I should be doing something productive right now.
Instead, I'm sitting in front of my computer, blogging about nothing. Then again, this nothing may become something, in the way my writing usually does.
I guess we could talk about me some more, since that's almost why I made this. I wanted to be heard, even if I had nothing to say. It's easier for me to communicate with the written word rather than the spoken one, even though I've been told that I get my point across clearly regardless of the medium. I also tend to have bigger thoughts than I can actually convey, so having a nice, uninterrupted place to do so helps me focus, at least a little.
Anyway, just to give you a good picture of what's going on on my side of the keyboard, picture this. I'm sitting here in a grey v-neck tshirt, my hair up in a pencil, no make-up, shoveling ramen into my silent mouth. Since I'm alone, I'm also not worrying about eating very politely. Half of the time, I look like a three year old eating pasta. I won't elaborate on that since it makes me look marvelously uncultured. I promise my mother raised me better than that. However, there's no one in the room to look dignified for, so I drop the worry. I'm facebooking in the background, messaging a friend of a friend for no reason at all really. I'm debating making tea.
Inside my head, the part that you can't hear unless you're reading, I'm vaguely tossing around ideas for this blog. I could go into what makes me happy, gush about my boyfriend, tell you in way too much detail how the pen and paper role playing game that I'm in is going, break down the characters that I've created and I have a particular fondness for...
Let's go with that one. I'm going to share a few characters with you. Think what you like about them, I'm beyond caring.
Actually, no. Let's stay away from the characters today and examine your responses to this. Several of you have sent me emails or facebook messages or called/texted/smoke-signalled me your thoughts on my blogs. Some of you are family, some friends. What no one seems to get about these blogs is that it's all written in a tone of boredom and near desperation. Everything is said in a languid, scornful tone. That's how I'm hearing the words in my head, how I'm trying to send them to you. These aren't full of me whispering softly to you the ideas in my head. This is me letting icy contempt finally steal into the voice that has comforted you, the voice that has quelled your fear or your sadness, the voice that has lifted up your spirit when nothing else would. This is the sharp darkness of my vindictive and somewhat twisted view of the world and the people in it. I'm not holding your hand while you read this. I'm sitting in a chair, playing with the dagger of words idly while you sit in my company. This lingual dagger could save you from harm or cause you pain. Your reactions and my disposition decide your fate. But I hardly tricked you into coming here. You're here of your own free will. I'm not a professional here. I am me.
Some of you will think that I'm being ridiculous, but look again at the title of this blog. Everything I Never Said Aloud. Let it sink in, lovelies.
I have been the best friend, the loving daughter, the model older sister, the upstanding citizen, the attentive student. How many of you have actually seen my darker side? Not that that side holds any danger at all for you, I only want to share with you the things hiding within. When I write, I want you to be my captive. I want my words to hold you hostage and make you think. I want you to wonder how this experience will change you.
Read my blogs with my voice. Read them with the note of contempt and scorn that they deserve. Every one of my posts is a dare, every single one. I'm daring you to hold on with me and see where this wild rollercoaster from purgatory takes us. You have only ever seen the side of me that was raised correctly, my polished and controlled side. Not the side that I kept to myself. Not the side that had the comforting darkness of a night sky that allowed my soul to rest peacefully. Not the side that relishes in the beautifully dark ideas that I've read and nurtured myself.
Now, don't you start thinking that the darker side is something that means that I'm crazy or some sort of madwoman. I'm just embracing the side we all have. The little voice of pain and indignation when someone slights you. The darkness you run to when you want to be protected from the bright burning light of the rest of society. The one safe place to hide when the monsters are after you. Where your nightmares reside, where you keep them once you have conquered them. The place where you are strong, where you have power that you would rather not think about. The one place that scares you the most. The deepest, darkest part of you.
I want you to read my blogs and stare at your computer screen like it's the only thing that exists. I want you to be rapt with attention, to not have a single thought that I didn't put into your head while you are reading. I want you to sit back at the end of these installments and gasp for breath.
I don't pretend to be that powerful. However, if you are my 'ideal reader', then I do have that power over you.
And do you know what the absolute scariest part of it all is?
You gave it to me.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Musing...
I had to watch a video for a job that I'm applying for today. It was called, "The Ten Commandments". In it, there were people with disabilities talking about how they would like to be treated. They want to be treated just like everyone else and only have the barest minimum of concessions to make it just as easy on them to do things as it is for the rest of us.
The very need for such a video made me start thinking about how ridiculously immature the population that I have come in contact with is. Bigots, racists, people who can only see people as their stereotypes, and people that have their heads too far up their asses to notice that there is an actual human being standing in front of them make me sick. Then again, I was raised to see people as individuals, not as anyone or anything else. Something that someone else did shouldn't shape my impression of you. For instance, a good friend of mine whom I love with all of my heart has a mother that I cannot see eye to eye with. Her mother has done a few slightly unprofessional things that caused me a problem or two, but I still love that hateful woman's daughter like she is my sister. I just refrain from allowing her mother to come up in the conversation. (Art, it's not your mom. No worries. :) She's always been very sweet to me. <3 )
As far as shattering stereotypes go, let me share a few with you. I was working a nonprofit event in Shreveport. There are pictures on my facebook of the event and you may be able to see the man that I'm talking about. He's a tall man with broad shoulders and a greying beard. I have yet to see him out of a leather vest with a huge fist emblazoned on the back. The day that I'm describing, he also had on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and a bandanna on his head. I hadn't had a chance to meet him yet, but I had a few minutes of down time so I was people watching. I saw a little boy running around and smiled. He was precious and couldn't have been more than four years old, if that. I can't remember whether the big biker stopped him or if the child stopped to tie his shoes and that's when the biker approached. Either way, I saw the child look up at him, almost bending backwards to look up at the face above him. I heard the biker say something; I couldn't hear words but I could hear a kind smile in his tone. Then I saw all 6+ feet of him kneel before the child and tie his shoe for him. The kid smiled at him broadly and thanked him. I got formally introduced to the man a few minutes later. The name on his jacket was 'Opie'. I have yet to meet a man that is as kindhearted as he is. We're even facebook friends now due to the organizations that we're in (I'm a part of the Justice for Justin Bloxom Alliance for Innocence and Opie is one of the Bikers Against Child Abuse) and their collaboration on certain events in the Shreveport area. There is one shattered stereotype for you. A kindhearted biker.
The next stereotype that I'd like to share with you is the guy that I saw in the student center. He had a flat brimmed cap on sideways, beads in his hair, a ripped shirt with some sort of basketball propaganda on it, a tattoo in darker ink on his dark arm proclaiming what part of Dallas he was from. His shoes were untied and had large 'tongues' that hung out at an odd angle, his basketball shorts were about three sizes too big and the black silky material contrasted sharply with his green boxers. Again, I was people-watching, so my eyes followed him to the piano that we had in the student center. He sat down and I just guessed that it was time for me to find my headphones because he was going to start fooling around on the keys like a five year old (or any other non-piano playing college student for that matter). As I rifled through my purse, I heard the most beautiful melody breeze through the student center. My head snapped up and there he was, playing a complex and melancholy song without a single scrap of sheet music. I am a little ashamed to say that my jaw actually dropped, giving me that pet goldfish look. I recovered fairly quickly and just listened, dumbfounded, as he played the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Shattered stereotype two: A classically talented 'gangsta'.
But I started this long, rambling blog by talking about the disabilities video. I am familiar mostly with physical disabilities (my mother's back is two-thirds fubar'd, my sister has a chronic stomach condition, my father was infected with West Nile and still has partial paralysis, my very best friend has Cerebral Palsy, a good friend of my mother's is confined to a wheelchair... the list goes on and on.) but I do know a handful of people with mental disabilities or mental illnesses. I won't go into that right now, but I will go into how I've seen people treat them. All of them. My sister is commonly treated like a hypochondriac, and as a result, some people have thought that my mother has Munchhausen's. All that she wants is to make my sister better. Besides, we eat the same food and such, so I'd be sick too if she was doing something like that. No one really knows how bad my mom's back really is unless they've seen her at home. For the sake of her pride, I won't go into that either... Whitney gets treated like a spoiled little rich girl or a circus sideshow when she rides her Segway around campus. What they don't know is that she has the Segway instead of a wheelchair. She didn't buy any kind of special privileges, she made concessions so that she could get around campus just like the rest of us. The epic coolness of the Segway is collateral damage. The family friend with the wheelchair is more of a badass than I could ever hope to aspire to. He can not only jump a curb in his wheelchair, he's also a blackbelt and trains MMA fighters.
I spent more time writing this than I had originally meant to, so I'll get to the bit about life in the next blog. Time to go to lunch with a friend!
The very need for such a video made me start thinking about how ridiculously immature the population that I have come in contact with is. Bigots, racists, people who can only see people as their stereotypes, and people that have their heads too far up their asses to notice that there is an actual human being standing in front of them make me sick. Then again, I was raised to see people as individuals, not as anyone or anything else. Something that someone else did shouldn't shape my impression of you. For instance, a good friend of mine whom I love with all of my heart has a mother that I cannot see eye to eye with. Her mother has done a few slightly unprofessional things that caused me a problem or two, but I still love that hateful woman's daughter like she is my sister. I just refrain from allowing her mother to come up in the conversation. (Art, it's not your mom. No worries. :) She's always been very sweet to me. <3 )
As far as shattering stereotypes go, let me share a few with you. I was working a nonprofit event in Shreveport. There are pictures on my facebook of the event and you may be able to see the man that I'm talking about. He's a tall man with broad shoulders and a greying beard. I have yet to see him out of a leather vest with a huge fist emblazoned on the back. The day that I'm describing, he also had on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and a bandanna on his head. I hadn't had a chance to meet him yet, but I had a few minutes of down time so I was people watching. I saw a little boy running around and smiled. He was precious and couldn't have been more than four years old, if that. I can't remember whether the big biker stopped him or if the child stopped to tie his shoes and that's when the biker approached. Either way, I saw the child look up at him, almost bending backwards to look up at the face above him. I heard the biker say something; I couldn't hear words but I could hear a kind smile in his tone. Then I saw all 6+ feet of him kneel before the child and tie his shoe for him. The kid smiled at him broadly and thanked him. I got formally introduced to the man a few minutes later. The name on his jacket was 'Opie'. I have yet to meet a man that is as kindhearted as he is. We're even facebook friends now due to the organizations that we're in (I'm a part of the Justice for Justin Bloxom Alliance for Innocence and Opie is one of the Bikers Against Child Abuse) and their collaboration on certain events in the Shreveport area. There is one shattered stereotype for you. A kindhearted biker.
The next stereotype that I'd like to share with you is the guy that I saw in the student center. He had a flat brimmed cap on sideways, beads in his hair, a ripped shirt with some sort of basketball propaganda on it, a tattoo in darker ink on his dark arm proclaiming what part of Dallas he was from. His shoes were untied and had large 'tongues' that hung out at an odd angle, his basketball shorts were about three sizes too big and the black silky material contrasted sharply with his green boxers. Again, I was people-watching, so my eyes followed him to the piano that we had in the student center. He sat down and I just guessed that it was time for me to find my headphones because he was going to start fooling around on the keys like a five year old (or any other non-piano playing college student for that matter). As I rifled through my purse, I heard the most beautiful melody breeze through the student center. My head snapped up and there he was, playing a complex and melancholy song without a single scrap of sheet music. I am a little ashamed to say that my jaw actually dropped, giving me that pet goldfish look. I recovered fairly quickly and just listened, dumbfounded, as he played the most beautiful music I had ever heard. Shattered stereotype two: A classically talented 'gangsta'.
But I started this long, rambling blog by talking about the disabilities video. I am familiar mostly with physical disabilities (my mother's back is two-thirds fubar'd, my sister has a chronic stomach condition, my father was infected with West Nile and still has partial paralysis, my very best friend has Cerebral Palsy, a good friend of my mother's is confined to a wheelchair... the list goes on and on.) but I do know a handful of people with mental disabilities or mental illnesses. I won't go into that right now, but I will go into how I've seen people treat them. All of them. My sister is commonly treated like a hypochondriac, and as a result, some people have thought that my mother has Munchhausen's. All that she wants is to make my sister better. Besides, we eat the same food and such, so I'd be sick too if she was doing something like that. No one really knows how bad my mom's back really is unless they've seen her at home. For the sake of her pride, I won't go into that either... Whitney gets treated like a spoiled little rich girl or a circus sideshow when she rides her Segway around campus. What they don't know is that she has the Segway instead of a wheelchair. She didn't buy any kind of special privileges, she made concessions so that she could get around campus just like the rest of us. The epic coolness of the Segway is collateral damage. The family friend with the wheelchair is more of a badass than I could ever hope to aspire to. He can not only jump a curb in his wheelchair, he's also a blackbelt and trains MMA fighters.
I spent more time writing this than I had originally meant to, so I'll get to the bit about life in the next blog. Time to go to lunch with a friend!
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