“There’s no need to get upset over nothing.”

Once, I was being verbally and sexually harassed at the mall by a group of teenage boys. My ears became hot with anger and I felt as though my blood was beginning to boil. I wanted to scream at them. But I didn’t. Instead, I vented to a “friend” of mine. This friend responded with the statement, “There’s no need to get upset over nothing.”

Yes, I am getting upset. No, it is not over nothing.

I get upset when white, straight, upper-class girls say that since they have never felt afraid to go out in public alone, I have no reason to be afraid.

I get upset when I am stopped by police officers for taking a walk in my own neighborhood.

I get upset when people shout obscenities and slurs at me when I walk down the street in “dyke” clothing.

I get upset when my parents tell me that I need to “stop dressing so butch.”

I get upset when people ask me, “Where are you from?” as if it’s impossible for me to be from the United States.

I get upset when girls ask me if I’ve ever had a crush on them as soon as they learn about my sexual orientation.

I get upset when people ask me if I have any straight friends.

I get upset when people ask me if I have any white friends.

I get upset when people ask me if I’m in an open relationship with my boyfriend simply because I’m bisexual.

I get upset when people ask me if my relationship with my boyfriend is some kind of diversity statement.

I get upset when people tell me to “get over it.”

I get upset when people say, “It’s all in your head.”

I get upset when people do not understand what it means to be depressed.

I get upset when people use the word “depressed” as a synonym for “bummed out.”

I get upset when people see my scars and call me an “attention whore.”

I get upset when I cannot freely walk through my own house without the fear of knowing that at any moment, I could be judged, ridiculed, or reprimanded because of my body and the way that I look.

I get upset when straight white men make jokes about their friends being fags or queers.

I get upset when a local news station refers to an entire community by simply calling us “gays,” as if our sexual orientation is our only identifier.

I get upset when people do not understand that the fear of being harassed, assaulted, discriminated against, or even killed because of my biological gender, my gender identity, my sexual orientation, my skin color, my race, my ethnicity, my weight, my mental health, and/or my partner is constant and ever-looming.

I get upset when people, who have never known what it means to live your entire life in a constant state of fear, attempt to dictate how I should and should not feel.

You have no right to decide a goddamn thing for me. Because you can and will never even fathom what it feels like to live in a world that you are simply a guest in.

Daily Struggles

I’m not quite sure as to where this post is going yet. I’m really just writing to vent and get all of my thoughts out of my head and into some tangible format that makes it easy to sort through them later. Best get started, then.

 

I take every kiss seriously. Really. Every kiss is a big deal. Yes, there have been many kisses; today alone consisted of at least thirty. But every kiss, no matter how brief, is important. I believe that a kiss can speak volumes.

On the cheek: “You are important to me.”
Between the knuckles of the hand I’m holding: “You’ve taken such good care of me and I really appreciate you.”
On the chin: “I’m happy right here. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
On the corner of the mouth: “I want to see and feel you smile. Your smile is my favorite thing.”
On the lips: “There is no one else I’d rather share this moment with.”
On the nose: “You’re playful and I really like that about you.”
On the neck, just below the jawline: “You’re worth the wait, the distance, the extra effort. You’re worth every minute of it.”
On the collarbone: “You’re beautiful and I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”

I wish I could convey my feelings into actual words. But whenever my partner asks me what I’m thinking or how I’m feeling or if there’s something wrong, I never have anything meaningful to say. Take tonight for example. Here are basically all the things I wanted to say tonight when he asked me 5 billion times “What’s wrong?”

I feel like my entire life revolves around making you like me. Yes, you’re my boyfriend. You have been for four and a half years. So obviously you like me. But that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that I spend so much time and energy trying to get you to understand how I feel about you. Because you’re my best friend and you’re everything I want out of life. And when I look at you, I feel like being happy is something that I can actually attain, and that’s not something I aspire to feel with anyone else.
I wish that every time I kissed you, you kissed me back with the same passion, responding to what I’m trying to say. But I don’t think it’s fair for me to expect you to feel as strongly about me as I feel about you. Because unless you’re as emotionally complicated as I am, that is just impossible. All I want is for you to understand what it means for me to love you as much as  I do.
On a completely different note, I feel like I don’t deserve you. Because you are amazing and deserve someone perfect. I feel like one day, you’re going to see that you could do much better and then I’ll lose you. I don’t know how to keep that from happening. It’s my worst nightmare.
So, what’s wrong? I am. 

Why can’t I just talk to him? You’d think it wouldn’t be so hard after 4+ years. But apparently, it is. Because I’m a crazy person. Why is my life so goddamn difficult?

 

This blog post got a little too real. But I got all of my thoughts out of the way, which I guess was the point. Pardon the rant. I half-promise the next post will be less insane.

depression comix #122

This is a daily struggle I face. This is probably why I have so few friends. It’s just easier to push people away than to make the mistake of opening up to someone.

Depression Comix

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Psychosis

I wrote this about two years ago with an idea from a friend. I’m actually pretty happy with it. Maybe I’ll take it further. If you enjoy it and you’d like to see more of this, let me know in the comments.

Psychosis

I suppose I noticed early on that something was different about her.  In hindsight, I don’t understand how I could go so long without confronting it.  She was so distant.  It was like she was there, physically, but somewhere completely different mentally and spiritually.  I loved her, and because I loved her, I guess I subconsciously neglected the problem, hoping that it would correct itself in time.  But, then it never did.  Eventually, everyone else caught on.  She was rude and uncaring.  She became more and more egocentric.  She wasn’t herself.  She treated me and others in bizarre ways, as if her entire moral consciousness was wiped clean and replaced with one of some pre-axial human being, unaware that there was any soul beyond itself.  Some of the things she said left a bad taste in my own mouth.  But, I was scared to tell her how much she had changed, how warped she was.  I didn’t want to tell her that, with the way she was, I just didn’t love her anymore.

Seven months and twenty-six days. That’s the time it took before anyone realized that Marcie Jacobs was consciously living in a world completely outside of the real, physical world of which she was a member.  Once the rest of us realized it, she was already deeply rooted into her separate universe. So much so that it would be nearly impossible to coax her out of her trance and bring her back to the world she belonged in.

—

            “Babe, can you do me a favor and grab that green mug from the top shelf.  It’s too high up and I really need to finish painting it or it’ll never get done,” Marcie called to me from the sitting room.

“Is it the one with the Celtic knotwork on the handle?” I asked. She was silent.  “Marcie, knotwork? Yes? No?”   She said nothing.   “If you don’t tell me, I’ll never know,” I said with a tinge of annoyance in my voice.

I grabbed the mug and walked down the hall into the sitting room.  Marcie was sitting on the window seat, staring out into the front lawn and humming.   I sat down beside her and dropped the mug in her lap.  “Babe, I’m not trying to be rude or anything, but, are you deaf?  I asked you if this was the right mug, twice.”  Still, she didn’t respond.  I’ll admit it – I was getting a little aggravated and I think I overreacted.  “Marcie!”  This time, I shouted.

She screamed.  She sprung to her feet, obviously startled.  I watched as the mug jumped out of her lap, crashing onto the hardwood floor.  “God damn it, Ray! What the hell is wrong with you?  There was no need for you to scream like that! Now look at this mess –” she cried.

She was shaking, partially from the scare I’d given her and partially from how perfectly irate she was.  She stood there, surveying the sight for a moment, and then scuffled off down the hall to the broom closet, cursing the entire way.

Feeling terrible, I stood there.  I didn’t know whether I should try to help or just leave the room and let her cool off.  I decided on the former.  I moved swiftly down the hall to meet her before she got back into the room.

Taking the broom and dustpan from her, I stopped her in mid-stride and said, “Let me take care of it, babe.  It was my fault; I’ve got this.” She glared at me, snatched the dustpan and broom back from me and shoved me aside, cursing under her breath again.

Rather than try my hand at being helpful again, I walked into the kitchen.  From there, I heard her muttering to herself.

“’Let me take care of it, babe.’ Yeah, right.  He can’t take care of shit.  What the hell does he do around here anyway?  He sits around, watching his football games and playing his fantasy sports.  What do I do? I cook; I clean; I do his fucking laundry.  Now, he goes and ruins the one thing that I want to do with my free time between work and taking care of his lazy ass.  Perfect.  Give the guy a goddamn medal.”

I was fuming just listening to her.  She was the one that wouldn’t answer my question and she was the one that wasn’t paying attention.  This really wasn’t my fault.  I grabbed my wallet and car keys and started heading towards the front door.  I heard behind me the crash of the ceramic pieces as they dropped into the bottom of a wastebasket and the thumps of the broom and dustpan as they hit the wall.  Then, I heard her voice.

“While you’re out, do you want to grab me some honey butter from the grocery store.  Honey butter on wheat sounds heavenly right now, don’t you think?”

I stopped and turned around.  I could see her at the other end of the hall, sitting on the window seat, humming.  I wasn’t sure whether to freak out about her radical mood swing or to be happy and skip to the store for her honey butter.

“I love you, Ray!”

I left.  I went through the front door, got in my car, and drove to the store.  I went straight for her honey butter, then down a few aisles for my favorite whiskey.

—

            The dull hum of the sedan’s engine buzzed in my ear. I made the drive home almost subconsciously, unable to focus on the cracked, pothole-ridden road in front of me and simply going through the motions. I replayed the scene at home over and over in my head.

Marcie had always been a little strange. She had a way of changing moods at an unreasonably quick pace and sometimes I had trouble keeping up with her admittedly one-sided conversations with me. I used to think it was cute, the way she would completely dominate a conversation with all that she had to say. She’s so intelligent. That’s what originally made her so attractive. But, after five years of marriage, it stopped being cute and started irritating me. I could have even initiated the conversation, telling her about traffic on the way home from work or the data rush at the end of the week, and she would still find a way to cut me out. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a talker, but her constant struggle with me to take the lead every time we exchanged words had become so out of hand that, eventually, I just stopped fighting it.

I only spoke when spoken to, and for the first few months, my tactic worked. But, Marcie was smart and she caught on. When she confronted me about it, we fought. I vented my frustrations and she proceeded to yelling.