You're Kidding Right? Right?...........RIGHT?

You know my electronic curse? That thing that causes every electronic device I ever own to break in weird, inconvenient, and irreparable ways? Well, it appears that it is not confined to electronic devices but electricity in general. You know how I said that my dad and I got electricity run to the pump house last week, and that all we had to do was hook up the panel box and I would have water at the pig barn? Well, it turns out that there is a short somewhere in the (I believe 80ft long) cable that we ran along the ceiling of my dad's shop and then under the ground outside, and there is no way for us to know where it is unless we dig the whole thing up and probably strip the coating off of it to find where the problem is. So yeah, I'd say we're back to square one with the electricity, but we're actually way farther back than that. What the fuck, Powers? Seriously, what the fuck?

Now That's More Like It!

Last night at Aikido, we worked a little but on the stuff that we had done before. But we also did a few new things including....working with swords! This is very exciting because 1- I love swords and have always wanted to actually learn how to use one. 2- For some reason, I picked this part up much faster than everything else. Every other thing we learn I having to keep doing over and over, and still end up using the wrong hand or foot or whatever half the time. The sword combination though, we went over twice and I pretty much had it. So yeah, that made me feel a little less incompetent.

It was kind of like this, but with way less touching.

Whitney's Haven for Unpleasant Creatures

I feel like someone, somewhere, put out an ad or something telling every creature no one likes to come live at my place. Perhaps something like "Do humans hate you? Are you scorned and threatened everywhere you go? Are you extremely annoying? vaguely creepy? messy? destructive? just plain inconvenient? Then we have the place for you!" In fact, there may even be some sort of underground railroad type situation going on to bring every unwanted or looked-down-upon creature on the planet to my dad's house, my pig barn, or my dad's shop (where I store my pig food, hay, etc.). I wouldn't even mind having them around, if they would just not be assholes about it. Sure, come live here. I don't give a shit, and I promise not to kill you. Just don't make my life difficult. But no! They move in, make themselves at home, and then decide to see how far they can go.

We are particularly overrun with mice and bugs (especially spiders. Holy shit! So many spiders!). Personally, I think mice are adorable; I don't mind having them around, but when they start shitting all over my house or.... OR giving birth in my pig food bags! (yes that actually happened) they become much less adorable. I also don't really have a problem with spiders, unless they build their webs across every doorway and also across every path I take between the house and the pig barn, right about eye-level so that I end up with webs stuck to my face! in the dark! so that I can never really know for sure whether or not there is a spider on my face!

I'm pretty sure they got the idea for the ad from Doyle.

P.S. All of our domesticated animals are obnoxious as hell too, just so you know. 

 

The Beauty of the Broken

This is probably my favorite of all of my old poems (even though I never think of this one as a poem. In my mind it's always a song.). There are very few pieces of my old writing that I can look back on now and not cringe at least a little, this is one of them.

Your scars and your tears,

your addictions and your fears

make you beautiful.

Your love

is such delicious poison.

I see the beauty of the broken in your eyes

and I

can't seem to shake this feeling

although your anger sends me reeling every time. 

I know it's not right

to stay with you all night

and watch you disappear 

into a thick fog of pain

and the chemicals you claim

bring you some relief.

And deep down I know

it's better if I go

and let you find your way

to the light on your own.

I thought that maybe I could save you

but I just don't know how to

and it breaks my heart

to see all the pain you live with

and the harm you'll cause yourself to ease it.

There's nothing I can do.

My staying here's not helping.

I wake up every morning and I feel so lost.

Lately I just feel so useless.

I can't stand to feel this hopeless.

It's tearing me apart.

I don't know how to tell you,

part of me still doesn't want to

but what else is there to do

but to walk away?

Remnants of Childhood

Here is yet another of my old poems. 

I went back 

to the place where I grew up

and there I found 

hidden in the brush

the remnants of my childhood.

There they were

at the base of that old tree,

rusted and broken

and so caked with dirt that I could hardly see

these things that I once loved.

Old toy and old places

tend to crumble with time

try if you want

but you never will find

a way to return them

to the way they are in your mind.

In the memories of children

everything seems divine.

Don't misunderstand.

Please don't get me wrong.

I have plenty of bad

and painful memories from when I was young,

more than I care to name.

But it's just different

for children than it is for adults. 

They have this innocence

that won't let them understand what's going on,

it's their only defense.

Children just know

how to see the beauty in everything

and to overlook

the things that they don't want to see,

things too ugly to face,

like depression and anger

in the people they love

and all of the chaos

this world is made of.

They believe those sweet lies

people tell to the young,

and no matter how hard they fall

they always get back up.

I wish that I

could get some of that back,

and see more value

in happiness than in truth and facts.

I miss that innocence.

Maybe then I could

start a new life for myself

and overcome

all of this hopelessness that I have felt.

I think that would save me.

Broken Glass

This is another of my old poems. I decided to go with this one this week because a couple of days ago, I got comments on it from Hello Poetry, which I haven't even logged into for years. Anyway, I figured if people there liked it all of a sudden, maybe you guys would too. 

I view my world through broken glass

it distorts everything I see.

Things that should be nice and comforting

all look dangerous to me.

Everything around me, everyone I know

is so twisted and unrel.

I'm living in this nightmare wasteland

where fear is all I feel.

I know this place is beautiful.

I hear it all the time

but it just looks like a prison cell

to these broken eyes of mine.

All these strangers that surround me

I guess you'd call them family and friends

just make me fell like I'm a spy

who's trying to act like one of them.

Is there smewhere out ther I can go

that will really look like home?

Or am I doomed to see only ugliness

and to always feel alone?

Are there people out there in this world

who will truly be my friends

who will love me and respect me

and on whom I can depend?

If I keep searching long enough

will I ever find a way

to see the beauty in this life

so I will have a reason to stay?

Or will I wander aimlessly

until the day I die

looking for a place and a life

that I will never find?

I wish that I could see the world

for what it really is

but my corrupted vision

is a problem I don't know how to fix.

For now I'll keep pretending

to see things the way you do

and hope that Im the one who's wrong

and it's you who sees the truth.

Who Am I?

So here is my first "throwback Thursday" post. It is the first poem in my poetry book from 2010. 

I am a dreamer without a dream.

I am an artist without an art.

I am a soldier against my own thoughts.

I am a betrayer of my own heart.

I am an activist too scared to act.

I am a lover unable to show love.

I try to be everything at once.

I find that I am nothing at all.

I hide my true desires

behind everything that I pretend to be.

It seems that all the things I really want

conflict with what I want people to see.

I want to take chances

but fear what I might lose.

I want to stand up for my beliefs

but I don't know what I can do.

I want to show how I truly feel 

to let people finally see the real me

but I can't stand to show them all my flaws

or let them know that I am weak.

No wonder I can't make connections

since no one knows who I am.

I wish that I could show them

but I don't know how I can

since I don't even know myself,

who I am or who I want to be.

All of my conflicting traits

don't even make sense to me.

Since I use the image of Spike doing poetry for my new poems, I thought I would use one of him singing for my old poems (because most of them were actually written with songs, not poems, in mind). Also, Buffy's face in this picture pretty nicely conveys the feeling I have about most of my old work.

Once More with Feeling

I finally found someone else to move my camper! He is doing it for the same price that I had agreed on with the first guy, which is nice since everyone else seemed to want twice that much. Supposedly he is going to pick it up on Saturday, and I should have it by Sunday. Also, I think my dad and I are going to go buy some stuff for my pump-house tomorrow, so that I can have running water sometime in the near future. Maybe, just maybe, things are starting to come together. Maybe.

No, Buffy. Not until the thing is actually sitting in my yard.....but then? Definitely! 

Angry Rant Immediately Followed by Nerdy Ramble

I swear, this shitty internet connection is going to push me right over the edge. I keep forgetting to write a post, because I'm used to writing them in the morning. Unfortunately, the internet has decided that it just doesn't do mornings anymore. It doesn't really do much of anything anymore, come to think of it.

Anyway, my dad and I finished Angel today. I don't remember if I said this when I watched it the first time or not, but the last episode of Angel is one of my favorite episodes of any show I've ever seen. I'm not going to go into too much detail because I don't want to ruin it for anyone who might watch it in the future, but there are just some ridiculously great scenes and some fairly profound lines in that episode that just really resonate with me. Plus, Spike's infamous poetry scene that I use as the image for all of my poems.

And this ^ fucking scene! Holy shit! 

Can I at Least Get a Cool Outfit?

You know how people inevitably change over time? Well am I the only one who feels like, as opposed to the normal evolutionary sort of change in which you learn from your experiences and grow as a person, your life has just sort of hollowed you out and left you as a shittier version of the person you used to be? Probably I am. I used to genuinely feel like a good person, never a happy person, but a good person. Now I just feel like a huge asshole trying desperately (and failing miserably) to pretend to be a good person.

I got taken over by an evil bitch and didn't even get to be super strong or anything. All I got out of the deal was an exceptionally scary voice that (sometimes) makes the dogs listen to me when I tell them to do stuff. 

Sacrifice

A couple of days ago, my dad and I watched the Angel episode "Sacrifice." At the end of the episode, my dad asked me why it had been called that and I pointed out that the bug demon told Wesley that love was sacrifice. This led to a long and rather frustrating debate about what that actually meant, whether it was true, whether love was really a good thing assuming it was true, and eventually the definition of sacrifice. Well, in case anyone cares, here is my thought on the whole thing. Yes. Love is sacrifice, absolutely. Here's the thing though; so is everything else. Everything in life is about sacrifice. Everything. We are constantly, like every moment of every day, giving up one thing (or many things) for the sake of something else. We sacrifice; money, attention, progress, success, and most importantly time. Every single second we spend doing one thing could be spent doing something else. The question is whether or not the sacrifice is worth it. At the end of the day, how many of our choices are we really satisfied with? How many times do we feel like we chose the right things to use up our time and energy on? That's where love comes in. The important thing about love is, at least in my opinion, that it makes the sacrifice seem worth it.

^Bug demon^ for those who haven't seen the show. 

Connection

I should be alone. I'm lonely when I'm alone, but that's better than what I am when I'm with others; always faking, always angry. Because the truth is I'm always alone. I move with them, act like them, pretend to be one of them, but I'm not one of them. I don't belong in my family, in my country, anywhere. I take off my glasses when I'm in public because I think I look better that way, as if it matters what I look like. My poor vision turns them all into monsters. Their faces blurred and distorted. Are they looking at me? I can't tell. I don't know if this makes it better or worse. I feel like they are all staring at me, and yet I am invisible. I am an uneasy presence they can all sense, so they squint their eyes and try to make out what it is they feel but can't see. Everyone is looking at me, but no one sees me. I just want to be seen. One small connection. A guy holds the door for me. I thank him. He smiles. A connection. Thirty seconds, no more. I think about it for the rest of the day. How pathetic is that?

Helpless or Bitchy?

So, my dad and I have been watching Angel lately. Tonight we watched the episode "Billy". This was the episode with the guy who had the (really lovely) power to make any guy he touched become a woman-hating psychopath. Anyway, it was a very feminist episode and, whenever I think about that sort of thing, I always find myself analyzing the different perspectives on feminism and what it means to different people. I know I have talked a little about this in the past, but I think I have a slightly different idea about this stuff than most people do. For example, overall I thought this episode was great, but there where a few things that really bugged me. One was this scene with Cordelia and Lilah where Cordelia convinces Lilah that she should help them because she is a "vicious bitch" and that no vicious bitch would ever put up with someone making her feel helpless. That bugs the shit out of me! I feel like that tends to happen in A LOT of shows. The girl is either, at least somewhat, helpless or, at least somewhat of, a bitch. No one seems to know how to write female characters who are both strong and pleasant to be around. I feel like we need to try a little harder to let women know that you don't have to be an asshole to be strong and take care of yourself.

One of the things I did really like about the episode though was Cordelia's sword fighting, because something that frequently irritates me about "strong female characters" is when you watch them fight and you can tell that, yeah the character is strong but the actress playing her isn't. I thought Charisma Carpenter looked like she could do some serious damage.

What Exactly Did I Do to You Anyway?

Sorry there was no post yesterday, I was busy trying not to spontaneously combust. Seriously, is it just me or do other people feel like the more you think you just can't deal with one more single thing, the more the Powers that Be dump piles of shit on you? I mean, I have gotten to the point where all I can really do is try to zone out and pretend like my life isn't really happening. So, naturally, more and more and more things keep happening that I can't ignore without terrible consequences. You know how I've bitched about all the mud and ice around the pig barn? Well, the whole fucking field is like that too and Riley Pig has a really hard time walking on it. That doesn't stop him from stomping around and knocking Tuni out of her food bowl though. Well, shockingly, a few days ago he was knocking her around and slipped on the ice and fucked his foot all up. My dad and I gave him some antibiotics and put some ointment on it and hoped that he would be careful with it and let it heal. He didn't. He just kept stomping around on it and making it worse. So Yesterday we had to put up a wall and lock him in the barn. Now not only is his foot fucking awful looking, but I get to try to go in and feed him while he is roaring and charging back and forth and trying to slam me against the wall, plus I really don't know what to do if it doesn't get better soon. It's not like I can just put him in the car and take his ass to the vet. Fuck everything.

Love Letter to an Imagined Soulmate

Well here it is, the weird little thing I wrote the other day.


I know you, my love; not your name, or where you live, or what you do. I don't know what you look like, or who your parents are, or what kind of music you listen to. Something tells me that, despite all of that, I would still recognize you if we passed on the street. Because I know the truth of you, the essence that lies beneath all of those things that we think make us who we are. I know the feel of you. Though we have never touched, there are times when I swear I can feel your hands on my skin. I don't know what your face looks like, but I have felt the sense of belonging that I would experience when looking into your eyes. I have never met you, maybe I never will meet you, maybe you don't even exist, but I have felt your arms around me as I fall asleep and known that I was home.

I can't actually decide if it's a poem, or an excerpt from a story that I will probably never tell, or exactly what the title proclaims it to be. Oh well. 

The Truth about Me

I feel like I am a totally different person now than I was, say, back in high school; even than I was back when I was going to WVU. I have changed a great deal, both through conscious effort and natural evolution. But there are times I feel like I am still that person I used to be, not just back at WVU or back in high school, but before that. Sometimes I feel like I haven't changed at all over the course of my life. When I think about it, I know that I have. I know that I have grown and learned and become better for it, but then I worry that all of that is in my head and that the people around me will still see me as this goofy, awkward, unattractive child, and that I will never be able to get past that.

Does anyone know the episode (Restless) of Buffy where Willow had the dream that everyone kept telling her that people would find out "the truth about her" or "about the real her." That's what I feel like sometimes; like the person I think of myself as is just this illusion I've created and that everyone knows that but me. 

Fire and Ice

I feel like I was built to walk through fire. Instead, I'm drowning in a frozen lake of mediocrity and mundane irritations. I pound my fists bloody on the ice, as everyone I know stands above me on the surface with looks of confusion and vague concern on their faces, asking me why I'm being so dramatic. I try to scream that I was not built for this. I was made to withstand heat, not cold. But when I open my mouth, my lungs fill with water and all that comes out is garbled nonsense. They all shake their heads in disappointment and say "You should be grateful, you know? Some people are burning."

First poem in quite a while. I hope you guys like it. 

One Year

Well, it has officially been one year since I started this blog and, as promised, here is my one last secret that I have yet to reveal to all of you. It probably won't seem like much of a secret to most of you, especially considering the multitude of exceptionally personal things I have already discussed here, but it's a pretty big one for me. Here it is; despite the way I act and the immense effort I go to in order to hide it, in a lot of ways, I am a big stereotypical girl and it bugs the shit out of me!

I try to act like I only care about really important things and the only thing that matters to me is trying to make the world a better place.

But sometimes I'm like "I just want somebody to hold my fucking hand!"

Here, for your reading pleasure, is a list of all the ways in which I am just an annoyingly average girl. 

1- Sometimes I just really want someone to tell me I'm pretty. 

2- A part of me still believes in the whole "fairy tale love" bullshit. 

3- I actually do that stupid things that girls do in movies where they dance around their houses when they're home alone. 

I do, at least, wear pants when I do it though. 

4- Good romantic scenes make me really happy and really sad at the same time. 

I couldn't find a picture of the part where he picks her up and spins her around, but holy fuck do I wish someone would be that happy to see me! 

5- I'm constantly comparing myself to other women and taking inventory of our respective good and bad attributes. 

I will never be able to look at her and feel good about myself. 

6- There are certain excessively cheesy love songs that I just can't help but love, no matter how shameful they may be. 

When this song comes on the radio I find myself incapable of turning it off, or of not singing along. 

7- Here's the one that I really REALLY don't want to admit to. Sometimes I actually do cry. Fuck do I hate it! And I never do it when anyone else is around to see, but it does happen. Usually, it's not even for any particular reason either. It's just sort of a "life in general sort of sucks" thing. 

8- I actually think it would be a lot of fun to go dancing, like in a club (gasp!). I would probably give it a try were it not for the fact that I am fairly certain I would just make an ass of myself. 

9- I totally understand every part of this post 

Every part. 

10- Part of me has always wanted, and probably will always want, to be a famous actress/singer/something. 

11- Sometimes I find myself looking at these stupid things and thinking "You know, that probably would be pretty nice." 

I chose this particular one because I think the second picture makes it infinitely funnier. 

12- I have quite a fondness for sexy underwear. 

I especially like this place because their stuff is sexy, badass, and affordable. 

13- As much as I try not to, I get extremely bothered by negative comments, especially ones concerning my appearance. 

I also have a tendency not to forget these comments for, well, ever. 

14- Whenever I happen to be near a mirror, I find that I can't help but check to make sure there's nothing for anyone to say anything negative about. Like obsessively. Usually I find lots of things. 

Too many things. 

15- I really wish I would get hit on sometimes. I mean by someone who isn't three times my age. 

Could somebody look at me like that^ please. 

So there you go, guys. My deepest, darkest secret is that I am, in fact, a girl. 

Sorry, It's the Best I've Got

So, I have nothing of any real value to write about today. So I'm going to tell you about this weird-ass dream I had the other night. I was dismantling these strange old ruins that were, for some reason, in my yard. Despite the fact that they appeared to have survived for thousands of years, when I shoved on them the blocks just slid and tumbled to the ground. So I just kept climbing around and shoving blocks off the top edges of the walls. I remember thinking that it was kind of a shame to destroy them, since they were so old and quite beautiful, yet I do not remember why I was doing it in the first place. I also remember thinking that these were Tibetan ruins, which makes very little sense seeing as how my yard is not, in fact, in Tibet.

At least there was no creepy cheese man. As a vegan, I would have been rather offended to have my dreams invaded by the Cheese Man and his dairy-based vestments. 

Quick Question

The one year anniversary of this blog is coming up in just about a week, and I would kind of like to do something special. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that might be. So my question is this; what do you guys want to see? Are there any topics you would like to see discussed? any deep dark secrets you would like to see revealed? any awkward pointless questions you would like to see answered? Just let me know.