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divaboy and his comment on my last entry. I feel so loved. ^_^
Stoopid internet. It's been down for days. We finally figured out that if we make a phone call, it comes up. Weather has been getting lots of calls from us.
I probably won't be able to get caught up on my friends, so if there's something you want me to see, howl.
Here's an entry I put on my computer...it's cut and pasted, so I apologize if there are any garbage characters.
I don't cry easily. This doesn't mean that it is hard to make me cry - rather, that I have spent years training myself to resist the flow of tears.
When and how, exactly, did my aversion to tears begin? Recently, I've spent some time examining myself for clues to how my childhood still affects me, and I believe it started with E.T. I was three, and it was the first movie I ever saw. My parents and I curled up on our couch together with a big bowl of popcorn, to watch it on our 3" by 3" black-and-white TV set with a rented VCR. I sat on my father's lap.
Everything went fine until it reached the part where you believe E.T. is dead. My mother ran off to the kitchen in search of more popcorn (and also because she couldn't handle the scene). I was left sitting beside my father. As the scene progressed, I fell to pieces. I was not yet quite old enough to handle the idea that things on TV are "pretend" - I'm not sure any child is fully able to comprehend that until at least the age of 13. I started bawling, loudly.
My father started to tell me to shut up - first speaking quietly so my mother wouldn't hear, then growing in volume. Soon, he was yelling at me, and then he had me under the arms, and was shaking me back and forth, shaking me so my head snapped forward and back. "Shut up, will you, goddammit, shut up, it's a fucking TV show, it's PRETEND, don't you get it, it's NOT REAL, shut the fuck up, stop that fucking noise, you're a goddamn BABY, only BABIES cry, do you want to be a baby? SHUT UP!!!!"
My mother came running back into the room with the bowl of popcorn in her hand. "Michael, what the hell are you doing? Let go of her, right now!" My father released me, but sulkily. Mom checked me over, all the while throwing dire threats in my father's direction of what she'd do if she ever caught him shaking me again. They mostly involved him sleeping on the couch.
My mother sat down between my father and I, and had me hold the popcorn, so that my father had to ask every time for the bowl. Several times, my father tried to patch things up by sliding his arm over her shoulders, and each time my mother told him to sod off, and that he wasn't getting nuttin' that night. Considering that both my parents were in their early twenties, and that I was an unwanted "accident", this undoubtedly was removing from my father the only good thing about the situation his life was in. He got more bitter as the movie wore on, and spent the rest of the time I was awake throwing insults at me over my mother's lap.
Subsequently, I learned that crying = physical pain, family strife and rejection.
I don't think there was anything in the years that followed that taught me anything differently. Occasionally, my parents would play, "good 'rent, bad 'rent" and take sides with my sister or I and against each other (such as my mother did with the E.T incident), but more often they were a team. "It's okay to cry," was not a phrase that I ever heard. "You make me sick, if you don't turn off that godawful noise, I'm gonna knock you into the middle of next week. THEN you'll have something to cry about!" was more the sound of the times. (Of course, we were usually crying as a result of a backhand or fist to begin with.)
At school I was, without question, the "school geek"; the dumping grounds for emotional toxins, for students and teachers alike. If there was one thing I figured out damn fast, it was that tears were a sign of weakness to these predators, as much as a lame leg. If I had no social skills to speak of, I learned better than anyone all the tricks to not crying. I would rather have died then let them see me in pain.
Later, not showing pain of any kind became more than just a survival skill. As I was gradually more and more aware of my boyishness, not crying or flinching at a punch became a matter of masculine pride. I was tough, I was macho, nothing could make me sweat. Whereas before my best defense mechanism against crying had been indifference, now it was aggression. Any threat of tears made me lash out violently, throwing punches indiscriminately at walls, at furniture, at faces. I had to prove myself. Don't you DARE make me cry, I'll KILL you for that!
Still, I find it hard to cry. But in the past two years, I've probably cried more than I have in the rest of my entire life. It doesn't feel natural to me. I've heard that T makes it harder for you to cry, so I hope that it will do that for me, and I can relax into my natural, tearless, state.
I guess I ended that abruptly, but I'm suddenly all written out.
divaboy and his comment on my last entry. I feel so loved. ^_^Stoopid internet. It's been down for days. We finally figured out that if we make a phone call, it comes up. Weather has been getting lots of calls from us.
I probably won't be able to get caught up on my friends, so if there's something you want me to see, howl.
Here's an entry I put on my computer...it's cut and pasted, so I apologize if there are any garbage characters.
I don't cry easily. This doesn't mean that it is hard to make me cry - rather, that I have spent years training myself to resist the flow of tears.
When and how, exactly, did my aversion to tears begin? Recently, I've spent some time examining myself for clues to how my childhood still affects me, and I believe it started with E.T. I was three, and it was the first movie I ever saw. My parents and I curled up on our couch together with a big bowl of popcorn, to watch it on our 3" by 3" black-and-white TV set with a rented VCR. I sat on my father's lap.
Everything went fine until it reached the part where you believe E.T. is dead. My mother ran off to the kitchen in search of more popcorn (and also because she couldn't handle the scene). I was left sitting beside my father. As the scene progressed, I fell to pieces. I was not yet quite old enough to handle the idea that things on TV are "pretend" - I'm not sure any child is fully able to comprehend that until at least the age of 13. I started bawling, loudly.
My father started to tell me to shut up - first speaking quietly so my mother wouldn't hear, then growing in volume. Soon, he was yelling at me, and then he had me under the arms, and was shaking me back and forth, shaking me so my head snapped forward and back. "Shut up, will you, goddammit, shut up, it's a fucking TV show, it's PRETEND, don't you get it, it's NOT REAL, shut the fuck up, stop that fucking noise, you're a goddamn BABY, only BABIES cry, do you want to be a baby? SHUT UP!!!!"
My mother came running back into the room with the bowl of popcorn in her hand. "Michael, what the hell are you doing? Let go of her, right now!" My father released me, but sulkily. Mom checked me over, all the while throwing dire threats in my father's direction of what she'd do if she ever caught him shaking me again. They mostly involved him sleeping on the couch.
My mother sat down between my father and I, and had me hold the popcorn, so that my father had to ask every time for the bowl. Several times, my father tried to patch things up by sliding his arm over her shoulders, and each time my mother told him to sod off, and that he wasn't getting nuttin' that night. Considering that both my parents were in their early twenties, and that I was an unwanted "accident", this undoubtedly was removing from my father the only good thing about the situation his life was in. He got more bitter as the movie wore on, and spent the rest of the time I was awake throwing insults at me over my mother's lap.
Subsequently, I learned that crying = physical pain, family strife and rejection.
I don't think there was anything in the years that followed that taught me anything differently. Occasionally, my parents would play, "good 'rent, bad 'rent" and take sides with my sister or I and against each other (such as my mother did with the E.T incident), but more often they were a team. "It's okay to cry," was not a phrase that I ever heard. "You make me sick, if you don't turn off that godawful noise, I'm gonna knock you into the middle of next week. THEN you'll have something to cry about!" was more the sound of the times. (Of course, we were usually crying as a result of a backhand or fist to begin with.)
At school I was, without question, the "school geek"; the dumping grounds for emotional toxins, for students and teachers alike. If there was one thing I figured out damn fast, it was that tears were a sign of weakness to these predators, as much as a lame leg. If I had no social skills to speak of, I learned better than anyone all the tricks to not crying. I would rather have died then let them see me in pain.
Later, not showing pain of any kind became more than just a survival skill. As I was gradually more and more aware of my boyishness, not crying or flinching at a punch became a matter of masculine pride. I was tough, I was macho, nothing could make me sweat. Whereas before my best defense mechanism against crying had been indifference, now it was aggression. Any threat of tears made me lash out violently, throwing punches indiscriminately at walls, at furniture, at faces. I had to prove myself. Don't you DARE make me cry, I'll KILL you for that!
Still, I find it hard to cry. But in the past two years, I've probably cried more than I have in the rest of my entire life. It doesn't feel natural to me. I've heard that T makes it harder for you to cry, so I hope that it will do that for me, and I can relax into my natural, tearless, state.
I guess I ended that abruptly, but I'm suddenly all written out.
