Poison Pen - Posting Challenge, Day 13

(Also be sure to follow along with Tina, Jean, Krista, and Tambo as they say much more sane and less esoteric things than me!)

Today is a letter to someone who's recently hurt me. Easy-peasy, since I happen to have been recently wounded, and wounded pretty terribly. There is nothing worse than finding out a friendship is false.

Dear Girl-I-Shall-Not-Name,

I'm past being angry, mostly. I'm past being hurt, mostly. Now I'm just feeling foolish, betrayed, and used. I kick myself daily for losing two extraordinary friends over someone like you. Sure, they were far from perfect, but gods know I'm not either. I could have simply, quietly asked them not to make fun of people I loved to my face and told them that wasn't cool. Instead I pushed, and pushed, and finally exploded.

And lost them.

And you, you gained them. You guys are bestest buds now. For over a year, one of them said the absolute worst things about you every chance he got, while the other very quietly stepped aside and let him do it, never even quietly asking him to pick a more appropriate crowd to vent his feelings to, or at least tone it down a notch; permission seemingly given and agreement made simply by never saying no. Neither ever spoke up for you in any way, not even to just keep things cordial when in mixed company. In fact, they had no use for you at all.

I spoke for you, time and again. I supported you from the first day I met you. I often spoke up for you when people mocked you, in spite of the trouble it caused me. I stepped forward when others stepped away. I bragged about the comics you created to new people who had never seen your work and pointed them towards your creations. I talked out problems with you when others were afraid to speak up. I was the one who finally told you why the bad blood existed between you and your tormentors (yes they were my friends, but let's face it, they were definitely your tormentors)--everyone knew, but I was the only one who had the crassness to step forward. I did it to try to and start the process of mending fences; after all, you can't correct what you don't know about.

And why did I do all this?



Because I believed in you. From the bottom of my toes to the tippy-top of my head, I truly, truly believed in you. I believed in your ever increasing maturity, in your ability to change and grow, in the sweet, wonderful girl I met; I totally believed in you. I believed in your inner strength, in your underlying sweetness, in your competence--untried but there--and in the light of your unique and wonderful personality. I believed you were creative, outwardly fragile but with a tough inner core, quirky, irreverent, and fun. You see the world differently than those around you, and I thought that was spectacular.

And if you sometimes whined, or got mad over stupid shit, or caused drama, or made mistakes...well, no one in our entire circle was blameless of any of those behaviors, especially not your tormentors. None of us stood without guilt, so I could not see why your judgment--a young woman with emotional problems who barely had any real world experience--should be so much harsher than the reaction those of us who were older, wiser, and should have known better.

So I stood up for you, time and time again. For a year solid, I stood for you when others were putting you down. I supported you, reached out to you when you were in crisis, and did everything I could to be your friend. And when matters escalated, I went to the wall for you, and lost two friends that were very dear to me, friends I loved, and who, even now, it hurts to be without.

And you know what?

I made the wrong choice.

Because the upshot was you making up with them--which was good--but dropping me like a hot rock the first time I did anything wrong. Or maybe the second time. Or the third. Or the fiftieth, for all I know, since you never told me anything was wrong. I just looked up one day to find you had dumped me on the comic site and on Facebook, no warning, no explanation, just boom, gone.
And, fool that I was, I honestly didn't believe it. When Facebook and the comics both went silent, I thought maybe you were going through something rough and just not posting. When I saw people in chat talking to you but no longer saw the reply, I assumed it was just scrolling too fast for me to see it. It really never occurred to me that you would ever do such a thing, and when cold realization finally dawned, it was one of the greatest shocks I've ever suffered.

You were a person that, if you needed a place, I'd have opened my home to, despite never having met you in the flesh. That was how much I trusted that the girl I got to know was real and genuine and just plain amazing. That was how much I trusted we'd made a real connection, something more than simple internet buds. That was how much I trusted you.

You're telling me now that you were looking for the right way to let me know why you tossed me away without warning, but the thing is, your actions don't back that up. It was a good two weeks or more before I figured out what was going on, and you never even dropped me a note in that time.You said you didn't want to hurt me, but I can't fathom how someone of your obvious intelligence could have figured that doing things the way you did would have somehow hurt me less.

When I called you on it, asked you calmly and rationally what happened, it was two days before I even warranted an answer. Even then the answer only came after you ignored my inquiry and I went off. And I still feel more like you replied because you were afraid I'd cause some sort of trouble than because you actually wanted to speak to me, and that you continued to argue with me because you felt pressured to do so.

This was something you backed up yourself when you ended your first note to me with; "Maybe I should have told you all of this BEFORE, but the fact that I felt this way wasn't going to change (emphasis mine)." It's the first time you mention anything is wrong, and the very first thing you tell me is that the friendship I foolishly thought we were building meant so little to you that you'd made up your mind it was over before even talking with me.

And the ironic thing? You'd spent well over a year--almost two, in fact--hurt that you were never told why the people who hated you so badly felt the way they did, and upset you were given, not a second or even a third chance, but more like a fifth or sixth one. But when it came time to deal with me, you dropped me without telling me what was wrong and gave no second chances.

You did to me what was done to you, and thought nothing of it.

But the worst, the absolute worst part of it? You proved them right. Your then-tormentors-now-friends? You proved everything that was said about you 100% spot on. I was warned, warned you treated people like this. I was warned that you didn't like people disagreeing with you, which was apparently my sin, to not agree with you on more than one occasion. I was warned you sliced people out of your life like this with no explanation and no second chances. I heard horror story after horror story.

But, foolish me, I make it a point not to listen to gossip. To understand that people--young people especially--can and do change. To think that because you were treating me with respect, that meant you'd give that same respect to everyone, and do so continuously. To think that you had taken the rift between you and those who had dumped and then mocked you as a life lesson.

I was so, so wrong. No lessons were learned. It's possible you only liked me not only because I was nice to you, but because, on that site, I was the popular kid, and more than nice people, you crave popular people. Once my star fell and you hitched your rising one to someone with twice my popularity--someone who, coincidentally, no longer liked me--you sure dumped me hard and fast. After all, you really didn't need me anymore, did you? You have what you want, so why bother ironing out the rough spots in our relationship? You don't need to work that hard, not with all your new friends basking in the glow of your new found stardom, quick to give you all the ego stroking you'll ever need.

Even worse, I lied to my friends, if only out of ignorance. I told them you'd changed, mellowed, weren't the same girl you had been. I guaranteed it. And when they'd had time to get over the hurt we'd slung at each other, they went to you with an open hand of friendship, driven partially by my words.

And you're going to hurt them.

Sooner or later they will disagree with you one too many times. They might accidentally hurt your feelings or piss you off; it happens sooner or later in every relationship. It's an inevitability. And when it finally does, you will do to them what you did to me; what you have done at least twice in the past that I know of, and more often that I have been told about through gossip.

You haven't changed at all.

The day will come that you will hurt my friends. Sure, they have no use for me anymore, and why should they? Pretty harsh things were said all around. But I still love them enough that it hurts every time I know they are online and we don't speak, every time I see comments left elsewhere and smiles given to others, and I know that door is closed to me forever. I'm not sure it will ever stop hurting.
And the clock is counting down until the day I have to watch from afar when the drama explodes all over again, when they curse my name for ever convincing them to trust you. And they'll be right to do so. It will be no less than I deserve.

I stood up for you, for the sweet, shy, sensitive girl I thought I knew. I went to the wall for you, risked everything and lost it, over you. I supported you, believed in you, and stood by you almost from the day I met you. And this is all it's worth, this...summary dismissal.

Know this; I will never ever stand for you again. To anyone. I will not show off your work. I will not introduce people to you. I will not set anyone else up for this kind of hurt, or for this sort of betrayal given in return for loyalty.

I know you are not a bad girl, or even a truly malicious one, but you are incredibly broken. And you are shallow, shallow about your relationships, and shallow about yourself. And until you pull your shit together, you will receive not one more iota of support from me.

Frankly, you haven't earned it, and you don't deserve it.

If I could go back and erase the entire confrontation, take back everything I said to my friends, I would. But I can't. All I can do is learn from this, and I have learned well. You have lost my trust, and you may never gain it back.

But then, I'm guessing that doesn't mean much to you anyway.

Someday it will. Someday you'll find someone you'll really want to keep, and you will do to them what you did to me, what you've done to so many others. Why? Because you refuse to learn from your mistakes or your life. And someday that someone will say the exact same things to you that I am now.

And you will deserve every word.

Maybe then you'll finally stop shitting on people and get your damned priorities straight.

Goodbye,
Me.

Me With A Friend - Posting Challenge - Day 3

Today's is both easy and hard--show a picture of me with friends.

Easy because, hey!, very little writing. (Creative punctuation, must love it.) Hard because...well...remember what I said about photos?

But it's not just that, it's that I have pics taken of me by friends, or with just one or two friends, but the picture I would wish to share would have all the people who should share the limelight, and that doesn't exist. So instead, I give you a picture of legs.






This was a Chinese New Years party.  And the legs you see before you was the natural fallout of drinking at said Chinese New Years party. It was great fun.

For a while, whenever a friend and I would get drunk, we'd tussle. We'd hit, but not too hard; we weren't out to beat each other up. Mostly, we'd wrestle. Two large breasted, long legged women in short skirts, trying to take each other down.

As a matter of fact, no, we weren't the life of the mostly male dominated parties. We didn't do it for the men, you see. We often started in a quiet little corner, and it would be after we'd chatted for a long time with no sign things were headed that direction. We tended to wind up like this, in a deadlock, with neither winning and neither losing, though we would end the battles like children:

"I won!"
"Nu-uh!"
"Uh-huh"
"Nuh-uh. I got you in the piggy-nose lock!"
"Well I got you in the over-the-shoulder-boulder hold."
"That was cheating! Bras are off limits!"
"They are not."
"Yes they are!"

...you get the point. Sometimes we'd tussle again, most times we'd go for another drink and dance.
I think our crowning moment of awesome was at a Con. Some guys had started beating drums quietly down one end of a hall, just for fun, not for show. We wandered down to watch, and then the mood of the drums took us. We circled and feinted and tussled  and wrestled and hit while the drums pounded, two girls just feeling their inner cavewomen. I think we were both aware the guys were grinning as the watched, but there was not a catcall to be had, not a word of leering encouragement said, just silence and the pounding of the drums. It was like a spell was cast over us all.

We never tussled again after that. Life took us in separate directions, and besides, that was a tough act to beat.

But I know what will happen if we ever see each other again, someday. We'll laugh, reminisce, drink, and sooner or later, with half forgotten drums in our heads, we'll tussle.

Name That Blog – Posting Challenge – Day 2

Today’s posting challenge is about the name of this blog–what, why, and where it comes from.



This is hardly mysterious. My last name is Grimm, and I set up this blog (originally) to be my writing blog. You do the math.

So instead I will talk about the name of my first blog, "Screaming in the Dark." I made that blog back in the 90's, back when the internet was so new it barely had graphics and the idea of sharing information was just as new. Back when I was pretty new, too, and trying desperately to navigate a life I was ill prepared for while dodging the demons that haunted my every step.

Anyone who knows me knows my life was never a picnic. Abuse, neglect, mental programs, and a lot of anger haunted my childhood. By the time I was seventeen my mother had had enough of me and threw me out of the house. By the time I was in my early 20′s I was a wreck. I barely knew how to make friends, I worked shit jobs for too little pay–so little that even holding down two or three could not pay my meager bills–and every day seemed just a little bit darker than the last.

Some good things happened, such as me discovering a place called Ravensguild. There I made my first lifelong friends, embraced a spiritual path I was finally happy with, and discovered that everything I said, felt, and thought was not wrong or stupid or immature. I was, for the first time, respected, and it was a revelation. It wasn’t enough to cure all that ailed me, but it went a long way to making me the person I am today.

But while it made my mental life easier, it did nothing for my physical one, and could only help ameliorate the worst of my lingering emotional effects. Bluntly put, they kept me sane, but they couldn’t make me a functioning human. I felt like I was drowning, physically and emotionally, that the light was going out of the world. Every day, every breath was a struggle, and I was ill equipped to deal with it.

But a friend in the Guild noticed. He only went by Wraith; it was all I ever knew him as, even though I have long since learned the names of most of the others. He didn’t speak often of his past, and what little I learned showed his to be far darker than mine. We spoke often. I told him what was going on with me, and he told me it was okay. It was okay to be in darkness. It was okay to drown.

See, I felt I was failing at life. I often still do. But I wasn’t the failure. In fact, nothing was wrong with me at all. Everything I was was a normal response to a fucked up existence. I was, in fact, a machine of survival, bred under harsh conditions to stand up to anything. What seemed broken was merely me breaking into a new world, a world where I no longer had those conditions to endure. I had to learn all new skills, and do it without a therapeutic ear, parental guidance, or really, any help at all. I was in the deep end–sink or swim–and I was going under.

I saw this world with a stranger’s eyes, and I saw more in it than those whom it had treated gently as children. I saw the hypocrisy, the double-speak, the lies. I saw it when politicians’ swindles made lives harder and closed doors. I noticed when people were subtly rude about my value, implying I had none because I was poor. I understood as my friends could not how and why the deck was stacked against me. And I ranted about the unfairness of it, even though every rant fell on deaf ears. People who hadn’t been there didn’t believe it, people who had and survived refused to think I could be different than them while those who failed also thought they were fully to blame for their failure. The first lesson I learned as an adult in this country that there was no mercy for people like me, and that I was more disposable than a week old McDonald’s wrapper.

I was mentally broken and scarred, severely PTSD, completely alone in the world without any familial support, I had no savings, and every goal I reached towards I had to achieve completely alone. Before you say it’s easy, imagine college without loans or grants, imagine your parents never washing your clothes, no friends to lend you money or take you out, no reward for hard work but more hard work. I was in a race with the rest of the world, but someone had moved my starting line ten miles back, broken both my legs, then demanded I catch up. Then, when I found myself floundering and begged for help, they told me my failure was my fault.

It was a hard coming-of-age, an awful one, and at the time I was unable to sort all the lies from the truth; even the truths I suspected I was reluctant to give public voice to. No one agreed (oddly enough, almost 15 years later they do but it took the collapse of an economy), and most told me I was full of it. So instead I whispered it to Wraith in private.

The pain I felt, the betrayal of my country, the double standard of outward politeness and subtle discrimination, the ghosts of my past trying to devour me, my feeling of culture shock and betrayal in my own home, a stranger in a familiar land, all the unnecessary trials I had to endure, and my fury at being thrown to the wolves…he called it “screaming in the dark.” He’d been there, talking into the blackness, into people’s apathy and their unwillingness to listen or learn. He’d raged against the world, a well founded rage, and been ignored, forgotten, dismissed. Disposed of. He’d screamed defiance against his own demons as threatened his very being, and he lived in that darkness still. We both did.

He taught me the darkness is okay. The fury, the pain, all of it is as right to feel and embrace as joy or love. Getting rid of the emotions only numbs you, but it doesn’t make the source of the problem go away. Injustice will exist, always, but the brave don’t look away. The truly brave don’t fear the dark.

And he taught me that I wasn’t alone.

I remember the relief I felt. I was depressed, and that was okay. I wasn’t “broken,” I didn’t need to “cheer up” or “get over it” or “focus on the positive.” I could rest, stop struggling all the time to live up to those impossible expectations, nurse my wounds and just let them heal. All those things other people demanded of me, that  was their wants, their needs, their desires, not mine. And I had no obligation to fill them.

Wraith taught me there is positive strength in pain, in sorrow, in being true to yourself and honoring your needs, even those most people would say are negative ones.

I named my first blog “Screaming in the Dark,” and that was what I did. I was young, there was an awful lot of whining done. But I said many true things as well, and I found a forum in which people would listen. And through all of them, I made my way out of the dark.

That time in my life is over, even if I feel the darkness swimming about my feet again, piranhas set on devouring me. I’m not yet certain the blog title still fits, and I am certainly fearful that I have no more wisdom or insight, but that my best years for both are behind me. I am pretty certain no one would listen, not this time, and I find myself blaming myself for my failures and cowering once again from the dark. It’s a scary damned place.

But for the moment, I’m trying it again, just to see if it’s right, just to see if it fits. Just to see where it goes. I’m walking down old roads in search of new paths, things I missed the first time around, and seeking to pick up strengths I once had but have since let fall behind me. And I am completely noncommittal. “We’ll see” is all the credence I give it.

But if I get really lucky, maybe I’ll find myself there once again.

And if I get really, really, really lucky, maybe I’ll find the ghost of a lost friend.

Endings

Stress Monkey