‘this feeling of being different …’

“I’ve al­ways been a bit ob­sessed with Par­adise Lost. I re­al­ly dug deep into the poem and its au­thor, John Mil­ton. As I was read­ing a lot of his po­lit­i­cal es­says I re­al­ized that a lot of what ‘Sa­tan’ says in Par­adise Lost are quotes di­rect­ly from John Milton’s own mouth. A lot of peo­ple thought he was the dev­il back then. He had a huge prob­lem with the show of op­u­lence from the Church. He thought it was dis­gust­ing. His poem is about the failed rev­o­lu­tion against the Church of Eng­land, which is Satan’s failed rev­o­lu­tion on earth. And what’s more in­cred­i­ble or ex­cit­ing than a failed rev­o­lu­tion?”
—Bert Mc­Crack­en, The Used

 

and i’m doing my best   PART 1

Mu­sic, tele­vi­sion, movies and the char­ac­ters that come from them.

I’ve al­ways felt like they were there for me when no one else could be – when no one else un­der­stood me, or even cared to. This may not have al­ways been the case, as I’m re­al­iz­ing that I’ve al­ways had a lot of peo­ple who love me and who would prob­a­bly have been there for me if I had reached out for help.

My prob­lem was usu­al­ly that I nev­er both­ered to ask, be­cause I felt like I didn’t de­serve help in the first place. I felt like I would have just end­ed up be­ing a source of un­want­ed an­noy­ance. That my prob­lems weren’t all that bad, and that I should be able to han­dle them on my own.

My prob­lems quick­ly spi­raled out of con­trol at a very young age. And I don’t think any­one re­al­ly knew what to do with me. Not my par­ents, or my friends. Not even the count­less doc­tors and psy­chi­a­trists I’d see over the years.

They did their best, ob­vi­ous­ly, and therapy/medication was able to sub­due some un­der­ly­ing caus­es for my grow­ing mad­ness. But they were only ever able to scratch at the sur­face – I’ve nev­er been able to get at the core prob­lems. Prob­a­bly cuz I wasn’t aware of what those were.

But I do now. At least, for the most part.

Prob­lems have been haunt­ing me for years now. And for the longest time, I act­ed like they didn’t re­al­ly mean that much. That they were just ter­ri­ble things that had hap­pened and I need­ed to just learn how to get over them and move on. So that’s what I tried to do. And for over a decade, I thought I was do­ing an okay job at it.

But now, they’ve been bub­bling back up to the sur­face. They’ve been hard­er to ig­nore. Hard to for­get about the dozens of peo­ple who’ve harmed me, used me, be­trayed me and took ad­van­tage of me.

It makes me sick to my stom­ach. Makes me wish I could do some­thing, even – at the very least – some­thing where I can fi­nal­ly be­ing able to speak my truth, with­out fear of reper­cus­sions or an over­whelm­ing, un­jus­ti­fied back­lash.

I’m not go­ing to go full on Jok­er and start killing peo­ple, or get­ting re­venge on the peo­ple who fucked me over. Nah. I’m not end­ing up like that. Like an­oth­er cliche’d crim­i­nal.

I’m not go­ing to give peo­ple just an­oth­er rea­son to hate me, and dis­miss me, or the prob­lems I’ve had to deal with be­cause of what they’ve done to me.

No.

I’m go­ing to grow from all of this. Even if it takes me my whole life to tru­ly get over every­thing that’s hap­pened, at least I’ll be able to die with some sense of peace.
I want my sto­ry to be heard. To be shared. I want that as my form of jus­tice.

I want to give a big “FUCK YOU” to all the ass­holes that caused so much dam­age to my life, and set me back so far emo­tion­al­ly, men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly.

I want them to know that they did some­thing fucked up. And I want them to apol­o­gize. And ad­mit that they were wrong.

But if I don’t get that from them. Then at least I’ll have shared my sto­ry. At least I’ll feel like I’ve been heard.

And hope­ful­ly, I can then use my ex­pe­ri­ences to help oth­ers. To show them that they aren’t alone. To maybe even pre­vent them from hav­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence some of the same tor­ment and hope­less­ness that I’ve had to ex­pe­ri­ence for so long.

 

So any­way, back to the main point. About the char­ac­ters from my fa­vorite shows and movies re­al­ly be­ing my true per­son­al he­roes, and be­ing one of my main sup­port sys­tems through­out my life, ES­PE­CIAL­LY when times were EX­TREME­LY dif­fi­cult.

I feel like the char­ac­ters in my fa­vorite car­toons, ani­me, and oth­er me­dia have lit­er­al­ly be­come some of my “best friends,” or my real-life he­roes.

Zim, Dib, Goku, Veg­e­ta, Arthur Fleck, and Jok­er all have had a tru­ly last­ing im­pact on me. They aren’t the only ones of course, but they’ve been the main ones for sure.

It re­minds me of the book Sun­days at Tiffany’s by James Pat­ter­son and Gabrielle Char­bon­net. Which is fun­ny, be­cause what I’m about to say next sounds pret­ty crazy, but I swear it’s all true. At least, as truth­ful as I can be, based on every­thing I re­mem­ber.

But ear­ly on in my child­hood, I was al­ways the kid that kid of wan­dered off by her­self, get­ting lost in the imag­in­ings of her mind.

There’s one time when I must have been 5 or 6, and my moth­er had tak­en me and my sib­lings with her on her week­ly shop­ping trip. And I would al­ways get so bored while she was pick­ing things out, so I start­ed to look around and en­ter­tain my­self by all the dif­fer­ent col­ors, and de­signs on the shirts, but even­tu­al­ly my sib­lings and I would start play­ing sil­ly games like hide and go seek.

I al­ways liked to crawl out un­der­neath the clothes and start act­ing like a ra­bid an­i­mal to try and scare them, or try to hide in a new spot as my broth­er would try to find me. And even­tu­al­ly the three of us would run into each oth­er and all start laugh­ing. As we’d be walk­ing back to find our mom, we’d think of ways that we could scare her, too, be­cause she’s al­ways been some­one who jumps at the small­est thing.

But all of the sud­den, I couldn’t find my sib­lings any­more, and I couldn’t even re­mem­ber ex­act­ly which way was the right way back.

I don’t re­mem­ber if I cried … But I re­mem­ber feel­ing ab­solute­ly ter­ri­fied and con­fused. I didn’t know what to do or who would be the best per­son to help me.

I re­mem­ber an old­er woman saw me, and she must have start­ed notic­ing that my par­ents weren’t around. She was very sweet, and want­ed to make sure I was okay.

She even­tu­al­ly helped me find my mom, who was of course, pan­ick­ing like crazy from the fear that she’d lost me.

Like I said, it’s all still kind of weird be­cause I don’t re­mem­ber cry­ing like a baby or any­thing. I was just act­ing as calm as I could, even though I didn’t know what to do.

And be­fore any­one – ANY­ONE, starts to say some­thing like my mom wasn’t a good par­ent be­cause she didn’t keep an eye on her chil­dren, you need to stop.

She was an amaz­ing par­ent. But she was of­ten tasked with keep­ing an eye on all three of us while hav­ing to do er­rands or oth­er sim­i­lar things.

Hell, right now, I can’t even man­age to keep my own per­son­al life or­ga­nized so I don’t know how she man­aged to take care of the three of us, my fa­ther, and then her­self.

Plus, back then things were dif­fer­ent. The world over­all just seemed like a safer place.

You could let your kids go play in the store while you were shop­ping, with­out fear of them get­ting lost or be­ing snatched away by a stranger.

Back then … things just seemed … calmer.

 

I used to con­stant­ly have night­mares where my fam­i­ly was pack­ing their bags and try­ing to leave me be­hind, and I would try to scream or run but I couldn’t move.

And I had night­mares about so many dif­fer­ent mon­sters. Like a shark at­tack, chomp­ing off your leg and a part of the surf­board.

Around this time, every night when I looked up at the ceil­ing when I couldn’t sleep, I start­ed see­ing all these dif­fer­ent col­ored ‘bugs’ crawl­ing or fly­ing around (in re­al­i­ty, it was just the shad­ows and re­flec­tions on the walls).

But that kind of feel­ing of be­ing watched, well, I guess it was the least wor­ry­ing prob­lems?

I’ve had so many thoughts of self harm and sui­cide through­out my life. I start­ed cut­ting my­self ear­ly on in high school. I didn’t even re­al­ly know why at the time. But I think it’s be­cause I’ve just al­ways had this feel­ing of be­ing dif­fer­ent. Be­ing weird. Dis­gust­ing. Worth­less  … And even when I did find the guy that I thought I would be with for­ev­er, he would even­tu­al­ly end up leav­ing me. Like so many of them did.

Like one of my exes, telling me that they just couldn’t han­dle me.

Mean­while, they were hook­ing up with my ‘best friend’ since 4th grade, A WEEK af­ter him and I start­ed dat­ing.

And I didn’t find out the whole truth about it un­til a cou­ple years af­ter we had bro­ken up.

But I al­ways knew there was some­thing go­ing on. I knew he had al­ways liked her. But – get this –
She had a BOYFRIEND of THREE YEARS. One that we all knew be­cause it was in our group of ‘friends.’

So yeah. I was heart­bro­ken and con­fused over why he didn’t seem to love me, but want­ed my friends. I tried so hard to make him hap­py. Only for him to ditch me at a par­ty to take mush­rooms with one of my friends … which led me into a mas­sive men­tal break down …

And I start­ed slam­ming my head against the wall, or burn­ing my­self with a lighter.

It just made me re­al­ize … none of these peo­ple were ever re­al­ly my friends. Not friends that mat­tered any­way.

It also made me re­al­ize, that maybe I should prob­a­bly go back to ther­a­py. HAH.

Ex­cept the med­ical sys­tem has just been an­oth­er thing in my life that has con­stant­ly let me down, or just been prac­ti­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble to work with.

continued next monday —

 

—kait­lyn­jane

Flom­mist KAiT­LYN­jane has been draw­ing and writ­ing sto­ries ever since she knew how to scrib­ble on a piece of pa­per, or her sister’s fore­head when she was just two weeks old. Copy­right © 2020 KAiT­LYN­jane.

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