MOOP!

( In this entry, I talk about flowers. )



These are the flowers I own that will not die. I look so honest, because it is a collection I do not tell people about. Most of them I found, or bought, or begged all on my own, because I like flowers that do not die, and not because they are a proof of attention. I like them because they are beautiful and strong. The world needs more of that intersection some days.

~Sor
MOOP!

ETA: See also Number 6

So, it's not a line that will make sense to very many of you, as there is not so much overlap between my friends list and hers, but I was charmed last night when I found myself saying "I may have to write up the last hour of my life simply because it had so much ridiculous in it that I feel like Racheline".

(And of course, there is enough of an age gap between us that her ridiculous can echo memories in a manner that I simply do not yet have the experience to do, but the idea of how sometimes all the world aligns to be so strange and yet somehow entirely correct is a concept that I find very dear.)

And so that's how the bunny scampering away from me on the sidewalk last night (towards where I was going, foolish thing, meaning I kept scaring it further away) came to shift my mood ever so subtle that last click it needed --there is a specter of suburbia in my little patch of city home, and that's okay, and I can be happy at life again. It was just so strange and wrong and beautiful to have a rabbit here --this is not Columbia, bunny, what are you doing in the city?-- that it put a smile on my face as I dragged myself up the stairs and into the safety of a room that feels like home.

The stories of what else happened before are much the personal sort, like the fact that sometimes I do need to cry where no one else can find me, because sometimes I provide my own comfort and strength. I am a girl who cries often, and being well-practised at such a sport makes it easier to 'fix' myself, though I wouldn't always say my fractured mind is broken. And there are things that cannot be changed and are nobody's fault, and just because there is not a clear evil to blame, does not mean that it does not hurt with an intensity that makes it hard to think and impossible to talk.

(And there are things which are, so clearly, somebody's fault, but the matter of intent makes it difficult to blame them. Perhaps I give too much power over myself to the people who don't need it, but I've always been that way, as I try to be better and better and perfect. It has never been as crucial to me to please myself as it has been to please all the rest of the world.)

So my night was strange, but it followed familiar patterns, and I was given the chance to walk alone in the dark, and listen to music pushed very loud. Dar is right, you know --as long as she's got noise, she's fine-- and despite being so aurally inept, I find that I can drown myself in volume, as a way to save me from myself. And while the patterns and thoughts may be familiar, the world is far too vast for that, and so I find bunnies four hundred miles from where I saw them last and laugh.

My life is sometimes ridiculous in how it plays out. I'm very grateful for that indeed.

~Sor
MOOP!

Author's Note: This post was written a few months ago, before I left Boston for the summer. I am only just now getting around to posting it as I clean up my desktop and put things away on my computer. Enjoy!

There are a multitude of tiny ways that make me think I'm faking it, loving too intensely, caring too much, altogether certain that there is a correct way to live ones life, and I am doing it decidedly Wrong. This is not an uncommon thought, I suspect, though also not a comfortable one. Why can we not accept that maybe this uncertainty is such a crucial part of humanity already?

Of course maybe the secret is not that the uncertainty itself is human, but that aspects of the uncertainty are universal. Little scraps of the world, when two people gasp at the idea that they share their strangeness. A spark of connection, where it is revealed that, reassuringly, we are not alone.

That being said.

"Everything has its place," her father had once said to her when she was young, showing her the long cedar drawers of the card catalogue in the great library where he worked, the brass brackets on its face shining like a policeman's buttons. "But more imoortant, everything's place is labeled. Order is transitive: order one precious thing and order the universe."

"Do I have a place in there?" November had asked, peering over the rim of one of the long boxes.

"Of course, baby," he had said, and with his big brown hand cuffed in plaid and smelling of lemon rinds from her mother's morning tea, riffled through a drawer and pulled a card from the stack.

006.332. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. H. F. Weckweet, 1923. Gleiss & Schafandre: New York.

She had taken it seriously. Even then she had not known another way of doing things. The book was on the seventh floor and she had walked the steps, every one, knowing that this was the only proper way to proceed to her place in the universe -an elevator is cheating. The book was small, in a brown leather cover embossed faintly with a little girl standing naked on a raft, straight as a mast, her stance determined, holding up her dress as a sail. It was, at the time, the oldest thing she had ever seen.

November had read it exactly two hundred and seventeen times, not counting unfinished perusals, since that day. It was, in fact, a long series of novels for children, but November did not care for the others: her father had not pulled them from the great catalogue and called them hers. She had not climbed seven flights of stairs for them. She had spent her birthday this year, her thirty-first, reading it cover to cover, dawn to dawn/ The girl in the book was named September, and she had known that this was meant for her, a message from Hortense Francis Weckweet and her father. Perhaps if the girl had not been called September, November would not have read it two hundred and seventeen times.

Pgs 124-5, Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente

Oh I see. That entry I made a few months ago, babling about the silly little book with the pirates?

I am not alone.

~Sor
MOOP!

ETA: Oh really? Blockquote won't do italics? That's curious. (and damn you society for ruining words I like --I would so rather be able to say "that's rather queer, isn't it?" but noooo.)

ETA2: No wait, I'm just an idiot who can't do HTML.

So, the other day I was going through old 750words posts and stuff, and pulled out a bunch of things that I thought were worth saying in public.

A lot of them are kinda depressing, because I think words often flow better when they've got a pinch of melancholic to them. But here. It's like a sundries post, only just with things I've written.

Author's notes are in italics

---

There is a boy.
Who likes me and other girls.
And likes me more _anyways_.

***

Being loved by someone sweet and devoted to me is nice, and I love them all for it.

But being loved by someone sweet and devoted to me over other girls is just a whole different realm of exciting. And of course, we don't actually have much of a romantic relationship at all, but still.

I've never been the girl who wins before. It's the scariest damn thing, but gods help me, I like it.

Yeah, this was really startling when I realized it for the first time, and I still kinda refuse to believe it's true.

And of course, there is no "winning" in poly (except maybe making everyone involved in your relationship scheme happy) but there's also not quite a word to express what I mean here. I am perfectly content to be right where I am in all the relationships I'm in --hence the reason I'm in them-- but sometimes it's nice to realize all a sudden that someone thinks you're special enough to set aside a girl who is clearly hotter and more interesting than you are.

---

...then it just hurts more and I am tired of it hurting _more_. Things aren't supposed to keep hurting more. Shouldn't pain level out at some point?

Yes. Yes it should. I think this particular pain might've gotten close to level for now, the problem is just that level is a lot of pain, and so I can only lock it away for so long before it rages at me again.

What, no, I'm not emo, nope.

---

I hate because the only other option is to hurt, and this hurts so bad I'm not sure I can deal.

I don't remember who or what I hate here. Very plausibly myself.

---

And really, if you don't have all your words sorted out beforehand, if you don't know what you're going to say, what's the point of trying to say it anyways? I'm a fucking writer, if I can't put a problem into words, there's probably not much of a problem in the first place.

...and even if I can put it into words, I'm a cynic, and a victim and extremely clever. If I can put it into words, I can figure out arguments against the problem until it no longer exists, or boils down to just me being a tiny idiot. And no one but me can fix me being a tiny idiot.

And this is why I am not very good at speaking up when there is something wrong in one of my relationships. If I can sort it out on my own, because I was just being silly, why would I bother my partner?

Yeah, I'm _really_ not good at this relationship thing. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

---

And when the going gets tough, I am presented with one option -to overwhelm myself in sensation.

Tense certain muscles past any reasonable point, shut my eyes tight, or stare meditatively into something lovely, or run and run until the body runs out of energy, or most used of all, drown my internal monologue in music.

I drown myself in music all the time. Hell, let's be honest here, it's one of the most useful coping mechanisms I currently have in order to fight bottom. I get sad, I pump on the Next to Normal, or s00j, or Vienna, or whatever else I've got, and I make the sad, if not go away, at least have to struggle past the noise to actually get to me.

It's a really really nice coping mechanism. It also means that I'm going to be deaf before I turn thirty.

My made up mind was not put here for you to try and change. Cheers, s00j.

---

But the best part of today is that I've hit upon two separate things that make me incredibly _incredibly_ happy.

The first is pretty logical. Giving Blood. Me donating a pint makes me both incredibly pleased with myself, and punchy as fuck due to the light-headedness. I am okay with this state of affairs, especially if it makes me unlazy enough to go give blood more often than the twice yearly I've been doing.

Speaking of which, I'm almost eligible again. Anyone want to go to the red cross with me this weekend?

---

I am amused by Hyde, protecting me from the ghosts that lurk for hours after I read anything creepytastic, no matter how far I remove myself from the immediate.

"Don't worry dear. There is nothing in this house as scary as I. Except maybe for you."

Oh, excellently played you delightful fucker.

y'all do know who Hyde is, right? He lives in my head and gives me not terribly good advice. Because I am, say it with me folks, a little bit broken.

---

I am, for the first time in my life, willingly sitting out while actively at dance.

I just...don't feel like dancing. I'd say maybe I'm tired, except I know I've danced in physically worse shape before --and that's not even counting on the sprained ankle!

No, I just can't cope with the idea of doing more dances tonight. There is apparently a point where the pain of dance overtakes the pleasure --I know, I didn't realize it could happen either. But there is, and I've finally hit it.

***

I don't want to sob in the middle of the dance hall, in the middle of a waltz. I don't know that I could explain why if I did. I do know that I don't ever want to have to. I hate crying, I hate the pain, and I hate people giving me sympathy, because I hate being weak enough to need other people.

All I want is to just be strong enough to survive independent of outside forces. Maybe that means I need to break up with everyone, not have outside forces that affect me any longer. GO LIVE IN A CAVE AND BE A HERMIT, SOR!

I am such a whiny cunt¹. It is beyond me why anyone at all gives a damn about me in the first place. :P

Cunt explained below. No, you don't get an explanation for the rest of it. But this is a pretty common mental path --emo -> yelling at myself for being emo.

---

Dog and I get along well, and that's really really important.

I need to remember that having friends who I can bitch about the odd parts of my life to are a really crucial thing for me to have. I also need to remember how much I appreciate having friends who will slap me down when I am using inappropriate language, or otherwise being an elitist jerk. (see also, Jesse glaring at me when I used bitch. I want to give him a cookie and a hug for that alone)

Dog is awesome. I really want to hang out with him more this fall, when I'm back in Boston.

---

(I don't know how to feel about the fact that I'm using Amanda right now for a little extra bit of stability. She is a fucking idiot. But her art, when it's good...

It's good. It's the best. Right now I am angry and hurt and sad and scared. And that is the perfect mood for listening to Amanda, because she will reinforce the parts that are okay to be reinforced, and she will eradicate the parts that need to just Go Away.

I use music to blank myself out. She's really really good at that.

Hate the artist, love the art? I don't even know anymore. It is so hard to be a good person sometimes.)

Can we have an Amandadebate-free space in my journal comments? I'd appreciate that.

Yes, this is all just because I handle arguments extremely poorly, and I can't freak out and walk four miles in this state.

---

I find it telling that I've had two boys in a row who were just for sex. And I'm in love with both of them.

Sex is a bit of a misnomer --I have what the Shakers² call an "unsullied cunt", which is apparently terribly valuable and should be protected at all costs. But boys who I am into with the kissing and such, and not the romantics. And...yeah. My traitor of a heart has started to sigh wistfully, and doodle our initials together on my school notebooks.

---

The emotion involved, this is more than sex. Sex is just endorphins and dopamine. Waltzing is...joy.

So, I almost just wrote "fucking _this_" as my author's note. Which means that I just tried to emphatically agree with something I wrote. So, uh, yeah, I'm a bit of an idiot.

---

~Sor
MOOP!

1: This is not a word that I should use. It's a slur, flat and simple, and I should not use it to refer to myself (which I do, occasionally), or any other woman (which I don't.)

That being said, there are a lot of things I call myself that no one else may touch, and yes, cunt is one of them. There's a hardness to it, all edges and corners and sharp, and in some moods, the words I feel that fit best are the words that fit this hardness.

2: See also, Shakesville here, and the specific origin of the term unsullied cunt here.

Two years ago today, it was 30 March 2007.

I spent the day frantic. Pacing madly, stressed out. School could not go by fast enough, and not even spending a calm afternoon with Ksatyr could reduce the way my heart was pounding.

There are a lot of terrible sentences in the English language. "The check is in the mail." "We need to talk." "The test came out positive." Two years ago today, I got to add one to my personal list of horrible horrible things to say --"The plane has been delayed." Delayed? What the hell do they mean, delayed. That plane was *important* goddamnit.

That plane was the most important thing in the world to me just then. Not for any particular reason of mechanics or materialism, but because of one specific nineteen year old passenger.

My clone.

I cannot adequately put into words the thoughts and feelings and wonder and sheer utter joy that took place when I first saw her, first got to hold her. Suffice to say it was amazing. For single moments in my life? It's up there. It's way up there.

Two years ago today, it was 30 March 2007. It was three years and two months after we had become clones. Three years and two months of e-mails and journals and phone calls and letters and conversations and understanding and love and sharing and desperate desperate want. Our conversations completely changed at that point --it's harder to settle for Less once you've had More-- but really, it was worth it.

That meeting, and the two later in 2007, and the two later in 2008, and the ones that will happen in 2009 and 2010 and so on and so on until we eventually warp the world so that us together is instead the norm, all those meetings make it worth it. All the pain, all the loneliness, and the depression and melancholy and hatred and longing and want, are made worth it.

And two years ago today, it was worth it for the very first time.

~Sor
MOOP!

Seriously. Not even the BtW files are providing anything interesting. So, I guess I'll actually have to come up with new content for this journal, rather than reflecting on the old stuff. Man, that's so lame! (*grin*)

So, what's on my mind right now!

Well, remember how I mentioned at the end of my last post that I would love to have a nice chat with the me who took the other path? As I wandered over to Magus's last night, I wound up having a speculative version of that chat, which, with the knowledge of what her life was like, later led to me and Magus having a fascinating discussion about alternate universe selves.

This was started by me going "Huh. You're kinda the lynchpin for a substantial amount of my life right now, aren't you?"

I'm pretty sure this is very true --one fragile little event, and we never remet, or things changed and rearranged in such a way that we never became close friends or partners. And my entire world changes --sans Magus, it's MUCH less likely I'll have managed to get as thoroughly into the dance I do (though I might more regularly do swing and contra) and while I'd certainly still be a gamer, I'd probably get to do less gaming. (Maybe --I would presumably still meet Dan4th, but I'm unsure I'd have the motivation to go to the strange internet man's house without someone else to watch my back occasionally)

More noticeably, without the dancing, I'd be out two *very* close friendships, and a handful of growing ones --I simply would've never met the SCD crowd. Swarthmore would no longer be able to be called the official school of making my life complicated since 2008. ;D

I've begun to sortof rough out some other lynchpins and ripplepoints¹ of my life, mostly by analyzing what sort of different relationships I would have with the world and the people in it.

Forget the big crucial events in my life --what were the silly little things that fundementally changed me, for better or for worse? November 21st, 2007? March 24th, August 7th, 2006?² And what were the things I can't even recognize that changed who I am? What made me stop trusting? What made me realize I like girls; that I'm poly?

What would my life be like without Veronica? (Indeed, would I have a life? Her and Kat have saved me a dozen times and more from ever thinking about suicide in anything but the most speculative of terms.) What would my life be like if my parents had stopped at two children, or one. Or if I grew up in my city, instead of Columbia?

The tiniest events at the time can make the biggest ripples in the end. This cute blonde chick saying hi at a girl scout thing, almost without reason, led to my wonderful friendship with Aren, and arguably, because of who wound up hanging out with who, with Blue. Two unthrown birthday parties are responsible for the best friendship I've ever had³. An invented name leads to my broken heart.⁴

A perfect synchronous double take changes the rest of my life.⁵

A business trip to Seattle in 1999, leads to me joining a web forum in 2003, leads me to running past the do not enter sign in the airport to hug the woman who means almost more to me than life itself in 2007⁶. What if I had never joined Sluggy? What if she had never sent that first IM?

And yes. I fear this entry is getting weird and rambly and boring. It's your turn to be weird and rambly! Tell me some of your lynchpins, some of your alternate timelines.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Oh, just go play Chrononauts. It's my favourite Looney Labs card game, and it's full of Time Travel, okay? It's pretty rad.

2: Okay, just because I've been making an effort to be less cryptic in here doesn't mean I'm going to let you see everything there is to know. Both those dates, things happened. That's all.

3: That being said, some things are plenty allowed to be public. Veronica and I became best friends because my mom and her dad were friends in high school, our birthdays were three days apart, and neither of us had gotten a birthday party that year. Seriously.

4: Sometimes I will still call Chris Momo.

5: If I could get video footage of any one moment in my life, I would honestly probably choose this just because it was so movie perfect. I was wandering, our eyes met, I passed him, confused, we turned at the exact same time to go "OH, it's YOU!"

6: We were given the first Sluggy Freelance book on that trip. The rest, as they say, is history.

I don't want to live my life
On one side of an ampersand¹
Even if I went with you
I'm not the girl you think I am
And I don't want to match you
'Cause I'll lose my voice completely

(Ampersand, Amanda Palmer. There's a little bit more to the chorus, but it's not important to the way I interpret the lyrics. Me, interpreting things, it's enough to make a cat laugh.)

To me, ever since the first time I really Heard the lyrics, actually Listened to them, instead of just letting the music wash over me as I am so wont to do, I realized that Amanda was talking about something that terrifies me. On one side of an ampersand? She (I) doesn't want to be part of a pair, oh look, there is AmandaandBrian, KatandAnyone. No. Just please, no.

And my fear terrifies me.

I've been alluding to this, bits and pieces and slipped words. A sentence here and there, nothing anyone would notice, not without being able to see the big picture. And the brilliant part of talking to you and you and you is that no one besides me ever gets to see the big picture.

Call it want of freedom, call it my own asexuality (which was never asexual somuch as aromantic, I realise) call it fear of intimacy, call it all or none of the above, it's still there. I'm beginning to get to an age where I can get into relationships that last forever, last the rest of my life, last until marriage and beyond, and dear gods.

Dear gods, I'm petrified.

This...These feelings, the way I love people now means I don't want to lose them. I've been able to enter every relationship safe in the knowledge that it was going to end. High school relationships don't last, silly, people are too different. Hell, the fact that Blue and I made it almost a full year is inherently boggling, a year long relationship? At fifteen, sixteen? We were freaks.

I don't have that safety anymore. I can't rest easy in the knowledge that it will, eventually, end.

Oh, of course it still will. I don't fool myself, my prediliction for older men² means I tend very towards people who're at enough of a different place from me that eventually we will fragment, and that's okay. I'm alright with losing love (though I never want to lose friendship). But sometimes...I fool myself. Or my mind fools itself. And I realize that I don't want it to end, not ever.

And ye gods, with that realization...I want to run.

I want to run and run and run and hide and be all by myself for a long long while and that's terrible. It's escapism of the worst sort, it's shutting myself off because I just can't accept the idea that maybe it's okay to have someone else there to support you. Because maybe I don't have to go through all of life alone. Because maybe I'm not the only one who can take care of me.

Because maybe being independent is lonely, and maybe being as truly free as I feel I want involves building walls so thick and high that I'll never be able to see the world through them. And I do like the world.

Growing up is scary, but why does it seem so much safer if I could just manage to do it alone.

I...I guess all I'm trying to say is that my therapist was right (damn her) and I think I'm scared of intimacy. I already knew I was scared of opening up, for reasons I've never been able to grasp. I'm scared of perfection for reasons half rational (as hard as I try to achieve it). I never realized that I was scared of safety.

If I flirt with everyone, smile and flounce, keep myself from never falling in love, then no one can ever care about me, and I'll never care about them. All hearts will be safe, unbroken. If I need to bury my face in a shoulder, I just have to turn to the nearest Toy, held fast in walls spun of quick-witted bullshit, rapidfire excuses for the tears on my face, my Need for arms around me.

And I'm sure that would work much better if I never slipped. Heels are pretty, sure, but I still trip, and tumble heart over head into love. And being in love means I have to care, have to be intimate, have to actually let myself open and be honest --I'm terrible at being honest, not in a way that causes me to lie, but in the actual speach, actually getting myself to the point where I can say the words that I need to sometimes. I'm getting better --I've been getting better for most of the last year, learning how to say I need help, say what's going through my mind.

I think I've been falling in Love. Not just loving people, I'm good at that, used to that. Ever since I first managed to tell Veronica that I loved her (not in any weird way, just as a friend, do you understand?) so very long ago (when such words were not to be spoken) not a day has gone by where the phrase hasn't passed my lips. But being in love? That's a lot harder. A *lot* harder, and it keeps happening, once, twice, thr...

I don't know what I'm going to do about this. At the very least, oh, does it feel good to write. I half whispered earlier, tears carefully hid from my eyes "I don't have a home" but I *do*, I so very do. My home has always been my words, given a blank page and a nudge in the right direction, I can weave myself a safety so strong I can almost feel the phantom arms protecting me.

I suppose what I'm going to do is let myself be open. Force myself from running. Maybe sometime I'll find myself on one side of that ampersand, and maybe I won't mind it so much.

I think it's time to face fears. To figure out why they are, and let myself defeat them. Let myself be serious, for once in my life, because for once in my life, I have found something worth being serious about.

Let myself fall in love. One, two, not quite three times, and see what it's like not being totally alone. Contemplate marriage, a mortgage, and a wall that does not encompass me alone.

We'll see.

&Sor
MOOP!

1: Though, to paraphrase Magus, it would not be terrible to live life on one side of an incubus/succubus. [/obscure Nethack joke]
2: And my beautiful younger woman exception is a whole different sort of case, and one I don't wish to discuss here.

This bit may very well be important: This is my livejournal. It is for me posting my own thoughts, however often I would like, on whichever topics I see fit.

From this point forth, no one is allowed to attempt to censor my entries in any way¹, and if they try, I will just laugh, and continue to write as I see fit. Fuck you, Curry, It's my moviejournal, and I'll poutpost if I want to.²

( That said, let's talk censorship! )

That being said, I might as well end this post by shooting myself in the foot and opening an honestybox.⁹ Ask me a question! I promise an honest answer. Answer not guranteed to be posted in livejournal, the Sorcyress reserves the right to answer with "I don't feel comfortable telling you that because...", NOT limited to one per customer, Reading small print has been proven hazerdous to your eyes

~Sor
MOOP!

1: There is actually an exception to this rule --if I give out information about you and you alone that you would rather not be public, you may contact me and tell me I'm an insensitive bitch. (This has happened before, with Aly's last name, Alex's school, Erika's age, stuff like that) You can't make me take down anything else without a damn good defense

2: To be perfectly honest, about ninety percent of all my references ever are Rocky Horror call lines. So, yes, I know that this was a song first, but when I reference it, I'm not referring to the song, I'm referring to Riff-Raff glaring at Frank.

3: Your big gun...IfyouknowwhatImean. C'mon, I can't have been the only one who thought that, can I? (Answer: Yes. Yes I can.)

4: Mature, reasonably intelligent, adults who still use words like 'sucky' to describe things. Sigh. One of these days I'll get around to make an active attempt to betterify my vocabulary. Until then, I think I'm stuck with things like faboo, and zohmgar, and boyf⁵

5: Boyf, pronounced...uh...boy-fff. Shortening of boyfriend that my brain has determined is totally awesome. Have not yet slipped up and said it in real life. Yet.

6: There is no footnote six

7: Teenaged and earlier sexuality is a different essay, which I won't go into here, to save space.

8: Well, first after going "zohmygod, *blushes fiercely* really?!" and smiling like my face was going to break.

9: This is half just because I'm a huge comment whore.¹⁰

10: ...also, a huge footnote whore.