On a distant and obscure mountaintop, a fire burns. Its smoke is foul and the flame is sickly. It is white hot only at the center. The local fauna eschew this mountaintop because not even a skunk can stand the smell, and the air is redolent with the smell of deep deep decay. The fire’s crackles and snaps flow together to form a stuttering sussuration, the air is greasy and toxic, and within the flames, filthy shadows flicker and die, only to be reborn again in a new and even more offensive form.

 

And yet, from a distance, the fire is so, so pretty.

 

Almost like a star.

I don’t feel too good right now.

I had a talk with Ita after class. I was nice. She was nice. But she had no comfort for me. She confirmed that all the teachers who had worked with me in a workshop class thought I was difficult and resisted taking notes.

It’s a bum rap, but that makes no difference. With my tendency to forget to follow notes people gave me in good faith and to submit half-assed work when everyone else worked super hard, I gave the perfect impression of a difficult person who could not take notes.

And sure, it’s tempting to blame it all on mental illness but today’s talk with Ita revealed the cold hard truth :

I never took my VFS education seriously enough.

Instead, I fell into my academic smugness mode. I thought I could sail through on talent and strength alone. The work wasn’t challenging me, so I didn’t take it seriously.

And I got good marks academically. But I get low marks for getting it done and that’s all that matters in the long run. Instead, I fucked around, let my brain empty on the weekends so that I didn’t even think about what I had to get done until Monday, submitted stuff late like it was no big deal or at the very least like I was not learning anything, just being visibly sorry about it, and in general making a very poor impression on my teachers.

And that really hurts.

And not because none of them would give me a reference. I know I don’t absolutely need one. I can build a writing career in tons of ways. That’s not the problem.

The problem is the disapproval.  Knowing that these authority figures in my life don’t think much of me makes me feel like I let them down after coming on so strong at first.

They must think of me as squandered potential. Story of my life, really.

The Jagoff won.

And I can go on and on about how awesome I would be in the writer’s room, but nobody hires you straight out of school unless you are pretty damned impressive, and while I think I am a terrific writer, I am going up against people who are just as good who have glowing recommendations and do not have twenty year gaps in their work history.

So I have a lot to overcome if I I want to make it into the TV biz.

But I am still leaving VFS with a diploma from the toughest writing for TV/film program around and the vastly improved writing skills I got from doing it. So it’s not out of the question that I would get work.

It’s just that I am going to have to prove that I can hold down a job first. Not easy… my inability to handle job interviews is what led me to stop looking a long, long time ago. Especially that part of the job interview where they ask me why I have a huge gap of time since my last bit of actual job history.

I can tell them I was sick and I am getting better. But they are still going to shitcan my resume because lots of candidates do not have my liabilities.

So I dunno how I get a job under those conditions. Maybe apply at some local fast food place that has a huge turnover rate and thus pretty low standards.

Otherwise, I will simply have to invent my own job.

When I was talking with Ita, I went in and out of feeling suicidal(NOT HER FAULT). More waves of suicidal mood hit me after I left, especially after I accidentally broke my beautiful headphones right outside the school.

This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like there is no hope for me : all it took was my not realizing that my headphones were trapped under the strap of my bag and SNAP. right hand speaker has a broken stem.

I just can’t keep up. When I look after thing A, thing B bites me in the the ass. When I am doing well on front X, front Y falls the fuck apart. I can’t win. I can’t even get ahead.

And today’s’ depression is only a small part of something much, much bigger happening inside me. There is an enormous shift of some sort taking place and I have no idea where it will all end up.

But I know it all started when I found a source for high quality gay furry manga, and that led me to a strip called BroGulls. (WARNING : Tons of NSFW content. )

It’s about two brothers who become more than brothers Despite the incest (brother/brother doesn’t squick me much as long as it’s someone else’s family), the writing is very good and the relationship between the brothers is so sweet and so strong and it stirred up something inside me that had long lain dormant.

That is just what a lonely person I am in the romance department. I have this vast unmet need for romantic love that I have never felt because because everything in me was so repressed. But now, it seems, the beast awakens.

I have never been part of the romantic world. I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve bever had a breakup. I have never yearned for someone from afar. Or anear. I have never been a part of that world at all.

And that’s because when I was a teenager, I gave up on the whole thing. I was a gay kid in small town Canada and I didn’t think my sort of sex – let alone romance – was ever going to be a possibility, so I just… closed off that area of my mind.

It seemed like a logical decision at the time.

And I have never recovered from that. It chills me to think of what madness that is. That others were driven by their hormones to try, at least, to find a mate, or at least a date, and there I was, feeling nothing and acting like none of that could ever apply to me.

Like the whole human pair-bonding thing was for other people. Not me.

And now just how lonely I am. Yay recovery.

Oh well, the first part is always hard, when that which was frozen and numb comes back to painful life like when your foot falls asleep.

And I honestly don’t know what to do with the loneliness. How can I get a man when my issues (and standards) keep me so tied up? Going to night clubs ain’t my thang. Dating sites always leave me depressed. The intellectual standards I need in a mate are high, and that limits the pool considerably.

Oh well. At least now I know to start looking.

The creatures of the valley watched the flame burn every night. They knew that as long as that fire burned, the Pact was in full force and there would be peace in the valley.

 

But if that fire should ever go out…

 

There would be war.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow, homework permitting.