The Case of Dawn Summers, Trauma Victim

Do other people remember their younger years?
It's something I simply can't recall; from about age 10 up through age 15, anything less distinct than the most emotionally shocking moments simply don't surface in my mind.  Sure, I recall the vagaries; I played Ultrazone a lot; I didn't have many friends; I spoke very little with family and had nothing to do with school.  Everything else I can recall from that time, albeit barely, was Matt Gallo being an ass and uncle Jack dying, though I can't place it anywhere in my mind, in time-frame, or anything else somber to be recalled.

This was brought into the most painfully acute focus for me, just now; pictures of a friend, cropping up from her years in those ages, reminded me of exactly what I had to go on from my own early-teen years.  The pictures were happy and bright, brimming with memories (albeit, slightly vapid ones, coming from a Barbie-type beauty parlor aimed at the 10-14 dressy-uppy girl demographic) and friendship, memories to transcend just the day of that birthday party and the silly hairstyles this cadre of girls adopted for the occasion.

From my experiences, the ones I suppose I had, I have to ask why they came with less inherent clarity than these girls' happy, cooperative days.

Were there pictures?  No.

Did I have friends to recall with?  No.  

So what makes it more likely to be recalled than anything I did in those years?  Just that it was among others, socially exploring more ground than I could ever probe in my loneliness?  Or is it my not-so-secret desire to put on makeup and prance around in frilly hairstyles?

So I guess the question is less 'do you remember it', but 'did it happen to you?', a distinctly understandable question given my history of trauma and emotional respite (that is, hiding.)  A combination, perhaps, of emotional and social retardation, alongside severe depression and a wholehearted lack of interesting events in that time span simply hide every fact, every date, every event and every decision I made.  Couple this with an underwhelming scholastic experience and a deadly addiction to internet gaming, and it's no surprise that my youth was, well, fucked up.

But here I am, definitely able to recognize the degree to which I've had to reconcile and repair the damage I've caused myself-- or that's just sort of 'happened' to me.  Things 'happening' always seem to be the biggest problem in my life, not that they have negative consequences but that they're keeping me from acting on my own-- see the entire last paragraph as for further impetus to why THAT might be.  With an inability to act with clarity comes an inability to recall with clarity, and, before servicing my crippling emotional failures and psychologically neurotic retreats, were exactly what I hid in.

The question still arises, however, of why I had no friends in that time to slap me out of my strangely depressive funk.  The easiest answer, and until now my standby, is that I was an emo shit.  That, and my school consisted of the 181 richest, whitest, and most pompous social rejects ever to utter forth from the loins of Madison's socialites-- myself included, of course.  To this day, I watch friends interact with other human beings-- texting, Facebooking, even talking to them to their faces-- far more intuitively and confidently than I am able to do, a slight irony given my seemingly-eloquent nature.  Is it just that I'm too different than they are?  Could it even be that my wordiness and worldliness is what deposes people from my presence as-is?

My apathy precipitated friendlessess, which in turn precipitated apathy.  Quite an irony, I think.  It's that apathy that manifested itself as a complete inability to make decisions, which, again, is what I mourn the loss of more than any memories I lack.  Afer all, isn't that just what everyone else was exercising to make themselves happy?  I can only imagine what I would be like to this day had I been able to act on my whims or desires.  I'd certainly be more normal, I can tell you that-- though a normal what, I can't say.

Hair

Is it just me, or is our culture terrified of out-of-place males in society?

Females-- we've been over out-of-place females as a culture.  Women that look like men?  Fine.  Women who perhaps share just a tad of both?  Still okay, by the social rulebook.  But what about men who decide not to play by those rules?  Not just drag queens-- no, men without an identity of gender at all?

Our society at least can contend with drag queens because, gay or not, they take on a specific role.  A female role, yes, but one so solidly embroiled with our cultural dualism of man and woman that a self-contained population of flamers doesn't threaten anyone's sensabilities anymore.

A much more dangerous-- and smaller, for the same reason people feel threatened by it-- is the born-male who casts off his cloak of societally-donated dominance over his ''fairer' sex' and sits outside the casual border of masculinity and femininity.  It's no longer the fight between men and women, media-controlled bout that declares 'his' and 'hers', but suddenly hallowed, untrodden ground, an ironic no-man's-land without demographic or description.  Why is our culture so afraid of immasculine men?  What is it about boys in dresses, unabashed by either their manliness or their androgyny, men in skirts and nail polish without remorse for breaking social convention, that scares us so much?

I don't know.  I'm not really ashamed to say that, but all I have is my ideas.  One, is a lack of exposure.  We don't see immasculine men much, and when we do, it's suddenly something foreign and strange-- especially as acculturated as we are by the media to the duality of the masculine and the feminine.  Which is my other point: the media doesn't like the androgynous either, so the one-from-billions time you see a trans or 'different' person on television or in advertising, it's a negative-- nay, insulting-- portrayal.  Without exaggerating, I can say that every one of the few times we see a genderfuck male in the media, it's a worse portrayal than if he simply had been omitted like every other TV show, advertisement, and movie.

But that omission's still not good enough.  Instead of villifying the androgynous male, why not use the media to normalize this harmless sect of our own culture with the rest of our unthinkingly-dualistic ways?

The only way to go from here is up.

Religionism

I don't think any form of god, goddess, deity, higher power, or superior intelligence exists. Though, as far as beliefs go, I don't think mine are either out of the mainstream or particularly strange. Let me clarify that: Atheism-- especially the stigma that goes with it-- isn't out of the ordinary. In fact, I posit that it is the ordinary, given that no evidence of greater beings has come to light as of yet, at least scientifically speaking. (Note to anyone who thinks this relates to Creationism V. Evolution, it does not. That is a political matter, not a religious one. It is, however, scientifically indefensible.) Say what you will about your personal visions, musty texts or priestly rites, but I repeat myself: no being has proved its existence to me in any logical, superior, worship-needing or worship-seeking fashion.

"But faith!", they cry, "You can't expect science and logic to have an answer for everything! Have faith and you'll be free!". With that I simply cannot abide; those who do not wish to follow their logical minds are free to believe, worship, flail about and have visions as you will, feel free, but the instant that you try to bring your morally- and logically-indefensible position to my doorstep, don't expect me to cow to 'Faith' just because you've got a nice copy of a book to hand out.

"Perhaps it isn't a greater being that requires our admiration actively!", others note, "what about the Deist gods, or the nature-worshipers? Couldn't their reverence be comparable to the religious?" And as interesting and astute as that accusation is, it's not really relevant. Certainly, those which see a "Watchmaker" god as being their creator still believe they were created, but the difference is that their deity is entirely permissible within the current purveyance of science and logic. Sure, he created the universe, but didn't do it in six days (at this point undefined, because the earth wasn't turning around the sun,) or just shy of seven thousand years ago (I know that not all religious people actually think that, but it's worthy of note simply to discredit.) Their god, taking no nonsense in creating the laws of physics, started the Big Bang from its disc-shaped singularity and let the planets and galaxies and such work and whirl out from there, knowing that all of his very clever work would allow civilizations to foster across the universe.
But there's no way to prove he exists, or ever did, or ever could have. So though he's an interesting curiosity, it's far more likely that he never existed, especially in the Christian deity's sense.

There's not enough room here to refute every single illogical point from every religion, as scientifically defensible (or indefensible) as they may be. My point is solely that Atheism should be given as much social credence as any other belief system, especially because of its cherishable logic and lack of bizarre or dangerous ritual or history.

A bad day, mon

Yeah.
I'm having a bad day. Don't really know why; what I do know is, I'm gonna resolve to write about something interesting every day!
...Well, maybe not every day. But at least when stuff bugs me. As much as I can.

Today. Yeah, anyway. Don't know what it is (maybe mom's distrust of me, still, especially on the schoolwork front-- yes, I'll get the three and a half pages of essay written tonight, and no, I'm not worrying about it, thanks,) but I'm certainly put off by this... day. Just as a whole. It was a half-day, too! I'm not usually even HOME by now, but I just wanted to come home and forget about the day. It wasn't even too bad, save apparently being ditched by every friend I tried to cling onto after this... day. Though the clinging was only because the day was already terrible enough to begin, I think, and I suppose they were doing their normal routines of wandering-about-without-me-or-maybe-not-coming-to-school-I-don't-know.

Oh, yeah, and I have an essay for Mr. Howe still to do. Remember those three and a half pages I'm gonna write tonight? Yeah, that essay.

I've also not written anything for fun in eons, and I finished The God Delusion-- again-- today, so I'm out of things to read during my boring classes. Guess I'll have to pick up Letters to a Christian Nation or something published by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. I've been meaning to read some other good artefacts of atheism, and it doesn't get better than that.

But I've still things to do today, so I hear; after reprimanding me for being careless with my homework, my mother immediately 'reminded' me that she was hauling me off over the dinner hour for dinner, or something like that. Really wasn't listening.
Anyway, I guess that means I need to go write something that isn't quite so... angry. And hopefully has better grammar.
Hehe, I love linking verbs. Err, linking verbs are loved by me.



P.S.: Man, I sound so cliche 'Teenage Angst' right now. :D

Welcome!

Welcome to 1999. The Furby is popular again, Dexter's Laboratory is showing on TV, and I've finally gotten my own blog: This means, in all honesty, that I've dug up enough interest in getting my ideas, opinions, and writing to anyone who may read it (friend or foe,) including a good portion of my past works.
I suppose my reasoning for this is simple. I've been searching for a while for a good place to put rants, rambles, and other Important Personal Dispatches from my neurotic side to the rest of the whole, shiny world. Though they can be found through Gaia, 4chan, Facebook, MySpace, BYOND, random E-mails and psychiatrist's testimonials, I thought this would be a good place for anyone interested enough in my personal fumings to come read my thoughts on... well, anything important enough for me to write about it. With any luck, I'll be posting lots of things both new and old: my notebooks burst with never-before-seen drafts of fiction and prose, while in my darker moments I've notes, confessions and other depressive scribblings to dredge up from my past.
Ooooooh, harrowing.