre-employment checks, on June 11th I’ll be starting a new job, at a new company, doing exactly what I want to do with people who I don’t know but I seem to like so far, in a location really close to home.
I didn’t talk about much of this outside of private channels because it’s always a bad idea to be negative about your employer when they’re your employer, but... I’m feeling such catharsis, and like the cold hand that’s been gripping my head and heart for so long is finally letting go.
Anyway, here’s a lot of words, and a few pictures.
Last year, on the five-year anniversary of working for the company I worked for, we’ll call it company A, I wrote this long blog post about how much I loved my job.
I really did. I was so happy. Most people who worked there were really happy. The IT/Dev group were mostly very close with each other. My team, the IT team specifically extended out with two others, we were honestly like brothers and sisters.
On August 15th, we were acquired by Company B.
I knew it was coming for like a month ahead of time, and throughout July and early August every day I made myself appreciate all the little things about working there, because things were going to change some. But you know, we’d probably just lose the top bosses and maybe they’d cut like, Marketing, which would be sad, but understandable. And maybe a few other people would leave and things would be different, but still, it couldn’t be that bad.
But it was. It started when... for most of the employees, our stock was worthless. A few people got a few hundred dollars but... some of us had been given stock in leiu of bonuses and raises. So our outgoing board screwed us. That cut, deep. It wasn’t the new company’s fault, but we started out disgruntled.
And the new company... I think that the people in charge didn’t really want to acquire us, but were told to by the financial backing partners. It was bad from the start. From an absolutely ridiculous NDA/Non-Compete which many lawyers we consulted said we shouldn’t sign which made 5 important people just walk out instead of signing, and the fact that my boss was almost walked out on orders of the CEO for speaking his mind when in a meeting Company B set up to answer questions. Our old and new CTOs just barely averted that from happening.
Picture break! This is the old office, the view from my desk. I mean... Carlos wasn’t ALWAYS dressed that way, just when there was a World Cup or Euro Cup happening. But every one of those desks and a bunch you can’t see were filled with people I loved working with.
But within a month, communication and trust between the two companies was already shattered. They made much deeper cuts from the staff than we thought would happen. We lost one of our 3 locations, everyone but the 2 devs there were laid off. The entire marketing team, almost all of the sales team, all of accounting. And it wasn’t too long before my boss found something else because his days were numbered anyway. And our CTO was pushed out a month later. Expected, but it stung.
And in all this time, they kept telling us that we were wanted. The IT/dev teams. And we kept dropping like flies. People just saying “Fuck this shit, I’m out.” Finding something better, higher paying, less painful, and quickly. For most of the last 4 and a half months of last year, I was turning accounts down.
We were getting punched in the stomach by something from the new company every few days, it felt like. There was no morale. There was only us, huddling together for warmth as people were torn away or dropped out, one by one. I organized probably close to 20 goodbye lunches, and several more “Hey who wants to go to lunch? We’re going to ____, whoever can go, meet there at 11:30″ to keep in touch lunches.
The last one we had was May 11th, to celebrate my birthday and one of our remote guys being in town.
I take a picture at almost every group lunch we have. I have so many pictures of various groups of us sitting at a table, smiling, all just happy to be hanging out together again for an hour.
This was the “new” Dev manager and Carlos’ goodbye lunch.
I can’t get into specifics of all the ways things happened that hurt. There are so many things that happened that just left our jaws hanging open. So many things we questioned. This post would be ten times the length were I to really get into it.
They hired a new Development manager, promised him support and the ability to run what remained of the IT department his way, and then in actuality though, gave him no power and no money and no ability to change anything. He was a scapegoat. He started out rah-rah we can fix this in late October or early November-ish? By Christmas, even his spirit was broken.
We were told during the acquisition we would get to participate in the company’s bonus program. Neat! Prorated, of course, I mean, that makes sense. Cool. Well, December we get our bonus checks and um... it’s half of what they should be. We did the math, a lot. Several times. Someone, somewhere made the decision that we only deserved half of our prorated bonuses. That’s just the way it was.
There’s so much more. But let’s move on.
We’d been told when all this started that they wanted to move our office and turn our development-focused office into more of a sales-focused office. The move is its own story of hilarity, but those of us left got the honor of cleaning out the office and packing it all away. We did, at least, get to take a lot of stuff home. I am, right now, sitting at my desk from work, and my chair from work, in the middle of my living room. What used to be my office is now in process of being turned into the living room. I took home my favorite painting, a TV console, and lots of just misc stuff we wouldn’t need at the new place. So that’s nice.
Yeah so that’s basically my living room now. The cats like it! They got new beds AND a big cat tree out of the bargain! Pemily only uses a bottom “house” level, Fry likes the bed on top and the bigger level right under it. They use the beds a lot more, though.
There have been so many days where I would just get in the car at the end of the day and cry out of frustration and anger and sadness over what we lost. The promises broken, the things that we were told wouldn’t happen and did, the things we were told would happen and didn’t. The loss of so many people I cared so much about from my daily life.
And I should say, some of the people at the new company are great. My new immediate boss, I really do like him, and I have always tried to be as honest with him as I could. The last several months, I’ve been completely honest with him, for both his sake and mine. He, more than anyone on their side, has gotten the brunt of taking several bad decisions by the higher ups on his chin. The rest of the other IT team, they are very nice people and I enjoy working with them. Even their CTO, well, there are some mixed feelings about him, but as a person, I like him a lot. We’ve even hung out when he’s been in town.
So yeah... by the beginning of 2018, the IT/Dev team was down to like six people, out of over 20 when we started.
The day of The Move, January 27th, everyone on the team who was left got pulled into a meeting at the new place, while the movers were still moving our things in.
We were told that we were all losing our jobs in six months. We’d get a (TBH, laughable, 12%) severance if we stayed the entire time. Or, we could move to Kansas City, Kansas. Hmm... from the #1 job market in the US to Kansas City. Lol. No.
Immediately, I mean like WHILE THAT MEETING WAS STILL HAPPENING, my last two team members from IT accepted other job offers they’d been mulling over. My last other friend who I’d gotten a job there not long after I started, went from “Nah, I’m gonna stick it out.” to “I’m out.”
Eric was gone a week after the announcement, Carlos and the new Dev manager were gone the next week. My dev friend and I were the last two left. It only took him about a month to be gone.
They’d designed an area in the new office for development and IT before they made the decision to move us. I literally sit in this area of 10 cubes utterly alone. Soon, the only people left from my office were 2 guys from sales and one project manager which... his story is a whole other doozy I’m not getting into. Anyway, four of us left, out of the 30 that were there in August. And eight of the twelve from Memphis still have their jobs. Twelve people left. Out of fifty.
So yeah, this is my view. Nobody sits in any cube you can see besides mine. My back is to a wall. One of the remaining guys DOES sit in that office on the right, and recently another of them moved into the office next to that one, which you can’t see in the picture, though. That helps stave off the lonely a lot.
The same day we were starting work in the new office, the Monday after the day we were told about losing our jobs (Friday) a whole other set of people started work there, too. Eight call-center salespeople and their manager.
It was very apparent that first week that... whatever used to be my company was utterly gone.
I wasn’t totally alone. The 3 guys left and I banded together. They were already close with each other, and I did consider myself friends with them already but we hadn’t been like, close. But they took me in, and made me a part of their clique. That helped.
And the new people... aren’t bad, honestly. The manager is great, I really like him, and most of the sales people are nice, even though I don’t really talk to them much. They have calls to make, and I don’t go to their meetings so... I’m just... there. It’s still a weird feeling. I mean, I IT Support them as is my job, but yeah. There’s still a divide there. The new office space is OK. The building is pretty classy, we’re on the 7th floor right off of a freeway, it’s a great view. Lots of nice amenities. It’s also a 45 minute drive from home. The drive would be a little better if I wanted to pay $5 a day in tolls, lol. No.
And mostly, I’ve been horribly bored. I mean, sure, I’ve made it to like episode 42 of Critical Role. I do all my work. I help the people in the office who need help. I set up cubicles with the computers and peripherals the Kansas office sends me for the new hires. I find more work to do. I’ve been documenting all the things I do in anticipation of when I’m no longer going to be there, and I don’t wanna leave my new team hanging when that happens -- none of this is their fault. I’ve been wiping all our laptops we don’t use anymore and sending them to Kansas so they can use them. I’ve been sorting boxes and throwing more stuff out. It just... it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing anymore. It wasn’t interesting or challenging.
So why was I even still there? I had reasons.
There was... an opportunity... I was told I was going to get. It was solid, a lock. And in fact at one point there was ANOTHER opportunity I was supposedly a lock for. For quite awhile, I was waiting for one of these to pan out because either would have been awesome. I just needed to hang on a few more weeks.
When suddenly it was April and neither had panned out, I realized that it was really fucking time that I stop waiting and being sad about what was gone, and to start actually taking charge of the next few months. I had til July 27th to make something happen for myself. I’d been assured that unless I did something really terrible at work, my current job was safe until that date. (I very much appreciated that and suspect my direct boss and (possibly the CTO too) has stuck his neck out for me a time or two to make sure this happened.) That took some pressure off. And I still had hope that the opportunity was going to pan out, but I could work harder to make things work out.
I first had to sit down and really decide what I wanted to focus on. Before the acquisition, I had two halves to my job. IT Support for the entire 50+ person company, and project managing our yearly SOC2 Audit. I knew I could pretty easily get another straight up IT Support job. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d been doing IT Support for like, 18 years now, along with another half to both of the jobs I’d had in that time (Telephony in my previous job, and auditing in this one.) I started to wonder if I could make a real go at getting a job 100% in auditing.
I started poking around at job listings for that and kept seeing the acronym “CISA” as a requirement for everything I was interested in. So I googled it -- Certified Information Systems Auditor. Intrigued, I spent a day learning about what that was. I took a “practice test” I found online and thought “Oh, hm, I don’t know most of these answers but I do understand the questions. I... I think I could do this.” So I joined a professional organization for the first time, dropped a load of money on that, plus study materials, and set aside another $600 for when it’s time to take the exam
A great deal of my free time since early/mid April has been taken up by studying. I’m hoping to take the test in late June.
I also modified my resume at this point to add that I was preparing for the test. Couldn’t hurt.
In the last six weeks or so, I’ve probably applied to 20 or 30 IT Auditor type jobs, and some just more in general IT Security. I’ve talked to about a dozen recruiters. I’ve heard a lot of people say my resume is great and they could definitely find me a job. None of them tried. I didn’t even hear back from most of them, ever. I’ve talked to a lot of internal recruiters, some of whom made me big promises then ghosted me, some of whom were excited to place me and then whoops it turned out the hiring manager promoted from within and all interviews were canceled... or something.
It was frustrating, but people kept telling me, this is also normal. TBH, I hadn’t had to job hunt literally since the year 2000. I’d read up a lot about what I needed to do, how to act and talk and what to say and how to answer the hard questions and I felt like I did well whenever I was given a shot. It’s just that Something always happened. I started to joke with my guys left at work that I wondered what this week’s Big Disappointment would be. I was also joking that if I wanted to feel let down this consistently, I’d go back to dating.
Two Sundays ago I was doing a pass at job boards, and went to one I hadn’t been using before, but probably should have. And there I saw it.
A job doing exactly the auditing things I wanted to do, but more stuff, that I also wanted to do, and I had almost every line of their “Must haves” already on my resume. It was one of like, three jobs I applied to that night.
Tuesday I got an email for a phone screening. I didn’t let myself get excited, but I researched the company as much as I could, and liked what I saw. I also noticed, holy crap, they’re a 15 minute drive, all on surface roads and no freeways, from my house. That. Would. Be. Awesome.
The internal recruiter was really responsive, and nice, and seemed interested, all things I’d come to not really expect. We set up a phone screening for Wednesday, and on Thursday she said that the hiring manager wanted to skip a phone conversation and jump right to in-person interview on Monday.
Um, wow.
So I finally got a chance to wear that $200 interview outfit I’d bought, and put on the $100 makeup, and Monday, I drove the fifteen minutes oh my God this is awesome to the new place. Holy crap there’s a Starbucks RIGHT OUT FRONT IN THE SAME PARKING LOT YOU CAN WALK THERE. I took the elevator to the top floor wow this view is beautiful I can almost see my house from here! and met my possible new manager. I kind of got the vibe early that he was already heavily favoring me, and our conversation was basically like “I need someone who can do ____” “Oh, yeah, I was already doing that, so I can definitely do that.” And some of it was “Hm, I don’t have any experience in that area.” and he was like “Eh, but you have experience in this related thing, you can definitely pick it up.” And it was a lot more like a conversation than an interview. Always a good sign.
I’d actually put under like “Other interests” my masseffectsaves.com site and being admin and a major contributor to the TAH wiki, as a “see, I have other interests, I’m an interesting person” and he even asked about both of those things. I think being able to explain these semi-complex ideas helped a lot. (Why do you need a saves site? WHAT THE HECK IS Thrilling Adventure Hour? And I explained that the wiki shows I am able to write well, and have a good head for categorizing information.)
I felt things were going very well when he asked me to stay, and went and got the team, the people who would be my equals. They came and asked me questions, I asked them a few, and they thanked me and left.
And then he brought in the CIO, his boss. Later edit: this was not his boss, but someone very important at the company and I have since learned he told my boss he should absolutely hire me and I was perfect for the job and thought I’d do great. And since it’s 2 months later I’m making this edit, he’s already told my boss he thinks I’m great. :) And we had a good conversation.
Then I got the office tour. That was when I felt really good about it. And I had decided pretty early on in the interview that yeah, I really wanted this job.
The only downside is a smaller bump in my salary than I was hoping for. But it’s still a bump. And literally, everything else is fantastic.
I left the interview at 11:30.
I got a phone call from the internal recruiter (I made sure to tell both her and her boss how great she is) with a verbal offer at 3:30. I verbally accepted.
(Side note, I also got another request for a phone screening interview with another company I’d applied to that same night while I was in the interview. I did set up the phone screening just in case, but canceled it this morning after signing my offer letter.)
I signed all my paperwork today, submitted for the background and credit checks (because of the industry of the company, the credit check is like, mandatory. And my credit is great so, no worries.)
My current boss knew I had an interview Monday. I didn’t go to work Monday or yesterday, but I talked to him and let him know. If everything goes well, I’ll be turning in my notice on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday), and the 8th will be my last day.
A week shy of 10 months since all this started.
To the people I’m close to who read this, I’m sorry I’ve been withdrawn for so long, It’s just how I needed to cope, thank you for sticking with me. IDK if anyone noticed, but I didn’t post on tumblr and let my queue run out for like three months at the end of the year. I’ve still not been here a lot, but... enough to keep a queue going and make a few actual posts here and there. It was really bad for a long time. I didn’t want to engage with almost anyone about almost anything. I didn’t feel like I had much positive to say. And I couldn’t really talk about this publicly.
And now, today, it feels so good. I just want to scream about how great it feels to be getting out. Moving on! And to be fair, the last four months haven’t been terrible. They’ve been fine. Just fine. They actually offered to let me keep my job, to be even more fair, back in April, at about the time I’d decided to start studying for my CISA. Also about that time I was going through my first “Oh you’re gonna get this job!” excitement, pre-disappointment, besides the two that I’d been waiting on.
Oh yeah, of those two I’d waited on... one of them ghosted, and the other one, the one I’d really been waiting on, offically fell through like two weeks after I turned down the offer to stay on at the current company. I did have one weekend of “OH SHIT WHAT DID YOU DO NO ONE IS EVER GOING TO HIRE YOU WHY DID YOU TELL THEM YOU WERE GONNA LEAVE MAYBE YOU CAN BEG TO KEEP YOUR JOB” thoughts, a pretty bad panic attack, a bunch of scared crying, and utter despair in there. Then Sunday afternoon I picked myself back up, and went back to studying, and told myself over and over there was going to be something awesome out there for me. Plus, I had savings enough plus the “retention bonus” money to live on for a few months, if worse came to worse and I hadn’t found something on July 27th.
And to be honest, I really didn’t think I’d find a job in It Security/Auditing until after I passed the exam. I was applying to things, though, just in case, maybe I will.
I’m so, very glad to be wrong. I’m still going to pass my exam, and there’s at least one other certification I’m going for afterwards.
Which is just another weird thing.
My whole life I’ve been like, drifting when it came to college and work. TBH I never finished college. I got into IT almost by accident, because someone believed in me and pulled me onto his team. That person went from being my boss for a few years, long ago to now one of my closest friends I stayed in IT + Telephony then IT + Auditing because... I could. I always had a solid job that I was happy in (except near the end of the first job, the last 2 or 3 years were... hooo boy. Anyway.) I never felt a particular passion or calling to it. I liked it, I was good enough at it. It was a good paycheck and I got to work with awesome people.
But, as much as I would sometimes grouse about the audit, secretly kinda loved it. It was a LOT of work, and nerve-wracking, but I was good at managing it. I knew I could be better at it and do more if I didn’t have that whole other half of my job of IT Support to do. But realizing last month I could actually get a certification and there were other certs I could do that would also make work better and actually holy shit I have a career PATH. What sorcery is this? It’s weird. I just really, really, really wish I would have started looking at it... oh... five years ago.
I also took this other step about a month ago. There were several jobs I didn’t apply to because I never finished college and they stressed a degree was mandatory. That made me sad, and nervous.
I knew I had a TON of college credits, probably close to 120, but nothing that would coalesce into like, a degree. Also as the years went by it was like... well. There’s no way I could start all over with college.
On a whim, though, I googled “What to do when you have a lot of college credits and no degree”. And it turns out, there’s a couple of real, actual accredited non-profit colleges that have programs exactly for people like me. They accept transfer credits liberally and will tell you what you need to get a real actual diploma. I said what the fuck, and applied and got my transcripts from the three colleges I had significant credits at sent over there.
They finished the evaluation and got back to me today. I need twelve hours to get a bachelors of Liberal Arts. TWELVE. Five classes. (one is a 1 hour credit, one is a 2 hour credit, the rest are three. And I can CLEP out of two of the classes, if I want to.) I was also accepted into the program. I’m kicking myself for not doing THIS years ago.
So... the rest of this year will be dedicated to CISA and at least one more certification. Starting in the spring semester, I’m going back to school. Online, night classes type school, but I’m going to do it. I’m gonna get a fucking diploma, even if it’s a liberal arts diploma, at 43 years old. (Hell, I’ll be 44 by then.)
And what’s crazy is... this is like the silver lining to a dark, dark cloud. No, it’s more than that. It’s... coming out of the dark. It almost feels like a rebirth. It took five and a half months of a torturous slow death of the job and place that I loved. Then two months of emptiness. Then two months of terror and pushing myself and frustration and disappointment.
And now... I’m here.
I’m starting a new job that I think I’m going to be great at, and think I can be very happy at the place.
I’m getting real professional certifications.
I’m going to graduate college, finally.
Sometimes it really does take a lot of pain in order to grow. It takes the death of a thing that you hold dear to push you out of the nest and force you to make changes, to work hard, to be better.
I’m still sad that it took all of that to get to where I am, but I’m so glad, today, to be here. I feel like I can breathe again. I feel like the future is good.
Sorry this post is so long, by the way. I feel like.. for a really long time I couldn’t talk much about it. There were only a few people / private places I really talked about it because I was afraid of consequences should the wrong people see -- I still needed this job. I needed to figure out what I was doing. So now, this is me able to talk about it. Thanks for reading. It’s been a journey, and this chapter is closing. I really, really can’t wait to get to the new one.
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Melancholia (2011): My experience with the melancholy.
Alternative title: What no “Melodrama” and “SOUR” (and “Offerings” by Typhoon) could do to a mf who needed it back in 2015.
It has been six years, six years ago, at exactly July 10th. 2015, a planet crashed into my life and destroyed everything, but luckily, I was be able to rebuilt my whole world from the ashes.
There has been a discussion of movies that got you into films in general. The movie that you love so much, it gets you into the medium as a whole. And how it affects you emotionally. I would like to talk about my story on how movies provided my recovery from the darkest time of my life. And I want to address my feelings regarding this movie, especially when reconciling with not-so-fun things in real life (both facts about me and this movie)
Most people assume it was either Jackie (2016), Synecdoche, New York (2008), or All That Jazz (1980) that saved me, got me into the medium, turned me into…...this. But not those. The story is more complicated than that.
And by that, I would like to preface this write-up by saying that I have planned to say this in a long time. I have already addressed it on my Instagram, but it was for my close friends list only. Now that it has been six years since it happened, I am ready to tell my story on how Melancholia, a giant planet destroying all life, saved me from my darkest time.
And a fair warning; This is VERY TMI, get outta here if you don’t want to see TMI stuff.
Before I go further, I want you to know that this is NOT a “My side of the story” thing. This is a writeup on how I feel in the aftermath and please do not go and assign who was the bad one and the good one. Thank you.
In 2015, I had a terrible break-up. In July 10th, 2015. I will not provide more details. But it happened.
The event did not come sudden, it happened in the middle of a party. I was invited by one of them to have a dinner together in a weeaboo restaurant that I loved. It was an anime-themed novelty restaurant. It had great food, nice atmosphere, and manga, with the speakers blaring anime theme songs, what’s not to like?
So I went with my best friend to meet all of them. But before the dinner even started, I already had a bad feeling that this dinner will suck. I wallowed in, trying so hard not to show negative emotions. Until my best friend escorted me into an empty space, where she tells me;
“Listen to me, we agreed that we don't want you to make any scenes tonight, no, we don't!"
(By the way, that's not the exact words from her, but she did say that to me before the others arrived. I reluctantly said yes.)
The party was fun, we had a lot of laughs…….for them, because I found it difficult to be happy, or even to enjoy the party. I tried my best to smile, but I ended up running away to the bathroom a few times. I even tried to puke because the food --- which I loved, since it wasn’t the first time I had dined in that place --- tasted like garbage that made me sick.
Nevertheless, the evening went on, until the inevitable happened. The worst that I expected happened, for reasons that's irrelevant to this story/write-up. Because no matter what, I fucked up, it was my fault. This is my consequence. I wished the world ends right this instant.
(Trigger Warnings: Suicide mentions, Possible Suicidal Ideation from this point on!)
It was over. I have to try being alone. It felt like my whole world had ended. And suicidal feelings would make me look like a coward, even though I thoroughly wished that I suddenly coughed up blood, so;
I wished for the world to just end. The end of the world is the only way I can be freed from my pain, I prayed to God many times to take my life, or to tell me when everything will be better. Yet, those two never came. I was forced to face the storm myself. With no help.
It fucked me up for the rest of 2015. In fact, I spent the tail end of 2015 sobbing and screaming everyday, unable to hold the tremendous amount of grief, and my gradual loss in pleasure from things I've previously enjoyed (sorry, Splatoon... it’s hard to like you again…) was worrying.
I refused to eat food unless it's my favorites, and even then, my favorite foods taste like ashes. I stopped believing in recovery, kindness, friendliness, and anything. I became a nihilistic pessimistic misanthrope. I overspent my money on anime merch as well.
My temper began to worsen, as I often expressed excessive amount of anger and tantrum, and the only way to let it out without harming others was by writing a really fucked up story full of violence……which in itself, still very concerning. Those were the days during July and August of 2015.
When the tears stopped, emptiness would fill my heart. Nothing brought me joy. It’s hard to feel, and I pulled myself away from people. Breakdowns were a normal occurrence during that period. I constantly looked for new interests, to distract myself from the pain, but none worked. To this day, I’m still unsure how I managed to go through all of that without wanting to pull out my hair or dropping everything in life.
In addition, making decisions felt more difficult, I chose my college major out of confusion. My scores flunked, my eyes were full of void and empty. I was melancholic.
Luckily, all storms do eventually end, as December 2015 was the time that I have waited, as I found my sister asking me to watch the Star Wars original trilogy with her. I reluctantly said yes, only to find myself engrossed to everything in it. Though, this is the story that you all know. Star Wars literally saved my life, and I gradually stopped crying. But that wasn’t it.
The real story starts here.
I joined Twitter in January 2016, just to see more Star Wars. There, I get to meet my mutuals, who are cinephiles. My days are gradually getting better. I was able to get back on my own two feet, and the light was finally visible, after so long. I gradually met other great people on twitter and exciting days would ensue in the timeline. The pain of the break-up was pulled from my heart,
But it did not help me to fully recover from the sadness, guilt, and emptiness that day has caused. How that storm would pass is a different story, a story only few knows. This is the story.
I started my college years in July of 2016, exactly a year after “Melancholia” crashed into my life. It started better than I thought. I made friends quickly, enjoyed myself in a new, unfamiliar space. It was much busier, but I feel better in this space. Still, the fear of 2015 repeating itself persists, even though the people of this new space are good people.
What if I have to re-experience the destruction of my world, again?, I asked. And in the middle of the question, a relieving answer to the way out of my pain reveals itself.
Before college started, I found Letterboxd. I was happy that I can finally become one with the cinephiles, and I began to consume more movies. I began to spend my time in Letterboxd, finding what movies I should watch, reading funny one-liners, and looking at recommendations for what people call, the “arthouse” movies.
And in the middle of November of 2016, during my journey finding the “arthouse”, I stumbled upon Melancholia, thanks to the enticing poster. I thought the poster was beautiful, and was an indication that it won’t have stuff like Antichrist (2008) (i will never watch Antichrist, by the way. Say no to self-mutilation!)
Seeing that it is in English, with “geek/nerd-friendly cast”, despite the film’s country of origin.
A Good start, I thought.
So, out of curiosity, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and the plot summary withered me in shock. It was too real for me.
This is how that day went, this is how I felt, everything felt like that. Melancholia.
And with that, I decided to give it a watch, despite the storm of the pain still looms in. It has been one year, and I was ready to face the storm, to calm it, to turn it into a rainbow, if possible. I am finally addressing what happened back then, and is ready to get out of it.
Melancholia centers around Justine getting married, which is supposed to be her happiest day in her life. But when she finally arrived at the Celebration…….she couldn’t bring herself to be happy, at the sight of people who love (Michael, Claire, and Leo), dislike (Wedding Planner, her boss Jack, and to a minor extent, Claire’s husband John), gives zero shit (Justine’s Dad – I don’t know his name), and outright hate her (Gaby).
It sounded familiar…..but it gets worse than that, real quick.
This, coupled with the sight of her uselessly cringe and unfunny dad and her mean-spirited mom showing how they clearly hate each other and don’t care (don’t really care, in her dad’s case) about Justine getting married, plus her overbearing boss STILL pushing her for a work-related bullshit on her WEDDING day, quickly worsen her mood, in a time where NOBODY wants to see her in a negative state, no less.
Everything made it hard for Justine to enjoy her happiest day. She’s trapped in the castle. And eventually her depression, which she tried so hard to hide, would leak into the party, and would ruin the whole night, her job, and her family.
And this rang true to that day. A fun dinner, where people I loved and cherished are all there, in a place that I liked being in, food that I enjoyed…..basically, what should have been one of the happiest days of my life, all fell apart from what’s really inside it. I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it, while everyone tells me that I should be enjoying the dinner no matter what, and no one wanted to see me in a sour mood.
And yes, my sour mood, complete with my unfiltered sadness doesn’t just annoy everyone……it destroyed the whole evening. My selfish breakdown ruined what was supposed to be a fun evening.
Justine tried to look like she’s enjoying it, hiding her melancholy, although cracks were shown……like, pissing in the golf course, as a possible metaphor of pissing everything in her life. She does eventually enjoy herself during the other events like dancing and cake-cutting, but not for long, as she escapes for a bit to drown her sorrows in the tub for so long, unhappy. And when everything just became meaningless for her, she does the whole fake smile thing too, until Claire sees through it, and accuses her of lying.
”You’re lying to all of us!”
Back to the dinner, I tried to look like I enjoyed myself too. I tried to laugh, joke, and talk about fun stuff. But it was clear that nothing worked. So I took regular bathroom escapes, doing nothing in particular. I felt nothing, because if no one can enjoy my presence, everything becomes meaningless.
I couldn’t follow their joy, their smiles, and whatnot. And my best friend (my ‘Claire’) eventually sees that I lied to everyone. In a situation where I am expected to feel the same thing they do, which was impossible for me, knowing that they don’t want me to emote and yet, demanding me to be happy. It made no sense.
And it was natural for me that the only emotion I can feel is gloom. Because being happy does not make sense, and the grief instantly glooms. Everyone could see through the lies I put up.
”I tried, Claire…”
Just as Justine’s wedding ends up with her leaving from her OWN life, and people leaving her…..essentially destroying her world, that day ended up doing the same for me. Simply put, it’s like seeing through a looking-glass. What was supposed to be a happy celebration left Justine to ashes. Just as a cosmic menace looms. It would bring an end to Justine’s ordeal, as well as my ordeal.
Which brings us to Part 2 of the story, the imminent destruction of Earth, and the lowest point of Justine, as well as the end of her ordeal.
At the start of the second part, it was made clear that Justine looked worse and an even bigger mess than she was in the first part. It is implied that her marriage wasn’t doing well, in addition to her being jobless, as a result of her breakdown towards the asshole boss Jack in the first part. She has nothing that can keep her in company. All she had was her deep depression.
It rang true to me too. For the first few days, it was just me crying my eyes out. But then I grew more numb and emotional, but distant from everyone. I had ALMOST no friends, save from two very great people who kept me alive……though one of them IS my ‘Claire’.
(Cue a paragraph on how my darkest times would’ve been a lot more different if “Melodrama” by Lorde came out at that time)
Justine can’t move, can’t feel, and can’t be bothered with pesky emotions. This was the next step of my grief and depression. After all the tears, there was apathy and numbness.
What struck my heart was the bath scene and the dinner scene…….she couldn’t even enjoy things she loved. This terrified me because I felt exactly like that too. I hated eating, everything tasted like garbage to me. I could not find enjoyment in stuff I like, because it felt tainted from the breakup. Everything looks like filth and garbage to me. Even everyone feels fake. Justine feels this, and the only real thing to her was what came next --- Melancholia.
So, we finally get to see Melancholia itself. Just as Justine begins to completely lose her pleasure. At that point, she can’t even feel joy from horse-riding (poor Abraham…). But at the same time, she found an outlet she can run to, for easing her pain. The Blue Moon became her only ‘friend’.
Really, when you are in your worst, the only solace you’ll find is bad things. I wanted horrifying things to happen. I wanted the world to instantly end. To me, nothing good comes out of life.
The Earth is evil. That was on my mind.
As soon as it was made clear that Melancholia’s here to destroy everything, Claire gets into a panic and wants everything to pass. Now Justine is calm. While I never felt like that (well, back in 2015-16 there was no “earth dying” threats for me to get happy from!), it does mirror my imaginations of that time. I would’ve welcomed an instant destruction of life, because I had nothing left at that time. It is terrifying in hindsight, but it shows on how these conditions can completely affect a person. I was lucky I had a ‘Claire’ at the time, but that wasn’t enough. I needed help.
I wasn’t able to get support because of all the stigma surrounding mental health. I wasn’t able to talk to anyone. I was alone
We need help, we need support. Because we deserve to live happily and wonderfully with everyone, we deserve to feel, taste, and smile. Depression and grief can change a person completely without them wanting it.
I never wanted to feel like Justine back then, but I was at my lowest that it was the only thing i can do. I had zero support, and my own thoughts are all there is. Even back then, I felt that I do not deserve a nice life.
What should I do? How should I feel? When the Earth is this evil?
But I know that Earth isn’t evil. And so does Claire, who knows that this storm is not real. But evidently, it wasn’t. It was total destruction. You either accept, or reject by leaving the Earth.
But in the end, storms pass.
And then Melancholia came. Everything faded to black. No one is spared. That is not a happy ending.
But at the same time, an enormous weight has been lifted. To me, it’s a sign to accept, and continue to live on. I felt much lighter, and it was a big step to my recovery from that day. My plight was a parasitic astronomical waste, and Melancholia crashed into it. This movie rejuvenated me.
While I do know of Lars von Trier being a detestable garbage human being (even before I decided to see this, I already read the shitty things he’s known for) that I hate and am glad that he’s not making movies anymore (Yes, Lars, The House That Jack Built (2019) should definitely be your last film), Melancholia made me realize how portrayals of plight can help me face my own plight. And to not make me feel alone.
People may not agree on the portrayal of depression, and that is valid. Absolutely valid. But to me, everything felt real to what happened to me. From the symptoms and negative effects to Justine’s condition to the people around her was really true to my situation. I hate to say this but Melancholia predicted my 2015 conditions in 2011, and again, it felt like looking through a glass.
But that ‘looking glass’ proved to be helping for me. Seeing a fiction about your condition makes you feel less alone. It made me feel seen.
Even the actors nailed everything. Charlotte Gainsbourg, as I have mentioned before, made my friend realized how terrible everything was to both of us as she (my friend) watched Gainsbourg painstakingly try to stop everything that has spiraled out of her control to plan so she can ensure that the artificial happiness could go well because it is a ritual.
She felt it. And she actually apologized to me for “being exactly like Charlotte’s character” when we saw this movie together!
Some of them (with 2-3 exceptions) on that day acted like Stellan Skarsgard and Kiefer Sutherland, in that I was a disposable business for them, an important business to handle and as soon as I wrecked their business thanks to my emotions, everything fell apart.
While I haven’t gotten the full closure on that day (I will probably never get one, and it’s okay. I don’t think i need one at this point), I feel that what’s important to me is how this supposedly eternal pain that ate me throughout 2015 has been lifted. Yes, there are relapses (at the time of writing in June 2021, I am having relapses about these memories again, but the pain is much, much less painful than in 2015), and I had no professional support nor medications, but this shows how films can be the only thing that comforts you when there’s nothing. I always come back to Melancholia (and Synecdoche, New York (2008)) when I feel terrible, to give me comfort that I am not alone.
Films are not reality, but they are paintings based on reality. And what ‘reality’ it paints is important. My reality of that darkest time was painted clearly. And it helped me to see my reality further.
(However, yes, PLEASE get support if you are having the same issues as mine. Nothing can replace professional help, therapy, and support! Unfortunately, I can’t post resources….as I don’t have support myself)
Melancholia did not cure my condition, but it did brought me out from my darkest place. And since that day, I’ve been ‘escaping’ to sadder and depressing movies as an escape from terrible times. I even made a list of what to watch when I feel bad.
Because when I see suffering in fiction, I feel that I am not alone, and it will eventually pass. Nothing lasts forever.
And my blight did not last forever. I was able to live a ‘new’ life in college and graduating….before my life got taken away again by, well, ‘rona, but that’s a different story.
But in the meantime, we have films. No matter how terrible our lives are, films provides an escape for us, no matter the emotions we have. The Earth isn’t evil, and when it does become evil, there’s a form of escape through films.
I really can’t provide more quotes because it’s hard. So I will end it here. Thank you for reading my thoughts and feelings. But don’t worry about me, I just wanted to get this all out from my system.
Thank you, and may we finally be freed from the Storm of Melancholy, and live in peace with it.
(Music I listened to while writing: “Shelter” by Porter Robinson, “Sober” by Lorde, “brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo, “Angie” by The Rolling Stones, “Sleep” by Typhoon)
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It’s been almost a year... here are some things That happened… I will be talking through my phone so if anything is incorrect, any run on sentences, anything sounds like shit it’s literally because I am talking to my phone and it is typing this baby out because I just don’t care to write it out to be honest so here we go here are some things that I learned here are some things that happened and I’m just grateful for life overall. Y’all ready?
Not everyone is your friend. People really don’t care for you no matter how much they can try or how much they think they’re doing for you, they can give no fucks.
Secondly, family sometimes is really all you have. Sure they may talk shit about you, not really care about your dreams, not really care about your ventures, tell you to get something that’s practical, and make sure they make you feel like shit when they really want to… But they are literally all I have. And I’m at the point in my life where it’s like I can at least keep that barrier up so that I’m not trampled by the negativity which is way better than having outside energies that you question about, “Friends.” Who say they believe in you but like really don’t believe in you. Which is so fucked up by the way. But to be honest it’s like really fine because I’d rather deal with my families energy then anyone else… And I’m not saying my whole family is like super negative either? What I’m saying is that sometimes energy just isn’t there and that’s what I’m learning and it’s OK ...
AnyWho so let’s recap what happened this year…
I moved back home at the beginning of 2020More like December 20, 2019.. And it was one of the most sad depressing most, agitating feelings I had ever felt in my life. I just never really thought I’d come back home but I’m doing pretty fine now and here I am.
At the beginning of 2020 I was living with my father for like two months maybe? And I got into a huge argument with my brothers and my little sisters mom and that was only because I was fighting for my father & the fact that everyone kind of takes advantage of the situation… And like my father is a kind hearted man am I so a lot of the men in my family.. but sometimes people just take take take and don’t realize what they doing and so I got into a huge argument with my siblings and it was terrible it was one of the worst things that I’ve ever happened to me, the things that were said to me, I felt like I will never forget those things… I’ll never forget how I felt.
Ummm.. another thing that happened was actually amazing was that because I couldn’t find a job at the time before February was over - covxd happened, and to be honest thank you God. I was in so much depression and so much anxiety that all I could ever ask was for the world to stop just for me and because of my situation because of the things I was going through I felt like God made away even though it was the worst way for the world, the earth, humanity, I just felt like I needed a break and I am thankful? That this happened because I needed my world to stop!
As all of the changes were happening I decided to move to my grandparents house as I was supposed to go anyways, like that was the destination I was supposed to be living at… But the way sometimes my grandparents are set up I just kind of scary you know what I’m saying. Sometimes you just can’t do nothing wrong or you’ll be hexed Ha ha ha I’m kidding, no I’m not… And I think the fear of messing up I think the fear of not having my own space I think the fear of not being comfortable really had me fucked up and I’m talking about so fucked up, so fucked up I literally went insane..
I saw myself waking up to heart palpitations, anxiety attacks, not being able to breathe, tight chest, out of air, not be able to think straight, suicidal thoughts that I never thought I’d see after taking some anxiety medication, but I am actually still scared after that... They don’t come up frequently but you know how the brain works if you’ve ever experienced this. I thought this year I literally was not going to make it.. There’s like no jobs in this town and there’s definitely like no big opportunities to make a lot of money compared to when I lived in the bigger city. It was like I was figuring out who I was, as if I had opened up Pandora’s box or some shit and it made me feel like I was literally crazy, like if I was going to submit myself into an insane fucking place, whatever they’re called and I had to pray on this shit because there was no way out of it,. I literally had no idea who I was I was this format of what ever that felt like I was floating in a 3-D world because nothing felt real anymore and that’s because I knew something was wrong with me and I couldn’t figure out what the fuck it was.. it just was a lot in my body and in my soul and I felt like my soul was screaming for help and I felt like there was nothing that no one could do to get me out of it. And so I called onto God. I called onto him and I asked him to help me, I asked him to keep me under his wing basically, And I told him to please take out anyone who could be hurting me in anyway or bringing their energy onto me so that I stay stuck in this bad energy type shit like what the fuck, it was so bad like if I could explain the way I felt if I could explain the way that I looked at the world, as if I was so scared of what was happening in the world but like not because of Covid but because of like the world is actually scary that is what I mean that was what I felt. The greatest metaphor or the greatest comparison that I think would be the movie capital SOUL, the Disney Pixar movie, Yeah that one the part where they go into the depression area where there’s dark souls and stuff .. if there’s anything that could compare to it would be that. It would literally be that. it felt like I was under a spell..
AnyWho after prayer and after Catholic prayer and after prayer of my own… Everything slowly turned around doc to me I felt like God was real because there was no way in hell that I felt like I was getting out of the situation I was if I just keep living my life the way I did. I’m not saying I’m super religious But definitely like, definitely spiritual on all levels for sure. And to be honest like I can only think God for what he has done for me, for giving me back my sanity, for speaking through me and for allowing me to break away from anything I did not serve me. I lost a few friends which, I believe ppl overdue their seasons anyways and I am not the type of person to keep friends for long periods of time.. So def happy that happened ..I was learning about energies and how to maintain my energy and keep my energy positive and it showed and redeem some things that I didn’t really wanna see and realize that I had to actually stop talking to a few other people just because of that… Sorry guys if you ever see this, I just had to do it.
I just wanted to say that I also did start my clothing line amparomerced.com. I also did in fact start content creating again on my personal YouTube & Instagram because I felt like I really wanted to do that and it was just something I always wanted to do since I was like in high school so I’m just continuing to follow the dreams that I know my soul wants and I know that is going to be for me… So I made a whole plan for this year and how I’m going to conquer that and I’m just really excited to tackle it and show you guys what I’m doing and it’s just you guys wow, I think this year is going to be magical.
I also did lose weight this year I think I lost about 30 pounds I am not sure because at the beginning of the year I definitely was like 375, and I am around and under 350 at this point and I only say this because the pictures only makes sense that I could’ve been that big and my measurements but to be honest like I’m just really proud of myself I wish I wasn’t scared to step on the scale In January 20 20 but to be honest like I’m just taking care of myself and I know that I’m on the right path because the weight is dropping off, like hallelujah like we are killing it y’all so.. yesb
Another thing that happened this year was that I found out I had a brain disease? A brain disorder? But basically my brain swells in the back of my head causing Chronic pain and spinal pain, it has a lot to do with my nervous system I guess and it’s called Charrie Malformation, it’s definitely been a lot a lot and not something that I had expected. They found some liquid behind my eyes and determined that it was just something that they would have to take out, I finally went to a Neurologist and he basically told me that I would have to go to MRI and go to a neurosurgeon to see if I was a candidate for brain surgery… So much fun. And this was on the day before my birthday let’s not forget that… But when it turns out the day before Thanksgiving I was declared to not have brain surgery and that even though my size of the brain would be a candidate for brain surgery I would be fine without it because I didn’t have the chronic pain issues as frequently as regular candidates would have so because my back and my neck was hurting it was literally just because of the situation…
How this brain issue came about: This situation became more frequent in my life in December 2018 when I was working at Guess inc. and the reason why I say this is because that was the first time I ever became aware of how my body was functioning, how much weight I was gaining, how much I cannot see at the left side of my eyes, and how much I had changed in being at this job for about less than four months,. The job really did fuck me up to be honest and ever since then I have had this situation happened to me and I was never aware of it prior or never aware of it at all to be honest. stress can really kill you boys and girls It can really fuck you up so make sure you take care of yourselves and quit those jobs that you don’t like because fuck those jobs fuck those people fuck anything else that doesn’t serve you a greater purpose in life and that’s just on PERIODT. 
AnyWho back to now.. I live in my grandparents Basement. I’m really grateful for them, I stop looking at life like it was against me and started thinking that life was for me… You know a lot of good things came out of the situation as far as figuring out my health finding out how to control anxiety and depression, figuring out the life that I actually really want to live, and really diving deep into who do I want to be in my lifetime here on earth… Like who do I want to be here, and to be honest I really want to be someone great… I want to live until I’m like 70 or 80 years old just like my great grandmother she was, actually like 93 I think… But I would really love to live a long life like her .. I would really like to grow legacy and I would really just like to not be afraid of life...
Out of all the learning experiences that this year that I’ve learned is that to be honest you can be anyone you want to be… You can have the job of your dreams you can live the life you really want to live and you can grow prosperous and be rich if you really wanted to… And although I live in my grandparents basement and my things are in boxes in barrels and I’m living on their bed that was a spare bed and The things that I have are put into 90 or 80’s Furniture like I am just so happy I have the opportunity to take a step back and really view life the way I can view it now… It’s really not that bad it’s really actually pretty fucking great if you ask me… Because I’m not paying rent and although I had a really cool life before this living in the big city and paid loads of money on rent… at least I’m not like super depressed or dealing with depression anymore, at least I’m like in a good mental health space and my grandparents allowed me to do that by being patient with me… I’m just like truly thankful for them like you guys have no idea and to be honest like if you were ever given the opportunity to move back home, and you think it’s going to be like the worst thing in the world, just do it. It’ll help you grow.
just look at life as it’s like you only have one life and you can change everything about it and in 2021 like that is what I’m going to do… I feel like 2020 give me the opportunity to plant my seeds to plant the life that I always wanted to live to give me a vision to look forward to life to look forward to the things that I never looked forward to before and I think that within this time it has given me The ability to really love who I am really love the skin I’m in and really love the person that I can truly be… And I think at this point in my life is that I am so comfortable with being alone & single that there is no way in hell that anyone can try to make me want to date them unless they have greater access to some higher spirituality shit that’s really going to turn me on and make me feel like yes this is it… Like I really don’t wanna be with anyone and I think that is the greatest lesson that I feel like what? How the hell did I get to that type of level.. Where I felt like I liked myself more than anyone else in this world? Now I think that is powerful… So whoever decides to come my way better level the fuck up because you know what, I will be single for the rest my life if I have to… I would rather fulfill my personal needs and feed into my soul th- someone else’s who can take take take take and never get back and I think that is the most rewarding thing this whole year (2020) has taught me. To be you, be free, and to love who you really are… No matter the good or the bad… No matter how you see yourself, to help people see you, the judgment in the world, it doesn’t fucking matter at all… That was my lesson in 2020… Because the world literally revolves around you.
So to be honest I’m just really thankful I’m just really thankful for everything that I’ve been through… I’m really thankful that I got to learn about myself that I got to open a box full of demons and really FaceTime… And really understand that I was just hiding from myself and that I was just so sad with the way that life I turned out that I didn’t realize that there was a life in front of me waiting for it… I’m just so happy that I have things to look forward to and I can spend the rest of my life, because I will live until I’m like 80 years old, doing the things that I love that feed my soul and that will show me the world it’s not against me it’s working for me in the universe is here we’re just waiting for me to get my ass up… And I did this was the first year in two years that I completed a vision board for what I wanted for my life in 2021, and I feel like for the first time in so long I have so much to look forward to and I’m just so proud of myself and it makes me cry because wow like I got myself out of my head I got myself away from the things that no longer benefited me and I got away from the things that were pulling me down… And I think that is the most powerful thing someone can do for themselves when they feel like the world Is literally over.
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https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/the-trumperdammerung-is-a-fitting-end-to-2020
Pasting the story by Susan B. Glasser, posted today, below, if you don't want all the ads and page loads on the New Yorker website:
As the awful year of 2020 and the awful tenure of Donald Trump both come to an end, the President has partied with the unmasked in Palm Beach and taken credit for a vaccine against a virus that he once counselled could be beaten with bleach. He has pardoned mercenary child-killers and Paul Manafort. He has golfed. He has raged. He has vetoed the annual defense bill and threatened to shut down the government over the holidays. He has turned against even some of his most loyal henchmen, and some, in turn, have finally flipped on him. “Mr. President . . . STOP THE INSANITY,” the New York Post blared on Monday, after four years of relentless cheerleading.
But, of course, the President did not, and he will not. He continues to refuse to accept his defeat in the election, and just the other day he retweeted a claim that “treason” kept him from winning. Injecting still more political drama into the most ministerial of constitutional processes, Trump and his most fanatical supporters now want Congress to refuse to confirm Joe Biden’s Electoral College win on January 6th—which is both pointless, in that it will not happen, and incredibly destructive. Meanwhile, more than a hundred thousand Americans have died of the coronavirus just since the election, and only two million Americans—not the hundred million he once promised—have so far received the vaccine.
The Trümperdämmerung is finally here, and it is every bit the raging dumpster fire that we, the unlucky audience for this drama, have come to expect. Is there anyone left who is surprised that the President is careening through the last days of his Administration with a reckless disdain that simply has no precedent in American public life? Still, the hardest thing to accept is that 2020 is not merely the year that Donald Trump’s luck ran out but that with it the country’s did, too. Sadly and yet inevitably, this terrible, wretchedly toxic year of pandemic death and economic distress, of partisan hatred and national protest, is the culmination of all that Trump has wrought and all that he is.
Now that 2020 is finally almost over, I find that I don’t want to remember it at all. (Though you should read Lawrence Wright’s definitive account of this Plague Year in this week’s New Yorker.) Perhaps this is simply because Trump has remained so defiantly and obnoxiously unrepentant, continuing his antics all the way to the end. He does not want to let go, to cede the spotlight, to renounce his outsized claim on our collective consciousness. It is my protest, our protest, to want so desperately to do so.
As it is, we are still in 2020, and I can barely summon the concerns and controversies of a year ago, when the most pressing political question in Washington was whether Trump’s former national-security adviser John Bolton would have to testify in the impeachment trial of the President. (Spoiler alert: he didn’t, though he would eventually call Trump unfit for office in a book whose contents he did not share with the United States Senate and the American public when it mattered most.) Now that the election and all the other mayhem associated with it have happened, it’s hard to recall that 2020 began with me wondering whether Biden still had a chance in the upcoming Democratic primaries, and pondering why the promising Presidential campaign of Kamala Harris had flamed out so quickly, before a single vote was cast. This was back when Trumpian outrages seemed less threatening to the literal health of the nation.
How much worse was 2020? Well, NBC’s list of the President’s ten biggest lies in 2019 included Trump perennials like the idea that windmills, because of their noise, “cause cancer,” and “people are flushing toilets ten times, fifteen times,” and the U.S. will “be going to Mars very soon.” All are bad, absurd, and embarrassing coming from a President, but would not even rate in this year’s far deadlier, more consequential tally. Trump was not just a circus this year; he was an actual catastrophe.
Which is why the before times are so hard to conjure now, nine months into the pandemic and nearly two months after an election whose aftermath has challenged the very foundation of American democracy. I can remember, sort of, Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump’s State of the Union speech, and the drama of Mitt Romney becoming the only senator in history to vote to convict an impeached President of his own party. I can recall, sort of, the anxiety that followed the U.S. assassination of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader Qassem Suleimani, and the drama of Biden’s remarkable comeback in the Democratic Presidential race.
In reality, though, the year really began for me, for us, in February—on February 24th, to be precise, when Trump tweeted, “The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” We already knew that this wasn’t true. I had spent the previous weekend haranguing my visiting parents about the virus and begging them to purchase N95 masks before it was too late. But somehow I did not fully recognize until that moment that Trump was going to approach the biggest public-health emergency of our lifetimes with a strategy of outright denial. The Big Lie of 2020 had begun. So many more followed that it’s hard to remember the breathtaking simplicity of this first untruth, the foundational lie from which so many deadly consequences would flow.
“Just stay calm. It will go away,” Trump said on March 10th, when thirty-one Americans were dead. “It’s going to go away,” he said on August 31st, by which point nearly two hundred thousand had died. “It’s going to disappear,” he said on October 10th. “It is disappearing.” He said that the coronavirus was a Chinese plot and that concern over it was a Democratic hoax, that he knew how to treat it better than the doctors did, that it was just like the flu, and that, if you got it, you would get better, as he eventually did in October. “That’s all I hear about now. . . . covid, covid, covid, covid,” he said before the election. “By the way, on November 4th, you won’t hear about it anymore.” But that wasn’t true, either, and, since then, millions of Americans have been infected with the disease, and December has been by far our deadliest month yet.
To be sure, there are many, many other Trumpisms from 2020 that would have been mind-blowing in another context, in any other year. That’s the thing about historic, world-changing times; so much happens that you can’t remember it all. Still, I am quite certain that, even amid the firehose of 2020 awfulness, the Worst Photo-Op in American History and the Worst Debate in American History and the Worst Case of Sore-Loserism in American History will rate a mention.
Thinking back through the year, I realize, too, that there is much that we will not only forget but may not even believe actually happened. Trump pressing his Attorney General to prosecute his opponent weeks before the election? Trump holding rallies with thousands of unmasked followers during a deadly pandemic, including a superspreader White House event at which he introduced a Supreme Court nominee whom Republican senators hurriedly confirmed just days before Trump was defeated? “Person, woman, man, camera, TV”? “Obamagate,” which was supposedly “the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA”? It’s just all too insane.
When I Googled “craziest shit Trump did in 2020,” a column I wrote in September, on “Twenty Other Disturbing, Awful Things That Trump Has Said This Month,” popped up. Although it was published just a few months ago, I realized that I did not remember many of the examples cited in it—the “super-duper” new “hydrosonic” missile that does not actually exist; Trump’s accusation that Biden got a “big fat shot in the ass” of some unknown drug; Trump’s admission that he was getting his information about the uselessness of mask-wearing from “waiters.” This, as George W. Bush was reported to have said about Trump’s ominous Inaugural Address, was some weird shit indeed.
Remembering all of this is already both hard and painful. There is still much more to learn about the disastrous events of the past four years in Trump’s Washington and on his watch. But I recognize that there are powerful forces—in human nature, in the politics of both the right and the left—that will push us toward forgetting. The urge to move on from Trump is understandable, and potentially very, very dangerous. As of noon on January 20th, no matter what other madness comes between now and then, America will start to move on anyway.
Out of all the books I read this year—and I read many, stuck at home during 2020’s endless quarantine—the one that resonated perhaps the most was “Those Who Forget,” an account by the French-German author Géraldine Schwarz of postwar Europe’s, and her own family’s, not entirely successful effort to reckon with the crimes of the Second World War. It made the very convincing case that, until and unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be. I still don’t want to remember, but I know that forgetting is not an option, either.
This has been a terrifying and sobering year, and presidency, to be sure. Sadly the consequences of it won't dissipate any time soon, or possibly at all.
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December 18, 2020
i’m starting this blog so i can have a place to journal my progress when i start intensive outpatient therapy in a couple weeks. i’m having the worst mental health of my entire life right now, which is honestly saying something because this is (i think) the fourth time in my life that i’ve genuinely wanted to be dead. i wouldn’t consider myself suicidal because i’m too scared of pain, death, and hurting my family to ever actually do anything, but when i feel like this it’s more like i just wish i’d never been born or wasn’t conscious.
anyway, my depressive episodes have only gotten worse with each succeeding episode, so i guess i’ve finally realized that it’s time to treat my mental health like the emergency it is. also, the more i age the more i start to notice the growing discrepancy between how my brain is maturing emotionally (it’s not) vs. peers in my age group (theirs actually are). i lack a lot of incredibly basic life skills, and i’m actually getting worse at them with age rather than better. i always thought my depression would get better as i got older, as my brain matured etc., but i guess i wasn’t thinking of depression as an illness that progresses if left untreated, and mine has been progressing like crazy.
i’m becoming increasingly unable to force myself to do things that i don’t want to do, cope with negative emotions, feed myself, drink water, take medicine, prevent myself from impulsive behaviors, etc. i’m aware that i’ve been pretty dangerously dehydrated now for about 6 years, to the point that i have fainted a few times, had a lot of liver pain, and have chronic gum disease and have to go to the dentist every 2 months (spent at least $2,000 on that by now) bc i don’t have enough saliva to keep my gums or teeth healthy. what is the reason??????? i literally cannot force myself to drink water. getting up to get it is, like, painful for me, as well as having to get up to pee all the time if i’m actually hydrated. i really don’t know how to explain this because there is no reason why i’m doing this to myself when it is so easy to fix and it’s causing such horrible problems with my body. all i can say is, it sounds insane because it is.
i also do not eat like a normal person, to the point that i know i’m anemic and vitamin deficient, but can’t do anything about it. i don’t cook food or eat at home because something about that process is incredibly painful to me. if i put myself in a situation where that’s what i have to do that day, i will just not eat. i usually just end up getting really expensive favor orders or fast food. this is super unhealthy to the point that it’s impairing my brain function, not to mention being a waste of money, but i cannot stop. in college, my social anxiety was so bad that i pretty much avoided meals to the point that i don’t get hungry the way a normal person does anymore. most of the time, i don’t get hungry at all because my stomach is in a lot of pain from either anxiety or just unhealthy eating habits. every once in a while, i get incredibly hungry but then i order a bunch of food and can’t eat very much of it because my stomach gets weirdly full quickly. this hasn’t even resulted in weight loss, however, because all of the food i’m eating is unhealthy and i don’t do anything to exercise.
aside from becoming increasingly unable to care for my health in even the most basic ways, i’ve had a lot of negative things happen to me this year that i can’t cope with. the worst has been my breakup with m, which has been a catastrophic year-long shitshow and been difficult for me to process or understand. he broke up with me back in september 2019, we got back together by that november, he started treating me like shit by january, i dumped him on Easter, he wormed his way back by late may and even though i wouldn’t get back together with him we were still hanging out constantly until august when i found out some disturbing shit he did back in january and started this terrible cycle of cutting him off every few weeks only to let him back in my life to some degree.
luckily, each time letting him talk to me again has gotten shorter and shorter. the last time was two weeks ago and we were only on speaking terms for a week total before i told him to leave me alone again, so that is progress. it just sucks when you so desperately want to believe that someone was who you thought they were while you were together, yet they keep doing more and more to prove that that was fake and they are actually a bad person. i wish i could’ve just had a normal breakup, where i’m sad about the loss but still think the person is fundamentally good. instead, i’m dealing with all these crazy feelings of realizing m was never who i thought he was, was not really a good person at all, and probably did not love me (at least not the way most people feel love or the way i loved him). it sucks to realize that nobody has ever actually been in love with you and that the person you’ve been in love with the most in your life did not really exist. it makes me hate myself, honestly.
i haven’t used benzos since my birthday 1.5 months ago, but that was another problem i was having basically from june-october this year. i’ve never loved any feeling as much as i loved benzos, other than being in love, but the love was not ever real and the benzos were, so it was probably better for me overall (ha ha). taking xanax or clonazolam was like being submerged in a hot tub that i could breathe in. taking them every night was like slipping into a pool of warm water that was also a portal into another world where i was literally someone else who couldn’t even comprehend the idea of anxiety, let alone experience it. i’m sorry, but people who don’t do drugs don’t understand that there actually is not any genuine human experience you can have that feels better in the moment than drugs do. the only problem is that the drug feeling comes with so many negative side effects that it isn’t worth it. coming to terms with the fact that i will never feel as good as i did with drugs, that i will feel good again but in a different way that takes a lot of work, has sucked. i was damaging my brain and body so bad that i was near killing myself and i’m pretty lucky my heart didn’t stop from everything i was combining (coke, benzos, adderall, alcohol). now i’m only letting myself drink and do coke (but NEVER together...i don’t even like coke unless it’s by itself or with benzos, it feels so dirty when you mix it with drink).
anyway, i also just don’t like my roommate but that is honestly the least of my worries. still, it sucks coming home and having her be there and just feeling how much she hates me seeping through our shared wall. i don’t know why i am so good with letting go of friendships but so bad at letting go of romantic relationships LMAO. i mean, i don’t get rid of friends easily at ALL. i’ve only lost 2 friends in the past 12 years and they were friendships i’d had for 13 years and 10 years, respectively. but once i decide i’m done with a friend, i don’t feel sad at all or think about them and if i ever do it’s just like “wow i really don’t like that person.” so it’s been good that i haven’t felt sad about that, but it just sucks that she’s still in my house and i have to kind of be reminded that she exists. and it’s bad for my self esteem bc i know she doesn’t like me, yet she’s aware of anything i do at my own house (although i never see her thankfully). anyway, i’m really excited to start IOP and work on my emotional skills and hopefully get my mind right.
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