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Honey is Sweet

Blah. Blah, blah, blah - 2009-06-28

I'm grateful for: adapting to the heat, somewhat; a healthy meal; Yellow Submarine on dvd - S3 had never seen it before.

Sunday, I slept until 3:30pm. How can I have a life like this?

So in my two hours awake so far, I've exchanged email with an ex-boyfriend, VV. VV was really my only serious boyfriend besides TH. He was really horrible to me. Funny memory, is within a couple of years of getting married, I was on the phone with VV, and I said to him that TH was almost exactly like VV (true), with the one difference, that TH loved me. VV responded indignantly, or defensively, "I loved you!" Um, yeah, there wasn't enough evidence to convict him, if you know what I mean. VV once told me (while we were dating) that he was not going to pay me any compliments since I obviously wanted them. Right.

So, in recent times there hasn't been any evidence to convict TH either of loving me, but then, that's par for the course. Abused children grow up and marry abusive spouses - often.

So what is coming up for me from corresponding with VV is that I am finding and (I hope) reconnecting with a part of my life that was so lost in the mists of time I had almost entirely forgotten about it.

When I was in college, I used to hang around the Science Fiction Society, or SFS. Spent more time there than in my classes by a large margin. It's where I found my first friends, and learned some of the very basic basics of social interaction. Yeah, I'd attended twelve years of school and was completely unsocialized. And now I field questions about 'socialization' for my homeschooled children. *sigh*

I wasn't exactly a child, but from this vantage, I consider it the happiest time in my childhood. I wasn't exactly an adult, either. None of us were really. The SFS was a haven for social misfits who were, by-and-large, smarter than the average person, but completely lacking in appropriate social skills. People who felt their 'superiority' to people of average intelligence while unable to manage simple thing that ordinary people manage every day, like conversation, or personal hygiene. Sometimes they were people who had leapt ahead scholastically or in work, but had missed steps in their emotional development. To put it nicely.

There were a handful of 'normal' people, people who were, still, more intelligent than average, but not lacking in social skills or emotional maturity, who were just interested in Science Fiction. They rarely hung around for more than a school term, but some of them made a big impression in the short time they hung around.

This was my nursery school for learning to be a person among people, and I remember it with warmth, fondness, and a bit of longing. I wasn't any more functional than any of them, I wasn't nicer or nastier, better or worse, but I still feel somewhat not-good-enough and afraid that I don't/didn't fit in. It makes me at once afraid to try and contact any of them, and desperate to try and make a connection or two, to try and find out if anything has changed?

Of course things have changed. I am not the person that I used to be. I wouldn't fit in with these people today, and probably wouldn't want to. Many of them are really big in science fiction fandom, some are pursuing careers or running businesses related to science fiction, fantasy, movie-making, art. Things I will always love, but I am solely an observer, so far in this life unable to take part in it other than through appreciation of what the others do.

CAN I reconnect with them? Do any of them (besides VV) even remember me? Was the SFS, or was I anywhere near as important to them as they were to me? What about the wall of pain that still exists, related to my life back in hell? If I do reconnect with these people, am I going to have to deal with that, too? What DO I have to talk about with them, anyway?

There are people, Greg Z., Greg No-Rocks, Jim-Jim, (what nicknames we gave them!), Cory, Manny, that I would really, really like to at least say 'hi' to. I have just found out that Joy K., one of my first friends, and someone I was accidently horrible to, died. No further information, when, where, how.

I know she married Jim-Jim, and I heard that they were divorced through some attentuation of the grapevine, but that is all. She was someone I looked up to and wanted to be just like, until I started moving in another direction, and said something horribly hurtful (but I really was clueless about that). I don't excuse what I said, I take total responsibility, but it really was ignorance rather than any malice or intent. *sigh* Sucks to be that clueless.

Then there is Phil, who I was likewise horrible to. In each case, Phil and Joy, I was trying to do the right thing. The dangers of trying to do the 'right thing' are evident. Especially when you have no idea HOW to do the right thing, just the vague idea that you should be honest, and when you don't know what to do, act like everyone else is.

If it were possible, I would really like to make some sort of amends to Phil, but I don't know that there is anything I could say or do, anyway. He called me on it immediately, and I don't think his opinion of me at the time was in any way uncalled for. I would just like him to know that I wasn't being mean, just stupid. And, what difference does that make to him?

*sigh*

I'd like to not hurt about these things anymore. It is long ago, and far away, and I was a different person, and none of them care, at least I imagine they don't.

There is Alice, who I wouldn't care to run into if I could help it. Her opinion of me was more than evident, and if I didn't really do what to earn it, it doesn't matter. Why should I spend any time with someone who holds me in open contempt? Alice works for/with Phil, so any contact I might make to Phil is fraught with the danger of running into Alice.

Oh, the soap opera! Aren't I much better staying out of it?

But, truth, the SFS is the only connection I have to my past (before M.S., before incest recovery, when I was still young and strong and healthy and full of plans for the future), and I would like to be able to connect to that me, somehow. If only to remember that I wasn't always like this.

And also that there are worse things than being a middle-aged, overweight, disabled nobody, housewife, mother of six, with no 'official' education or job or career or hope of one.

Yeah, I'd rather be me now than me then. But there are parts of me, then, that I'd like to be more of. Besides the physically healthy part. No, really.

Oy, gott, I am so much more my mother's daughter than I ever wanted or wished to be. No, it doesn't give me any more sympathy for her. I didn't pass it on to my kids. I didn't blame my kids for anything wrong in my life. I don't expect them to make me feel better or take care of me (besides the physical care I require, but I have no choice about that). Let me just say that there is ample evidence for a conviction on the charge that I love my children, and care about them, and for them, and put them first. So I guess in the way that matters I am NOT like my mother. Thank goodness.

Way back when I thought I was capable of great things. Maybe I was, but whatever.

TH is home now. Time to stop worritin' about the past and eat supper. I've got a load of laundry started, so the day isn't a total loss.

I'm listening to Fanny Brice (sp?) as Baby Snooks. Old time radio programs are fun!

0 bleats so far

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06