Antisocial

https://humansoftumblr.com/these-17-people-wanted-to-avoid-socializing-and-so-they-did-these-super-sad-things/

I love to see people refusing to socialise even more than me.

I don't hate people (generally, usually, mostly).  I even like most of them most of the time.  But I've long felt this need to "comply."  Even people who think they understand, don't.  Today's conversation... Person 1:  "Hopefully the evidence of the damage being apart will encourage more people to be face to face after we can do so."  Me:  Or at least learn how to chat and skype.  I miss chat.  Hardly anyone does that anymore, it's all texting or facebooking.  Nothing personal anymore.  Person 3:  "I don't think that's good.  Personal is better."

Say what?

Because I don't want to place any sort of (additional?) wedge between us, I replied nicely.  But honestly?  She doesn't get me.  We'd had a short ... okay, I ranted to her today about this subject, about how everyone feels some crazy desire to force everyone else to socialise and accept children running around and feeling like crap.  In person conversation, mind you.  Then this.  First, I /said/ nothing is personal any more, meaning chat is mostly gone (aside from texting - that's a separate issue for me that I'm working on).  Facebook is social networking media.  Not the same.  You can use the chat client, but it's a distracting piece of crap at times.  A blackhole.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting lost in there.  But it's designed to entrap you.  It's impersonal.  It's about shallow little likes and tiny bursts of ego-stroking that damage young developing brains.

I'm developed as much as I'll develop.  I still fight against the urge to panic and flee when I'm in crowds or groups.  It's a complete overload on my senses.  I get exhausted.  I stop hearing well enough to participate.  I spend days planning for this suffering - eat well, poop well, pee well, take vitamins, sleep enough, list everything I should bring I might need to stay sane like a thing of tea and a snack for the road so if I get hungry I don't act like an idiot because I can feed myself enough to cut that short before it affects my ability to function overly much.  And that's assuming it's a good day.  Usually, I hide as best as I can, get dragged out anyway, only to be what I consider ignored.  On top of that, it usually requires travelling.

So I've decided I'm no longer going to outings unless they're outside and I feel like it.  No more situations inside.  No more kids.  Instead of getting angry about it, I need to simply say no.  "But we'll miss you" my ass.  You don't talk to me anyway.  Not more than five minutes.  So why do you want me there at all?  We can do that on the phone.

It's unnatural to talk on the phone, via skype, via chat.  Yes, it is.  I'm not natural.  I was born with a computer implanted in my brain.  Okay not really but it feels that way.  My memory is unnatural.  My early photographic memory was unnatural.  My tendency to think twenty things at once and work on problems in my sleep and lucid dream and foresee what's going to happen five seconds from now as I talk and observe ... all unnatural.  My ability to intuit gadgets was unnatural.  I am, like my mother used to tease me, an alien.  I have been living like this for years, and I don't want to shut people out completely, I just want to not have to be in their direct presence every time we socialise.  I want to enjoy socialising instead of being overwhelmed by it.  I'd like to not have to drive an hour or something to go watch someone who specifically requested my presence sit on their phone ignoring me.  How is what they do any more natural than what I'd love to do?

There are other people that get it.  Otherwise that link at the top there wouldn't exist.  I'm not totally alone in this.

So on the way home I decided I simply would stop doing things I didn't feel like doing.  Problem solved.  I've hidden in bathrooms, by walls, wandered outside to hide, tried to initiate conversations and failed, found other loners to sit with in silence only to be pulled back to the herd, felt stupid, felt inadequate, felt ignored, felt like some crazy selfish asshole.  Well wait a minute.  Why is my going there to suffer on their request selfish?  Why aren't they selfish for insisting I do it their way after many explanations about how I feel in these situations?

Well!  Why, indeed!  So just don't go!

It's a slippery slope, though.  I watched my mother do just that for years and eventually she was so isolated she hated all people all over again.  I don't want THAT.  I just want to avoid /groups/ and those "friends" who totally ignore me when I do visit...*  So... I'll need to compromise to remain somewhat social.  Go see /a/ friend, make more of an effort to see /family/ - but one at a time.

* I have two particularly special friends I would drop everything for to go be with and simply sit near.  This is unusual.  They don't sap my energy.  I could literally watch one do artwork and the other cook or look through her ebay finds or something.  Or just stare at them.  Or stare at my feet.  For some people, knowing them causes time to stand still.  In a good way.  They also happen to be, like my husband, the least judgmental people I have ever known in my entire life.

Now, the funny thing - My most awesome husband in the entire world put forth the effort tonight to get back into chat for me.  After fighting with Google for a while (chat requires chrome, go figure), we've been chatting back and forth for a few hours now.  God, I've missed this.  Much easier than either doing interruptions where my entire train of thought is interrupted or complete silence without any talking at all.  Now little blurbs can occur spontaneously without derailing.  I love this.  All visual.  We can still go watch tv together but as we're doing our thing this... wonder... is there to keep us somewhat more connected.  Little pings of "hey, I'm thinking of you, I'm still here."

It's late and I'm exhausted.  It did feel good to get out and walk and chat.  But even that... The overzealous notice-everything was turned on full throttle.  Just in case I was exposed and just in case someone else was exposed (to covid) I kept trying to maintain distance as we walked together.  This person doesn't notice things easily.  But I notice everything.  So amidst avoiding wet spots on the ground (so my mesh shoes don't get soaked) and the traffic proximity and the public proximity and the noises and the wind and snow and other people and listening to conversation I was only me-only alert to ensure we all avoided getting too close to one another, and avoiding breathing downstream to another even.  I can't shut this off.  This is why being with people is exhausting.  I'm constantly worried about "fixing" what they don't see to avoid some issue.  It makes life unenjoyable for me.

Cats.  Soft, fuzzy cats.  Yes.  And bed.  And tomorrow, tea.

-nv

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Interesting pen!

https://glassdippen.com/products/vintage-style-glass-dip-pen-with-wooden-pen-cap-for-everyday-journal?variant=32181473476711

Pretty, kind of a cross between something I'd have in Chinese tea sets or next to a fancy goblet of wine...

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Poem: Ticking

TICKING
2019071401 - c2019 wlc

There was no clock like that in sight
Despite the ticking in the night
I ran away from the way you smiled
You were reviling and reviled

You used to read me bedtime stories
Finger moving on the page
With sight and sound of orange cups
I heard your voice subdued in rage

Ghosts had haunted you and I
Sometimes it was kinda funny
Hypocrisy... its embers glowed around us
Even when the days were sunny

It doesn't matter how much time goes by
We cannot seem to let our demons die
You were always Mum to me
You were all that you could be
And even death can't take that away
I still feel you every day
At times I feel you're even more
Than you could have been before

Now I carry all our ghosts
Sometimes I swear you're by my side
I hear myself and think of you
Understand the need to hide

For days, I seethed in raging tears
So many times life made us weep
I sat there reading bedtime stories
As you tried to go to sleep

But as you left, the way you smiled
Hatred for us both, exiled
I watched as the clock stopped right
Before the early morning light

Happy Harmonies,

-Whitney

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Bloom and Washi tape

Hardly post on here anymore, but let's see if I change that with my more newfound interest (art).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-on-wet

I think it's safe to say this "wet on wet" method has been my primary for many, many paintings, even when I was doing acrylic before watercolour - it was not until this year that I finally looked up the difference, in fact, and had to try watercolour for myself.  Anywho.  More recently, I've begun to allow things to dry because of the "bloom" mentioned under Techniques:  "In the medium of watercolors, wet-on-wet painting requires a certain finesse in embracing unpredictability. Highly translucent and prone to accidents, watercolor paint will bloom in unpredictable ways that, depending on the artist's frame of mind, can be a boon or a burden."  You're telling me!  I tend to work betwixt the two when I'm trying to do something specific.  For example, sky... I'm not particular about it usually, because skies are skies to me.  They're hard to mess up.  So unless I want the sky a very specific way, the colours can mix in there however they want and I'll blend them out once everything is on there.  Detailed objects such as trees or critters, on the other hand, require more paint from me and I tend to paint them more directly.  So I may allow some drying as I mix the paint thick and then slop it on there.  It really depends on what I'm looking for, I suppose... but to be fair, simply experimenting and knowing what materials react in which ways and whether you can use it to your advantage or not is just another tool in the toolbox.  Unpredictable or not.

Kirsty Partridge's youtube channel (Kirsty Partridge Art, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSl51TSNCxLQJqLTQp0B6Cg) explained how to keep washi tape from ripping the paper when you pull it off.  Well, I never thought of using it for painting before, so suddenly I got clued in... instead of covering the entire canvas (paper), or having uneven paint lines, washi to the rescue!!  Then one day I was painting inside the washi lines and Dale goes, "Oh, nice frame."  I stepped back and looked.  Washi tape DOES make a very nice frame, especially when it was selected with the resulting painting in mind.  I always used it in my planner as a border... why did I never think to use it as a frame for a painting?  Now I use it for multiple scenarios.  Also, that's a reminder of how beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and how subjective art can be.  He didn't know the technique and he didn't care nor did he need to.  He was appreciating it the way he saw and understood it.  What seemed to him on purpose was advanced planning on my part to do something entirely different.  In the end, I kept the tape on the paper and wiped off the excess paint with a wet rag.  Now it looks intentional (except it's hanging off the edge of the page, but whtaever).

The thing that is so inspiring about art is the same thing that is so inspiring about computers, languages, history, maps, music, legos, and pretty much any other specialty:  It has its own set of terms, tools, and a countless array of ideas.  It's versatile.  It's interpretive.  It's creative.  And it offers an excellent learning curve that can be utilized by young and old, novice and expert alike.  It does not discriminate.  Most people love some kind of art whether they create it or not.  It's one of our most human qualities, this need to express, create, and appreciate.  Yet despite how basic it can be, you can get so deeply into it that one day you're sitting there going, "If only I had a piece of compressed brown chalk, or white charcoal, this would be so easy to accomplish without leaving xyz and working around it."  Or:  "They should make charcoal with pigment /in/ it so I don't have to keep adding coloured pencil to the-- HEY!  They DO make that!  That sucker's going on my wish list!"  Or:  "Ohhhh...THAT's why they have such a selection of papers!!"  lol

Art.  Gotta love it.  This one is from yesterday.  Note the washi "frame" as a border.  :)  Also note the "bloom" that's so notable in the ground and mountains near the bottom (there is some in the sky also, but this worked to the effect I desired - I wanted it to look rough and stormy, and that's exactly how it bloomed for me).  The only thing in this painting I had not anticipated was in the sky.  Sometimes, I'm finding that this 140lb paper, applied with watercolour paint of just the right consistency, will result in an odd textured crackleature once dried.  If the paint is heavier, it dries smooth; if wetter, it looks watercolourish.  Have yet to recognise the precise moment when the paint is of such a consistency that it will dry that way.  Is that bloom?  I may ask an artist friend of mine that is studying this stuff.  She may know...

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It is... A new year.

Guess I had nothing interesting to say.  Just felt like playing with the Staedtler Triliners and the need quickly moved toward Tombow ABT brush markers.  I always find it fascinating how one medium can literally take five minutes to morph into a scene while another takes about two hours to morph into something like this.  Maybe once I'm more acclimated to the brush markers' blending capabilities, I'll learn a few shortcuts to make it look more seasoned with less work.  In other news, I really like the neon aspect of this particular Staedtler triliner colour.  Wow is it... well, neon!

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zentangle

In Junior High, Mum had noticed that I often wrote words on paper and would then trace around them over and over (spacing in between lines) until they overlapped.  Sometimes I'd add shapes in there to add additional visual interest.  Usually it was in black ink, but sometimes I'd do colours.  Or paints.  Or whatever.  Anywho, she watched me at one point and commented that I must be subconsciously keeping myself from going crazy.  Her opinion was that I was reorganizing my brain by doing that tedious work over and over like that and it was a sign of how much of a mental disorder I must have.

At the time I just shrugged that off as whatever you say, I'm busy enjoying myself over here.  But now, I took out the nice new box of Staedtler triliners (thank you K&F and N&J!) and thought huh, I wonder how zentangle got its name?  Because, I remember zentangle from when Mary took some class and showed me the elements of it... and also remember thinking of how similar it is to my previous line-workings of years past... which I occasionally still do.

Zentangle.com's explanation was of interest.  It's basically meditation using repetitious shapes and "tangling" them together.  While there, I found an interesting design and decided to copy it, and as I did so to some extent, remembered all of the above and found it ironic.  Mum said I was crazy and drawing this way was a symptom of that.  Meanwhile, people everywhere are doing zentangles as a way to simply relax and meditate, often to better cope with the stresses of their worlds.

I guess Mum was right about one thing:  Such repetitious work does indeed allow the brain to reorganize itself.

Oh, and today's zentangle.  :)

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Doodlesketchaintingours

A friend of mine handed me a Derwent Sketching set one day last year and I said, huh, haven't used charcoal in a very long time (i.e., not since high school art class made me and I thought this stuff is messy, screw dat give me paint).

Well, I couldn't say no to such a beautiful set and ended up loving it.  Doodlesketchaintingours has become my latest obsession.  Since that day, I've not only played with charcoal and graphite.  Oh, no.  I've also discovered oil pastels, watercolour, different paper types, watercolour pencils (metallic and more normal like), waterbrushes, metallic markers, tombow dual-tip brush markers, and.. get this.. erasers.  Did you know different erasers do different things?  I didn't, either.  I do now.  And I also discovered this lady here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSl51TSNCxLQJqLTQp0B6Cg

(Kirsty Partridge)

There is something very magical about just applying pigment and watching it come to life.  I have no idea how it happens, but it does.  The other day I walked into Michael's (bad place for me to go) to get a specific black Tombow marker.  I ended up with Derwent watercolour pencils, a waterbrush, and a much-desired (and needed?) mixed media sketchbook that actually opens flat but keeps everything together.  So I ended up with this dock/sky/water/shore/rocks picture straightaway.  These pencils are awesome.  You sketch it all in, shade it to your heart's content, and then apply a waterbrush to blend the strokes all together.  It makes some pretty cool stuff.  At any rate, it's my friend's fault.  I've been into art stuff for some time on a lower level, but now that I've found the higher-quality art supplies... I've been spoiled.  Now I'm actually /interested/.  Not good.  I had enough hobbies.  Didn't I?!?!

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Lots o' stuff.

So.  Lots has happened since my last post.

First, my mom died some weeks back.  Yeah.  Hadn't spoken to her in twoish years.  A tad more than that, but I forget exactly when.  She'd said some things to me that made me realise we were very very noncompatible people and that I could not be around her anymore or I'd be torn asunder.  It took a good, solid year to get over a lot of that.  She never called me, and I kept myself from calling her, knowing she'd never call to apologise or anything.  Exactly as I wanted it - I couldn't be hurt again.

The year after that, I was doing a lot better with it and that was a good thing because a kidney stone began growing in me that kept fooling doctors into thinking it was something else.  I got laid off amidst that crap, and the pain was steadily increasing despite various therapies, money spent to no avail, and time spent trying to "fix" what I couldn't fix.  Eventually, I had surgery to remove the .8mm bugger.  I remember so badly wanting to call my mother before the surgery.  But I didn't.  I knew that if I did, she'd just say something like, "You've always been so whiny, try childbirth."  I had contemplated suicide within weeks of starting my new job because the pain had gotten so bad.  Months of increasing pain apparently can do that to otherwise upbeat, positive people.  I mean, "Meh, I got laid off, I'm talented, I have connections, I'll get hired somewhere."  And I did!  and I loved it and slipped right in well before my typical six months of figuring shit out.  Yet there I was, frustrated, dealing with all this new stuff, learning the ropes, arguing with vendors, and sitting there in four hours of solid pain.  And the thought was a good ten minutes.  I didn't do anything obviously.  But I found myself sitting there, contemplating the how, and deciding that particular how was too risky and I'd end up in a hospital with a smashed in face on top of existing pain I was trying to escape.  So I consulted a doctor who brushed it off because he hadn't lost hope (in determining what was causing the problem) and he wouldn't send me to a pain management counselor.  (He has since been fired.  It took me months longer to determine that I needed to do that... in fact, my mom's care in the hospital was what helped me figure it out.)

I cannot imagine having called my mom during those two very major things.  On top of that, a former boss died, and I absolutely adored him.  I could only imagine her:  "Oh my God, and that's just someone you worked with.  You don't even talk to him now.  Here are the tissues."  Fuck you, Mom.

Well, I got the call that she was dying.  I had imagined this a lot over the two years prior to it actually happening.  I wondered, "Is this really the right thing for me to be doing, to be not calling and making amends for the umpteenth time?  Should I call her, because once she's gone, it's too late?  Am I a bad kid for taking care of me and not begging her to forgive me for things she said?"  And the answer was always, "I'm ok with it.  She has made it obvious she cannot be anyone I can be around.  I cannot be who she wants me to be, either.  We need to stay apart.  I think we both know we each love the other.  But we just can't be together.  Ever.  Again."

I got the call Tuesday.  I went up on Wednesday when I found out she had lost consciousness and was slipping faster than they'd expected.  She died on Saturday morning.  She never regained consciousness.  But, that friday afternoon, I read to her.  At one point, I looked at her gaunt, drugged, sleeping face.  I said, in our former joking manner, "You bitch, you just liked me to read these tonguetwisters to you so you could laugh at me!"

Her eyes opened to slits, and I swear to God, she smiled.  In disbelief, I blinked, and she was gone again.  Did I imagine that?  I may never know.  But I don't think so.  I think she woke just long enough to acknowledge my memory of what our lives were once like.  Back when we were acting like idiots together instead of adversarial adults.  She knew I came back for her.  And that was enough.

I watched a shadow walk into her room a few hours later.  I tried to get Dale's attention but he was on the phone with his own mother and didn't notice me gesturing.  I didn't dare to move.  I stared at it until it faded.  It stood in the middle of the room.  Eventually I could only see it by looking to one side of it.  What the hell was that?  I got worried.  I had never seen that before.  I had watched two other people dying, and that thing never showed up.  Was that the grim reaper?  Was she about to die?  But she didn't.  The thing faded eventually.  Then I realised... I couldn't feel her anymore.  I always thought... I always thought that I'd know for sure when she'd left this world because hey, she's my mom, right?  But no.  Just a vague sense that she was kinda sort of not there anymore.  But she was still alive.  People can't leave their bodies when the bodies aren't dead, right?  Even the blue-sparkly aura had disappeared.  It had been there since I arrived on tuesday.  The last time I'd seen that, my mom's sister had just died.  Before that, it had been my friend's father.  Mum was always one to go against the mainstream, but to this extent?

My cousin woke me up at 1 something am to tell me her breathing had changed and I needed to get up.  We stared, embracing, waiting for it.  She stopped breathing.  I had nothing.  Maybe I was too close.  Maybe my sense of this stuff was too worldly now and I just couldn't feel it.  I don't know.  But I absolutely didn't know for sure that she had died.  My cousin had to tell me.  I glanced up at the time to always remember.  We left her there.  What was left of her.

Sometimes I remember these hours and cry.  But, having gone through her stuff that week, I realised that I was right.  It had to be this way.  I wish I could have been stronger for her, but I am who I am, just as she was who she was.  I have no doubt that she loved me and was proud of me, and I know I love her.  I miss the good times, but I needed to grow up on my own, I needed to find who I really am, and I sometimes bitterly wish she could have been there... but she couldn't.  What I hope beyond all hopes now, is that she is no longer riddled with all of her demons from the past, and can be the person I always knew her to be, and way more.

A lot has happened over the past couple years.  I got in a final fight with my own mom, the only parent I ever knew.  I lost my job, and got a new one.  I had surgery for excruciating, months-long pain.  I lost someone very close to my heart.  And then, I lost the one person I have always wished I could be around and finally gave up on.  My own tormented Mum.  Truth is, I lost her years ago.  But her death has brought me more peace than I could ever explain.  Tears, sure, but... not only a relief that she'll never put me down again, but also, relief that she isn't hurting anymore, either.  So I can finally just feel the love part of what she was, instead of the tormented little girl that was inside her.  The part that truly mattered, in the end.

And that is all.  For now.

~nv

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