OK, this is a really emotional topic for me and it might piss some people off.
But this is something I need to do.
Christmas is less than a month away, and once more, I will not bother to make a list of things people can get me.
Because clearly nobody gives a shit what I actually want.
For many years, I would make a list of potential gifts for my birthday and Christmas. I would do so full of hope and goodwill and cheerfulness and then email it off to the people who love and care about me.
Only to have them completely ignore it and just get me whatever absolute minimum thought and effort gift they were going to get me anyway.
And that really, really hurt me. It brought back painful memories of being treated, at best, like an afterthought as a child and feeling like I didn’t matter to anyone.
And I know why it kept happening : because when it came time to get me a gift, they just couldn’t be bothered to look at my list.
That clearly would have taken far more time and effort and willpower than I am worth to people. I mean, it’s bad enough they have to put up with me at all.
Actually giving a shit what I like and want is beyond the question.
And that wounds me so very deep. Not only does it involve a jumbo dose of disappointment (which I never handle well), but it confirms how little value people place on me as a person and how I am not equal to others at all in their eyes.
I’m that dumb old dog they got for Christmas, after all.
And the thing is, I know that part of the reason they do it is that they know they will get away with it. They know I won’t complain about it. I won’t guilt them over it. I won’t retaliate in any way. I won’t argue about it.
In fact, as long as they are willing to ignore the crestfallen look in my eyes and the sound of my tender little heart breaking, they get off scot free.
And they know this. And they exploit it.
And that’s not likely to change much, I guess. It’s not in my nature to look a gift horse in the mouth, no matter how sick the horse is or how its teeth are falling out.
I can’t make people care more about me, but I can at least not participate in my own neglect by making a list and getting my hopes up.
Sometimes the only way to keep from falling is to stay down.
So no gift list from me this year, or ever again. Just get me whatever the hell you want. I am sure that whatever you get me will be just fine, as far as you know.
I will pull myself together, and if I really do want something, I’ll get it myself, as usual.
More after the break.
About what I just wrote
I really needed to get all that off my chest.
When I started thinking about the subject this year, I realized just how hurt I was by the whole thing, and that’s when I knew I had to write it all out of my system.
And everything I wrote up there is true to how I feel. Whether it is true to reality is another story. Either way, it feels good to have expressed it.
Going to have to get a lot better at expressing what I feel instead of bottling it all up inside if I want to get better.
And I do.
A deep and mysterious world
There has always been a lot going on in me that I can’t explain or justify.
Thoughts that flicker through my mind like shadows on a TV screen. Emotions without form or name circling the glowing center of my being. Ideas that are born and die without ever becoming conscious.
Ghosts and spirits and wild-eye imps cavort inside my haunted head.
And a good deal of effort and life potential has gone into me trying to find a way to express all that to people that do not understand it because they do not live inside my head like I do.
Be glad of that, people. This is not a nice neighborhood.
:Looked at that way, I feel like I have been trying to explain myself to the world for my entire life., I’ve been desperately trying to bridge the gap between my inner world and the real world for as long as I can remember.
And I am pretty sure that’s how I ended up developing such amazing verbal skills. They are just a side effect of my lifelong attempt to articulate myself to the world.
And somewhere deep inside my mind there is a deep almost mystical belief that if I can just find the right words, I will somehow unlock the door of my lonely little cell and “people” and I will finally get along well because now we understand each other.
And maybe that’s an impossible quest based on the magical thinking of a very lonely child. If so, I am okay with that.
After all, it is in pursuit of that fabulous quest to write my way out of my cold dank prison cell that I have been writing 1K words a day on this blog for the last 12 years.
And in doing so, I have developed my writing muscles to sleek, athletic perfection. Wherever I go in life after my unfreezing,. I will go there with writing abilities beyond the reach of most mortal writers.
And for that alone, I can stop thinking of all these locked away years as having been “wasted”. I’ve gotten a lot out of them.
And now I am finally healthy enough to want more.
So much more.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.