Run

When I originally thought of writing as a full time hobby/art/possible living, I didn't envision the live blogging I do now. Well, these 'we' tagged posts are scheduled, but you know what I mean.

I never feel alone on the internet, and trackers show me I very rarely am. This blog gets hit so continually that it feels like a hangout, maybe on the exclusive side because lurkers come and go freely without other people knowing they're here. As reclusive as I've been in the past even with my internet history, I like feeling that I'm not alone. I guess like with any sport or challenge, you really don't want people seeing the fails, but knowing someone still shows up regularly even after the facepalms has been so inspiring that I have been able to surge far past my originally intended platform goals. Until I experienced this, I never even envisioned it. This was pure accident.

I'd love to propose the idea of 'lurker engagement' as a great assessment tool. I don't think this is utilized well in general analytics. I've had statistics classes in 3 different fields of study (math, geography, and sociology), and if there's anything I'm good at, it's trends over time. When you use engagement to assess blogging needs, include the silent returns. They may not 'engage', but they are definitely engaged. I have 600+ documented returning readers that clocked over 10 returns each, and a fifth of my readers spending 20 minutes to over an hour at a time reading and clicking through more posts while they are here.

You heard me. Yes, documented. Those of you throwing in the towel need to stop that. On the outside it looks like I average 30-40 hits a day and very rarely get comments. I'm not 'engaging' my audience. On the inside, people are keeping this window open and clicking 'next', and apparently quite a few have me bookmarked. It's about learning how to read your analytics. You are not alone. Don't stop just because you can't see people reading what you write.

Love

After the guilt part goes away, life gets more fun. I started asking myself- What do I really want? And then I'd ask- What am I willing to do to get that?

Basically more than anything, I want to write. I. Love. Words. Words are an endless game and thoughts never stop, and I happily thread and sculpt ideas into stories amusing myself, so why not do that out loud? Why not put those words into something I can hold in my hands? Why not make words that can be held in hands all over the world?

As for what I'd be willing to do... Going public as a real person was one of the biggest decisions I ever made in my life. I think I thought harder and deeper about that than I did about getting remarried, lol. Making myself available for people to contact, standing alone in scary spotlights at the height of depression spells, literally listing my flaws. I am willing to do these and more, despite a developing paranoia (that my psychologist kept insisting wasn't really social anxiety) and a solid history of public humiliation.

Fun? I said fun, didn't I? Well, I think deep down I long to go skydiving, so why not take the same level of risk writing? Why can't writing feel edgy? The best writing is the scary stuff, like confessing your soul and then wobbling away feeling sick after hitting 'publish'.

Applause

Along the way, I learned that one of my deepest needs to feel recognized and validated in any part of my life is something I'm supposed to get in healthy relationships. Learning to embrace that it's actually ok to own a skill set was one of the hardest healthy things I've ever done. This runs completely counterintuitive to the guilt I was raised to harbor over every little thought, word, or movement in my existence. The freedom to be is kind of like realizing you can stand there with the fridge open if you want to.

Yablo

Since then it's been about learning to own my truth. I don't have to apologize for being born on this earth, or for standing up for what I need. I am who I am who I am.

FOCUS! GET TO WORK!

Planning revenge takes a bit of obsession, I'll admit. To properly pull off the kind of revenge I can find satisfaction in, especially the broad scope part, I had to do some pretty deep thinking. What will be required of me executing my strategies? For one thing, I'll have to climb out of my comfort zone into a very uncomfortable spotlight. If I'm going to discuss my personal history and feelings with the world at large, what will this do to the people I care about? Will they stop talking to me? Is stepping out worth the risk of losing family while I'm still learning to keep and grow friendships?

Believe it or not, the hardest part was believing I could do this, not because it felt so unreal, but because I had become so disabled I could barely even piece together a single sentence. This idea of a book felt like something I'm making up, creating a patchwork of truth from slippery memories I had locked away and had really never talked about before. I quietly watched other authors launch from near oblivion into fair bits of success, and realized the goal absolutely must be success or I might never have another chance to get past the sticky pull of my depression, much less the plethora of daily challenges. Every day through bitter tears of crippling pain, crushing depression, and most of all alone, I whispered "I can do this." And every day I have made some kind of progress, sometimes a millimeter at a time, sometimes feeling so fail I could barely imagine going on, but believed I must even if there was no hope and people might think I'm only making up a lie. Because it is my truth.

Through the never ending haze of overwhelming interruption, I learned to develop some very stimulating patterns of thinking, and repetition slowly honed my sword. This had the odd effect of surging me forward with a passion that felt like my soul exploding, and from there it got much easier.

theme, focus, execution

It wasn't as simple as getting a friend back, I found out. We did patch up, yes, but we grew in very different directions over the years, and we are both learning and adjusting and it's taking time. I have learned every bit as much from this entire friendship debacle and getting back together as I have learned from being married for more than two decades. I have certainly learned more than from any other friendship I've ever had, mostly about myself- my skewed or simplistic expectations, my misunderstandings, my lack of foresight even though I'm very good with foresight with my spouse and children. I'm not very good at intuiting what a friend really needs or wants from me. I'm not able to be the person I was hoping I'd be. Still, I don't want to let go, or simply settle. What do I want? Where is forward from here? And I think she may be feeling the same way. I have definitely grown much better as a person for the efforts, again, so much more than without her, in so many ways she'll probably never understand or comprehend. I am learning. That is phenomenal after a lifetime of social stagnation. In the meantime, I have surged into all new territory with my psychologist. Some of my buried childhood memories are surfacing, and I am more determined than ever to get my 'revenge' on a brutal world that teaches people all the wrong ways to 'love' their children. This world is so broken.

The

Once I was settled into the swing of being part of a group again, that old void started gnawing at me, and over time it chewed me up so much that one of my friends commanded me to go make contact again. It had been years. I practiced all this time, but my nerves were a mess. Should I? I put it off over and over. I sort of attempted. I pulled back and let it dangle. I had never felt afraid like this, never felt this kind of anxiety over another person like this. But I couldn't finish moving forward without that friendship, that one person who had somehow snuck past my unconscious defenses and clicked into a spot reserved for only one who could never come back, unintentionally ripping the old wound open and leaving me helpless like no one had ever done. I knew I couldn't finish healing until I had at least tried to heal that. It was very scary. I used to scoff at other people feeling embarrassed or nervous. My turn.

Hot

And then I found them. My People. To say I was elated was an understatement. I hope I never ever lose them. They are my rock, and I need them every day. It's a lot of work balancing all the things I need and all the things other people need back, but I am delighted trying to keep up.

I'm

Over time, with help from my psychologist, I am learning that my childhood was much more difficult and painful than I initially thought I was realizing. The trauma was bad enough without my friend's murder complicating it, plus my alcoholism and new experiences on the edges of the underground. I had a lot to sift through, filter down, come back from. It became about much more than learning how to keep a friend. This has become about a childhood fantasy about revenge, or an adult fantasy about getting even somehow. This is about why the world is the way it is, and what can I do to change that.

White

Part of healing and accepting myself is embracing what I really love. I know I need other people, I know I love all that crazy scifi out there, surely I could find my way back out into a place I could fit in without blowing it all up... I started practicing. Everywhere I went, every day, I became mindful of interaction, how I present, how others might see and react to me. I practiced smiling and making eye contact even just buying toothpaste, I practiced seeming like a pleasant person in lines at the post office, I practiced summarizing my thoughts on the phone and in doctors' offices instead of rambling, stuff like that. It was very awkward, lol, but I kept at it till it got easier.

And I especially practiced online. I practiced making my paragraphs shorter. I practiced interacting on social medias. I practiced talking to my kids. You heard me. I actually practiced how to interact better with my own kids. I practiced all this with the intention of still retaining my own integrity, my own personality, my own ME without any masks. I learned to be an actor. It's not the same as lying, but it *is* learning how to pretend well. The goal is to increase satisfaction levels in all parties involved, kind of like a game. The better I play the interaction game, the better all of us feel about each other. Lol, yes, I turned social interaction into a game. 😁 Over time, I'm getting pretty good at it.

Dollhouse

Part of waking up to the pain of loss was also waking up to my autism getting in the way of playing the social game right, and that being the reason for my friendship history being so abysmal. I can't fake and pretend, I can't live lies, I can't ignore discrepancies and inconsistencies. I question everything, and I make social interaction so awkward for other people. I didn't realize for years how I affected people around me everywhere I went. I seem to have a charismatic personality, and people seem drawn to me, yet I can't keep deeper relationships, I can't seem to keep trust, and sooner or later, friends either slipped away and shut down contact or outright let me know we couldn't be friends any more without telling me why.

Years of never having proper closure doesn't mean much to someone who is emotionally shut down, but waking up to an abyss of not getting desperately needed answers during no closure nearly did me in. I begged my doctor to send me to a psychologist down the hall, and my very first statement walking in was I need help talking to people. Obviously I could talk heads off, and obviously I metaphorically eventually killed every contact, so obviously I wasn't doing something right. Honestly, I would never have sought out that help if I hadn't felt like I was desperate to know why I was hurting so badly from another loss. That had never happened before. I had been given leads in this friendship to follow and adapt, and even when I tried I just couldn't. The very thing I'd rebelled against my entire life had beaten me down, and from this loss event I surged into deeper writings about self, masks, social solutions- years of public blogging that have given me a deep lurker cult following. As I have agonized and learned, others have watched and kept pushing me out into my little spotlight.

Satellite

For the first time since my best friend was murdered, I felt like I had found a friend I could click with. For the first time in my entire life, I was beginning to form my deepest autistic feelings into words, learning how my words were both my weapons and my tools, realizing how words flick other hearts and burn other souls, realizing I can't do this by myself, and I do need another person who will help me see myself, help me grow, help me find my potential. In all my other relationships I was still apart, merely partnering or caregiving, but not soul sharing. I couldn't imagine going through the rest of my life so empty, now that I had awakened to it.

Accidentally

As I felt the last of the party and another friendship slipping away, I jolted awake with a lightning bolt spearing a bigger picture vision into my brain that lasted only a heartbeat, the insight I was never born or gifted with, just out of my grasp. It was too late. My head and heart screamed as the last of all of it slipped through my fingers. I've been through several deaths and a divorce before and since this particular event, but never in my life did I feel such intensity in a heady grip of euphoria and then drowning in sorrow and sadness. I realized this is what I'd been looking for my whole life, and without a doubt, it was my fault I lost it.

Sex

And then there it was, that friendship that clicked. I didn't know it was even happening. I knew something felt different, but there was so much other stuff going on both in real life and online that I couldn't untangle any of it. I knew I needed a 'home', I knew I needed people, but I still didn't know yet how not to crash the world around me. And of course, the explosion was everything that beautiful tragedy should be, and naturally I was the catalyst for a powder keg of fun and chaos. The difference this time was my heart unexpectedly shattering.

Take

Well, you know what happens to people who shut down and don't empathize. I grew so pathetic that even when I started straightening up and getting back on track, I couldn't keep friends. I stumbled around so awkwardly with social interaction once I let go of the hate as a way of life thing, I went through friend after friend, unable to understand what I was doing wrong, unable to slow the inevitable disaster. I still hadn't been diagnosed autism yet, and the world of caring felt treacherously slippery. I think I know how John feels in this series. Very few people really look at John.

Million

Ideally, inside my mind, I wanted people dead. I wanted them in pain, and I wanted them out of my way. I walked a very fine line with my intellect, and it wouldn't have taken much to snap me into a veritable supervillain. In retrospect, I feel I can empathize with people who go to the dark side. I've felt the process, and I know how easy it is to cross that line and not be able to come back. I walked right on that line for years, but I never quite stepped off into that dark side.

Poison

I recognized myself as Hatter in this movie. During my dark night of the soul, I was very capable of hurting and not caring. Even with a solid moral upbringing ground into me from birth, I was cold and ruthless inside. I didn't even pretend not to be, but since I didn't use foul language, dressed simply, and remained about as immaterial as it gets, most people didn't equate me with savagery, much less a shadowy manipulator of events. Fortunately, someone came along and woke me up to other possibilities.

Natural

And from there I just didn't care. I nearly drank myself to death. I hung out with a major underground drug distrubutor and his girlfriend, living a double life with a normal job and getting to know a few people in the seedy underbelly of a big city. I didn't feel anything, wasn't afraid of anything, and all I cared about was my job and alcohol, which was probably my salvation since I turned down a sweet offer managing my own interstate drug trafficking team from California to the midwest. I had left my child with my mom during this time, thank goodness, and in three short months passed up two amazing opportunities for really good jobs (local police and hospital administration, go figure) before I finally got so sick from the alcohol I had to quit and come home.

Why

Looking back now, I can see that the night of the horrible phone call was the last time I closed the door on my mom, never really to open it again. After a difficult childhood through which I was very rarely asked personally if I was ok, I saw that question in her eyes and simply just shut all my emotion down, turning my back on her, and going back to bed, quietly tucking what I'd just heard into a very dark place and making it not exist. The next day I burned all the letters my friend had written me after we moved, and walked on as if she hadn't existed. From then on, any time my mom made a big deal about anything else that ever happened, I simply went deeper into the dark until my entire heart was swallowed up and I lost myself. My life turned into anger and hatred, and I really took it out on my poor mom. After a failed first marriage to a guy who turned out to be a mentally ill pedophile, I became a hardcore drinker and went places in my life most nice people don't even think exists except on TV. I know I would never have gone down that path if that murder hadn't happened.

Spin

And after April 5th passed, I always felt lost and floaty inside without knowing why, and I latched hard onto repetition and super focus so I wouldn't feel crazy, never understanding why I felt like that. This playlist is an example of a coping mechanism.