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h... h
6 days ago
when i was 4 (or maybe 3), i became so angry at something that I can't remember. i was with my face full of tears, and i was angry. so i went over to the stapler in my dad's worn down apartment, and i took the stapler and stapled my thumbnail. and i screamed and cried harder.
this might count as the first time i hurt myself.
almost no one knows that i didn't reach full sentience till about age 12. (maybe 13, now that i think back) i keep going over this in my head becayuse... i think that i did not have personhood or a self-substantiation, a sense of "me" that let me live life as a person and understand that i was a human being living among human beings, and that human beings are people who have their own thoughts, are all individuals with their own minds.
there was a little framed printed graphic on the wall of my dad's run down apartment, of a toony Frankenstein monster, smiling softly. i wrote "Hi." on a bit of paper and taped it to the picture, because that is what i thought he was saying. A few years later I grew, and looked at the paper, uneven, the Hi word written poorly by my kid writing hand, and I got quietly angry. i didn't understand that i was angry for the valid but useless reason that i didn't write it well, and it didn't make rational sense to do something like this and tape it to the frame. now, it is irrational for kid me to have so harshly judged kid me for doing that. and i'm angry.
i didn't understand a lot growing up. when i was two i remember my baptism and i just wanted to be held by my mother. but one of my uncles(?) was given me to carry, and i did not like the gray rough sandpaper suit he wore, i did not want to be away from the softness of my mom. the baptism i don't remember and i don't fault anyone, but thoughtless wordless desperation was screaming in my head, but i had no language, no learned words or much of any cognitive nor brain development for me to understand myself. i didn't know the fear and panic in me being taken away from my mom was natural, or understandable, or something that even came from within me. all i wanted was the soft mother person to hold me, and i didn't understand why i felt this horrible emotion that i didn't even understand was an emotion, or something that came from within me. all i felt was a horrible thing. that continued on, and maybe this delayed sentience explains why i never really... learned how to demand anything for myself or ask for what i want or need.
when i was five, my dad took me to the apartment complexe's halloween party, or christmas party or something, and it was the eighties, so everyone was smoking. i felt so sick, i wanted to throw up. i had headache from the smoke, and i was in pain, and i was the only kid there. everyone looked so old, and the entire room and air outside smelled like concentrated smoke. i wanted to cry, i wanted to run, to go back to our apartment, or just to the cold fresh air outside, but i did nothing, i said nothing. i didn't know i could ask to go because i was so sick. it's not that someone taught me not to ask, or that anyone did teach me and i didn't do it-- just, in my mind, even today, i do not conceive of asking as a behavior i can do. it's like seeing into the microwave spectrum of light, no one ever conceives of it because it is never ever something that any person ever does, ever. it just doesn't... ever occur to me, even if i am taught to ask.
when i was ten and eleven, my body started reachign for puberty, and it started growing painfully, extremely painfully fast. my skeleton hurt, as i stretched out, and my growth went out of control. there was a store in the mall called daffy's, for grownups clothing, and my mom would spend time there while i hid, or read my books under some of the clothes. when i grew, my bones hurt so much that i cried, silently. i was bored to literal tears or in pain, and sometimes i asked when we were going home, but i never told my mom that i was crying because my body hurt so much. the pain was so intense and deep in the core of my body, i could not escape it, and it lasted about three or four years. in the winter it was the worst, because i stood on the floor heater vent, trying to warm my freezing stretching muscles in my feet and lower legs, stiff from the cold winter air. i cried standing on the vent, but i never told anyone because i didn't know it was something, let alone something to do.
one time in third grade, at the end of the school year, the teacher and aide in my class were doing something like a fun activity game course, and it involved tossing items, moving things around... i don't remember much. and the teacher asked for people to try it. and i did, i went first, and i managed to do all the things and i loved it, i was succeeding. and then i got to the last thing which might have involved a paper airplane, or something, and i didn't understand i was supposed to do one thing in a certain way. the teachers and whole class were watching. i messed up on the last thing, and the teacher told me it was completely different. i crumpled up the paper and threw it at the thign i did wrong and got so embarrassed and angry, and i don't know why the anger was so intense. i was embarrassed that i messed up when i thought i was doing so well, and i was truly. but i was so embarrased, ashamed, and incandescent for a kids' activity. the teacher tried to say "You were a guinea pig, it was to test the activity out." and i got even more enraged angry, and ashamed that i was used as a test subject for an experiment. i don't know why i remember these bad things so completely.
when i was six or seven, i was playing on the playground, and it was cold, and i was having fun. i ran around, and then tripped and fell forward on my hands. I scraped one really hard, and i thought i cut my palm, it hurt a lot. but when i looked at my hand it was like the skin had been popped open and this little bead of clear thick not-liquid gel had come out of my hand. but the real thing is, i cannot remember if this actually happened, or it was a dream. i can still remember the fall and the pain though.
some time later i had a dream where i was playing on the playground, but i looked at my hand and there was a bloodless cut in the middle of my palm, and something like a white flat pasta noodle (with square edges) was extruding out of the cut, slowly. i was disturbed by this and spread the wound open with my fingers and the white noodle thing started spouting out much faster to my fright. the weird thing is for a while i could not be sure either if this was a dream or not.
when i was eight, my dad took me to yard sales, and to my surprise he had me try different kids bikes at the yard sales. some were obviously too small. then another one was my size perfectly, but it was a step-through frame, which in the eighties was called a "girl's frame" bike. i was repulsed by it even though i fit well on it and it was far easier to pedal than any other i had tried. my dad took an old green road bike he had, and we rode together. it was very hard to pedal up hills, though he stayed with me. i felt really embarrassed about riding a "girl bike" even though today i like some women-specific design geometry and really like far more the colors on womens' frames. i didn't feel angry, just embarrassed. i don't know why i felt so embarrassed and small.
realization.
though my dad could have afforded me a new bike, and should have, and shouldn't have ignored my distress (because again i didn't say anything, because i always silently withstood things), he did buy me a bike. the price was right, if the emotions were secondary. but he rode with me. he took me outdoors at least. like he took me to the national zoo. and to the national mall. and to a few other parks. he was sort of... like i am now, not really fully invested in others, but sort of caring. and there were some times he genuinely cared about me, and included me in his life.
God... *cries* he got me junk food and wireless Nintendo controllers, and let me play all his Atari 2600 games, I loved Vanguard and Enduro, and didn't understand E.T. he showed me his slr camera at the zoo, and how to focus and tell what the half-circles meant for exposure in the viewfinder. the camera was pleasantly heavy. all my life, I forgot that... i only remembered the anger and manipulation and beating, and... God the beating, and screaming and running. but he also rode with me. and got me pizza hut each weekend, i loved that, and the zoo and the things he gave me, and making the star decoration for christmas in the apartment window. he left that up a long while.
i think.... i think.... i am having difficulty admitting that... or confessing that i don't want to recognize, that i liked the things my dad did. that we did together. i wanted to only hate and forget my dad, to throw his memory away without counting the cost of throwing away the good he was in my life. and maybe that's what i'm doing with my mom now. i keep trying to convince myself that i don't love my mom, so i can just... oh God... endure her until she.... *cries, in shame, and a lifetime of regret* why am i so broken, and so... inhuman
when i was very small, five or six... yet another bad memory that hurts me. why am i typing these things? they help to write out, to recall and flow them away from my mind to digital paper, so the paper can contain it. it cannot hurt the paper. i am so tired. i am so regretful. i thought i was going crazy, clinically like unsafe crazy, but... what am i thinking?
why do i recall the bad memories so easily, but only once a year maybe do the nice memories maybe half appear? and why do so many of my good memories cause me so much pain?
but haha, unstable deadbeat fur like his father, a loser, manipulator liar who beat his wife and kid, chased them with the belt.
haha no one's going to want to be friends with unstable fringey cringey Kurra haha....
"man up, grow some balls, everyone had a rough childhood, stop making excuses you frustrating $%#@ you're what makes this fandom such a cesspool and a joke, it's people like you" haha, no one wants that haha.
i have bee nvery unfair to my parents. i am unfair. an unfair person. choosing to remember only the bad, so i can have an excuse not to put effort into remembering the good. i can't remember what's good about myself. maybe if i could, i wouldn't punch myself in the face so much online.
maybe i wouldn't be proud of my shame.
"Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all."
"Which is?"
"It's not about you."
i don't have any answers. i write, to let a record show, i tried.
this might count as the first time i hurt myself.
almost no one knows that i didn't reach full sentience till about age 12. (maybe 13, now that i think back) i keep going over this in my head becayuse... i think that i did not have personhood or a self-substantiation, a sense of "me" that let me live life as a person and understand that i was a human being living among human beings, and that human beings are people who have their own thoughts, are all individuals with their own minds.
there was a little framed printed graphic on the wall of my dad's run down apartment, of a toony Frankenstein monster, smiling softly. i wrote "Hi." on a bit of paper and taped it to the picture, because that is what i thought he was saying. A few years later I grew, and looked at the paper, uneven, the Hi word written poorly by my kid writing hand, and I got quietly angry. i didn't understand that i was angry for the valid but useless reason that i didn't write it well, and it didn't make rational sense to do something like this and tape it to the frame. now, it is irrational for kid me to have so harshly judged kid me for doing that. and i'm angry.
i didn't understand a lot growing up. when i was two i remember my baptism and i just wanted to be held by my mother. but one of my uncles(?) was given me to carry, and i did not like the gray rough sandpaper suit he wore, i did not want to be away from the softness of my mom. the baptism i don't remember and i don't fault anyone, but thoughtless wordless desperation was screaming in my head, but i had no language, no learned words or much of any cognitive nor brain development for me to understand myself. i didn't know the fear and panic in me being taken away from my mom was natural, or understandable, or something that even came from within me. all i wanted was the soft mother person to hold me, and i didn't understand why i felt this horrible emotion that i didn't even understand was an emotion, or something that came from within me. all i felt was a horrible thing. that continued on, and maybe this delayed sentience explains why i never really... learned how to demand anything for myself or ask for what i want or need.
when i was five, my dad took me to the apartment complexe's halloween party, or christmas party or something, and it was the eighties, so everyone was smoking. i felt so sick, i wanted to throw up. i had headache from the smoke, and i was in pain, and i was the only kid there. everyone looked so old, and the entire room and air outside smelled like concentrated smoke. i wanted to cry, i wanted to run, to go back to our apartment, or just to the cold fresh air outside, but i did nothing, i said nothing. i didn't know i could ask to go because i was so sick. it's not that someone taught me not to ask, or that anyone did teach me and i didn't do it-- just, in my mind, even today, i do not conceive of asking as a behavior i can do. it's like seeing into the microwave spectrum of light, no one ever conceives of it because it is never ever something that any person ever does, ever. it just doesn't... ever occur to me, even if i am taught to ask.
when i was ten and eleven, my body started reachign for puberty, and it started growing painfully, extremely painfully fast. my skeleton hurt, as i stretched out, and my growth went out of control. there was a store in the mall called daffy's, for grownups clothing, and my mom would spend time there while i hid, or read my books under some of the clothes. when i grew, my bones hurt so much that i cried, silently. i was bored to literal tears or in pain, and sometimes i asked when we were going home, but i never told my mom that i was crying because my body hurt so much. the pain was so intense and deep in the core of my body, i could not escape it, and it lasted about three or four years. in the winter it was the worst, because i stood on the floor heater vent, trying to warm my freezing stretching muscles in my feet and lower legs, stiff from the cold winter air. i cried standing on the vent, but i never told anyone because i didn't know it was something, let alone something to do.
one time in third grade, at the end of the school year, the teacher and aide in my class were doing something like a fun activity game course, and it involved tossing items, moving things around... i don't remember much. and the teacher asked for people to try it. and i did, i went first, and i managed to do all the things and i loved it, i was succeeding. and then i got to the last thing which might have involved a paper airplane, or something, and i didn't understand i was supposed to do one thing in a certain way. the teachers and whole class were watching. i messed up on the last thing, and the teacher told me it was completely different. i crumpled up the paper and threw it at the thign i did wrong and got so embarrassed and angry, and i don't know why the anger was so intense. i was embarrassed that i messed up when i thought i was doing so well, and i was truly. but i was so embarrased, ashamed, and incandescent for a kids' activity. the teacher tried to say "You were a guinea pig, it was to test the activity out." and i got even more enraged angry, and ashamed that i was used as a test subject for an experiment. i don't know why i remember these bad things so completely.
when i was six or seven, i was playing on the playground, and it was cold, and i was having fun. i ran around, and then tripped and fell forward on my hands. I scraped one really hard, and i thought i cut my palm, it hurt a lot. but when i looked at my hand it was like the skin had been popped open and this little bead of clear thick not-liquid gel had come out of my hand. but the real thing is, i cannot remember if this actually happened, or it was a dream. i can still remember the fall and the pain though.
some time later i had a dream where i was playing on the playground, but i looked at my hand and there was a bloodless cut in the middle of my palm, and something like a white flat pasta noodle (with square edges) was extruding out of the cut, slowly. i was disturbed by this and spread the wound open with my fingers and the white noodle thing started spouting out much faster to my fright. the weird thing is for a while i could not be sure either if this was a dream or not.
when i was eight, my dad took me to yard sales, and to my surprise he had me try different kids bikes at the yard sales. some were obviously too small. then another one was my size perfectly, but it was a step-through frame, which in the eighties was called a "girl's frame" bike. i was repulsed by it even though i fit well on it and it was far easier to pedal than any other i had tried. my dad took an old green road bike he had, and we rode together. it was very hard to pedal up hills, though he stayed with me. i felt really embarrassed about riding a "girl bike" even though today i like some women-specific design geometry and really like far more the colors on womens' frames. i didn't feel angry, just embarrassed. i don't know why i felt so embarrassed and small.
realization.
though my dad could have afforded me a new bike, and should have, and shouldn't have ignored my distress (because again i didn't say anything, because i always silently withstood things), he did buy me a bike. the price was right, if the emotions were secondary. but he rode with me. he took me outdoors at least. like he took me to the national zoo. and to the national mall. and to a few other parks. he was sort of... like i am now, not really fully invested in others, but sort of caring. and there were some times he genuinely cared about me, and included me in his life.
God... *cries* he got me junk food and wireless Nintendo controllers, and let me play all his Atari 2600 games, I loved Vanguard and Enduro, and didn't understand E.T. he showed me his slr camera at the zoo, and how to focus and tell what the half-circles meant for exposure in the viewfinder. the camera was pleasantly heavy. all my life, I forgot that... i only remembered the anger and manipulation and beating, and... God the beating, and screaming and running. but he also rode with me. and got me pizza hut each weekend, i loved that, and the zoo and the things he gave me, and making the star decoration for christmas in the apartment window. he left that up a long while.
i think.... i think.... i am having difficulty admitting that... or confessing that i don't want to recognize, that i liked the things my dad did. that we did together. i wanted to only hate and forget my dad, to throw his memory away without counting the cost of throwing away the good he was in my life. and maybe that's what i'm doing with my mom now. i keep trying to convince myself that i don't love my mom, so i can just... oh God... endure her until she.... *cries, in shame, and a lifetime of regret* why am i so broken, and so... inhuman
when i was very small, five or six... yet another bad memory that hurts me. why am i typing these things? they help to write out, to recall and flow them away from my mind to digital paper, so the paper can contain it. it cannot hurt the paper. i am so tired. i am so regretful. i thought i was going crazy, clinically like unsafe crazy, but... what am i thinking?
why do i recall the bad memories so easily, but only once a year maybe do the nice memories maybe half appear? and why do so many of my good memories cause me so much pain?
but haha, unstable deadbeat fur like his father, a loser, manipulator liar who beat his wife and kid, chased them with the belt.
haha no one's going to want to be friends with unstable fringey cringey Kurra haha....
"man up, grow some balls, everyone had a rough childhood, stop making excuses you frustrating $%#@ you're what makes this fandom such a cesspool and a joke, it's people like you" haha, no one wants that haha.
i have bee nvery unfair to my parents. i am unfair. an unfair person. choosing to remember only the bad, so i can have an excuse not to put effort into remembering the good. i can't remember what's good about myself. maybe if i could, i wouldn't punch myself in the face so much online.
maybe i wouldn't be proud of my shame.
"Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all."
"Which is?"
"It's not about you."
i don't have any answers. i write, to let a record show, i tried.
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