To Masticate on the Meaning of Things
candiland
Posts: 3
He tries to tell me that the reason I have so many trust issues is because I've been such a secretive succubus troll in the past. You know, that whole idea of emotional transference? Well I seem to have a really, really bad case of it.
Living a very active secret life has been both a curse and a blessing throughout my existence thus far. The idea just occurred to me that maybe - just maybe - having a secret life gives me one area of my life where I feel like I have absolute and total control. My life has been riddled with death, dying, fighting, alcoholism, bipolar disorder.... I have lived many, many years under the roof of some really emotionally fucked up individuals that reeked havoc on my psyche, and having little to no control over the insanity that surrounded me left me, perhaps, with some really fucked up control issues of my own. Oh, you wanna be mean? You're gonna treat me like shit? Well, I'm gonna go out and have amazing sex with my secret lover to make myself feel better - so fuck you, too, buddy!
Deep down I understand that on some level, this sort of thinking is inherently wrong. But I am so damn good at it. I'm always juggling knives and, as cliche as it sounds, it makes me feel so alive. I consider the psychology of myself and others a fascinating game, yet I try to use what I'm really good at to help and heal others. It's truly amazing how much you can subtly manipulate a person's mind to help them come to terms with things such as pain, loss, dogma, and longing. You enter people the way you sense they can be entered - some through sex, some through friendship, some through a drunken night of debauchery or a psychadelic ride through the firing neurons and synapses that make the person tick. It's quite easy to play any role the other person wants to box you in, and it is from this convenient little box that you sprout roots - or wings - and gradually invade the psyche of the person who thought they had you all figured out. This is one game I have never lost at. Whether this makes me a sociopath or a social worker is for you to decide. I guess it's all in what we try to get out of the game, right?
You may be wondering why I'm posting this strange little life story in the Pearl Jam message pit. I guess, for me, Pearl Jam is an integral part of what defined me and my generation, for better or for worse. I've been in and out of punk, sixties and seventies rock and psychadelia, indies rock, and cute little bands like Poison and Motley Crue. Yet Pearl Jam, to me, represented an angry, youthful hope that acted as some sort of umbilical cord, if you will, to what I felt was the hard lined, unfettered, and indisputable truth that was denied to me by my teachers, leaders, equals, and elders. Here I was, face to face with this enormous hypocrisy that, because of my age and social standing, I was completely helpless to do anything about. I remember, in middle school, being so angry that the government condemned killing yet did not blink an eye when sending our beautiful boys to war, or the chronically oppressed, abused, beaten-down men that our system had failed to the electric chair......... Everyone seemed so desperate to prove that my world was made up of black and white - literally and figuratively - yet their emotions, words, and pain were always so transparent to me. The dichotonous nature of mankind is represented so well in Pearl Jam's music that I felt like I had connected with a long lost lover.
There are so many lovely, beautiful people that have fallen in this grinding war of cultural subversion. I consider them fellow soldiers - the beautiful blond boy that blew his brains out in his jeep at just seventeen years old; the beautiful platinum-haired, blue eyed twenty three old man whom I seduced and who consequently became my lover when I was only sixteen, who was so sensitive and angelic that his rage, his love of drink, and his gradual descent into cocaine and heroin found him bled out, covered in mucous and vomit, on his basement sofa just weeks after I walked away. All of this, and more, was being played out against the backdrop of Seattle grunge music, the only music we felt truly represented the awakening our generation was embodying throughout the 1990's.
They always want to blame the music. They always want to blame the drugs. They always want to blame the blacks, the hispanics, the rap, the hip hop. They always want to blame the video games, the action flicks, the adult entertainment industry. Yet where does the true blame lie? Is there blame to be had - any, at all? What would happen if we stopped blaming, if we stopped pointing fingers at one another, if we stopped stretching and distorting the truth to back up our own wacky, self-righteous senses of identity? What would happen if we accepted, acknowledged, and embraced the pain and the scars of not only ourselves but of our so-called enemies, those who tend to mirror those things inside of ourselves that are too gruesome for us to face?
I was at a bar in Philly over the weekend. The man next to me was obliterated, and began talking about his stint in the army over in Afghanistan. He showed me his shrapnel scars. He was enraged, he was scared, he was incredibly and totally fucked up. I embraced him, and he cried. He cried like a little baby while I told him he did not serve in vain. He cried like a little baby while I stroked his hair, murmured soft words, and told him to let go, that everything was going to be okay. I urge everyone that reads this to not fear. Do not fear emotion, do not fear truth, embrace your brothers and your sisters and do what you can to lighten their heart and carry their burden. There isn't much we can do in this world, and sometimes we feel utterly powerless in the face of such immense loss and destruction. But just by reaching out and embracing those we tend to keep at arms' length, we are doing our part to lift the veil of blame and hate and shame so that the candle of truth and humanity can shine and reflect each person's goodness, wholeness, humanness back onto ourselves.
Our friends, our family members, our acquaintances, our lovers that have passed on have gifted us with the unique ability to make the best and most beautiful connections we can, while we still have time. Love, laugh, live....... and thank you, Pearl Jam, for guiding one lost soul on her journey to Truth.
Peace.
Living a very active secret life has been both a curse and a blessing throughout my existence thus far. The idea just occurred to me that maybe - just maybe - having a secret life gives me one area of my life where I feel like I have absolute and total control. My life has been riddled with death, dying, fighting, alcoholism, bipolar disorder.... I have lived many, many years under the roof of some really emotionally fucked up individuals that reeked havoc on my psyche, and having little to no control over the insanity that surrounded me left me, perhaps, with some really fucked up control issues of my own. Oh, you wanna be mean? You're gonna treat me like shit? Well, I'm gonna go out and have amazing sex with my secret lover to make myself feel better - so fuck you, too, buddy!
Deep down I understand that on some level, this sort of thinking is inherently wrong. But I am so damn good at it. I'm always juggling knives and, as cliche as it sounds, it makes me feel so alive. I consider the psychology of myself and others a fascinating game, yet I try to use what I'm really good at to help and heal others. It's truly amazing how much you can subtly manipulate a person's mind to help them come to terms with things such as pain, loss, dogma, and longing. You enter people the way you sense they can be entered - some through sex, some through friendship, some through a drunken night of debauchery or a psychadelic ride through the firing neurons and synapses that make the person tick. It's quite easy to play any role the other person wants to box you in, and it is from this convenient little box that you sprout roots - or wings - and gradually invade the psyche of the person who thought they had you all figured out. This is one game I have never lost at. Whether this makes me a sociopath or a social worker is for you to decide. I guess it's all in what we try to get out of the game, right?
You may be wondering why I'm posting this strange little life story in the Pearl Jam message pit. I guess, for me, Pearl Jam is an integral part of what defined me and my generation, for better or for worse. I've been in and out of punk, sixties and seventies rock and psychadelia, indies rock, and cute little bands like Poison and Motley Crue. Yet Pearl Jam, to me, represented an angry, youthful hope that acted as some sort of umbilical cord, if you will, to what I felt was the hard lined, unfettered, and indisputable truth that was denied to me by my teachers, leaders, equals, and elders. Here I was, face to face with this enormous hypocrisy that, because of my age and social standing, I was completely helpless to do anything about. I remember, in middle school, being so angry that the government condemned killing yet did not blink an eye when sending our beautiful boys to war, or the chronically oppressed, abused, beaten-down men that our system had failed to the electric chair......... Everyone seemed so desperate to prove that my world was made up of black and white - literally and figuratively - yet their emotions, words, and pain were always so transparent to me. The dichotonous nature of mankind is represented so well in Pearl Jam's music that I felt like I had connected with a long lost lover.
There are so many lovely, beautiful people that have fallen in this grinding war of cultural subversion. I consider them fellow soldiers - the beautiful blond boy that blew his brains out in his jeep at just seventeen years old; the beautiful platinum-haired, blue eyed twenty three old man whom I seduced and who consequently became my lover when I was only sixteen, who was so sensitive and angelic that his rage, his love of drink, and his gradual descent into cocaine and heroin found him bled out, covered in mucous and vomit, on his basement sofa just weeks after I walked away. All of this, and more, was being played out against the backdrop of Seattle grunge music, the only music we felt truly represented the awakening our generation was embodying throughout the 1990's.
They always want to blame the music. They always want to blame the drugs. They always want to blame the blacks, the hispanics, the rap, the hip hop. They always want to blame the video games, the action flicks, the adult entertainment industry. Yet where does the true blame lie? Is there blame to be had - any, at all? What would happen if we stopped blaming, if we stopped pointing fingers at one another, if we stopped stretching and distorting the truth to back up our own wacky, self-righteous senses of identity? What would happen if we accepted, acknowledged, and embraced the pain and the scars of not only ourselves but of our so-called enemies, those who tend to mirror those things inside of ourselves that are too gruesome for us to face?
I was at a bar in Philly over the weekend. The man next to me was obliterated, and began talking about his stint in the army over in Afghanistan. He showed me his shrapnel scars. He was enraged, he was scared, he was incredibly and totally fucked up. I embraced him, and he cried. He cried like a little baby while I told him he did not serve in vain. He cried like a little baby while I stroked his hair, murmured soft words, and told him to let go, that everything was going to be okay. I urge everyone that reads this to not fear. Do not fear emotion, do not fear truth, embrace your brothers and your sisters and do what you can to lighten their heart and carry their burden. There isn't much we can do in this world, and sometimes we feel utterly powerless in the face of such immense loss and destruction. But just by reaching out and embracing those we tend to keep at arms' length, we are doing our part to lift the veil of blame and hate and shame so that the candle of truth and humanity can shine and reflect each person's goodness, wholeness, humanness back onto ourselves.
Our friends, our family members, our acquaintances, our lovers that have passed on have gifted us with the unique ability to make the best and most beautiful connections we can, while we still have time. Love, laugh, live....... and thank you, Pearl Jam, for guiding one lost soul on her journey to Truth.
Peace.
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