Toxic people suck

 Having a major fury today over realizing just how awful things actually went last weekend.

I went to a neighborhood house for an "art gallery showing." The invite came from an old acquaintance from way back. She was always pretty hard to take, very controlling and righteous and opinionated, but I didn't understand how bad it was and thought, hey, she was young, she's matured, I've matured.  Let's start anew.

Well I arrived at the house and was warmly welcomed and overwhelmed right away.  Like floating on a sea of inputs trying to sift out what matters.  Tea? Cookies? Look at this, talk to that person, say something nice. 

Well we sit down and she starts peppering me with questions after assuring me that everyone in the room already knows ALL about me.

red flag. Must remember that. If they've told everyone in the room, say "well, I guess we're done here then, there's no need for me to actually be here!" and flee post haste and never look back.

But I didn't, I felt like, "well, don't have to guard my words, and gee, they all accept me anyway!" Which is what she wanted me to feel. It was my big mistake, and I was too overwhelmed to notice or analyze or understand it. Meanwhile she's talking about my cancer, my colostomy, and they all know I'm trans and I think even welfare and incontinence were brought up.  And I didn't initiate these things, I just foolishly responded to questions, getting drawn out like a lamb at the slaughter. 

Like that "bring a fool to dinner" party in that movie where they bring someone for everyone to talk about later. I felt that way. That person.

I came back the next day, still full of the positive vibes that socializing always gives me. The tone was different.  I gave Zoltan the hot sauce and my last blue bottle and he didn't really thank me, just kind of set them down with minor interest.  Naomi wasn't there. I stuck around awhile, but a french bitch was hooking zoltan with her fishing rod so it wasn't much fun and I left.

Over the last week it's been playing in my head. I gave naomi a gentle scolding for telling them I was trans but it wasn't until this morning it all finally clued together just how badly I'd been mistreated.

Just like Valerie used to do.  They call us unicorns because people treat us like some rare exotic display creature.

Naomi is offering to help me sell my stuff that I haven't even made yet anyway, and she wants to help me put together a marketing page on facebook.  I don't want to play along.  I don't want to be hurtful but I also just don't want to deal with it all. She's not going to follow through, you know? People like her just string you along to keep you on the string, they never follow through if they can help it. They rarely do any better than you could have done because if they had any quality talent they wouldn't need to play trips on people's heads like that. Their internal pride over their skill would fill the need for validation.  As it is, they validate themselves by invalidating others.

At this time, my decision is just to be difficult. Hard to reach, short of answers, and always polite and pleasant.  She doesn't need to know my thoughts, they're hurtful and she can't do anything about it.  It's not like she doesn't know herself by now as well as she can. I guarantee she's been told by many by now.

It's frustrating.  Would there have been a friendship with a neighbor if not for the unicorn side show? 

But then, let's think about that. Zoltan.  What do you know about him from his house?  He's sloppy. Careless.  Dirty. His art is jenky as shit and while he brags on about his education, his art shows no skill or attention to detail or care.  He slaps shit together and plays with materials and calls it good. He is very very very proud of his work and himself.  Now, none of that is based on the bs Naomi told me about him, which noise was damned unkind.  She said he woke her up early to start political rants.  But she seems to draw rants out of people so I didn't necessarily count that, and she's living in his house, no idea if there's rent or not but I suspect not. She's selling his art as her art in her little shop, which btw ain't cheap to rent a shop.  She's been there longer than anyone previously. She thinks he's lonely. I don't, though. On the weekend she assured me everyone but me was a friend of Zoltan.  

yeah, so she's a toxic manipulative bitch and he's a self absorbed egotist.

Ok, that feels better.

I know, I'm judging.

I know, it's wrong. 

But not doing so is also wrong.

Where's the balance? I am going to continue to respond to these two and keep them at arm's length and give them opportunities to earn my trust and prove their characters. which I already know they won't use.  If they contact me, it'll be for another unicorn showing or as part of the loving bombing currently underway. When this fails to melt my cold cold heart the relationship will dry up. Zoltan will simply cease to exist unless I choose to initiate contact, so that's easy. If he actually contacts me and just wants to visit, I'll give him the opportunity.  I mean, an autistic artist could very much look exactly like Zoltan and he might be getting manipulated by bitches.  But I think I needn't worry.  And I think being more conscious of these qualities and making this judgement will help me remember to protect myself.

I just need to learn to notice when someone's doing that interrogation BS. I did shut down one bitch who'd taken up the thread and was drawing me into telling my cancer story.  I just told her the story wasn't fun to tell or hear. Then commented that it was interesting how when someone has been through something genuinely horrific, they don't want to talk about it. Whereas lesser suffering gets talked all out.  In my memory, I can observe what I couldn't spare attention for then. Everyone shifted uncomfortably.  The conversation shattered and attention turned away from me.

So I can't expect a place in that group of humans, I get it.  I'm not a human to them, I'm a side show.  

But I really need to learn to keep my own counsel in the face of a blizzard of questions.  Because I should be afraid of what people think. Because it does affect me.

What if all that "nevermind what others think" stuff is crafted to make us vulnerable to the narcissists in our midst?  I mean, all media has been overrun by them, right? At all levels. From the PTA to the senate, they run things. Tigers are going to run things to suit the tigers' natures, and rabbits are just going to have to be quick on their feet.  Heh. I was born in the year of the rabbit. I sure feel like one.

Heave a heavy sigh and repeat once again, the root of all suffering is expectation. 

I'm suffering negative emotions because I got an expectation of community and friendship which has turned out to be false.

I'm suffering because I had an expectation that most people I meet are honest real people who give a shit about each other and this was also a let down. I'm not sure there was anyone in that room saturday or sunday who would have been real with me.

Without speaking to blame or fault or moral failings, the control is with me here. Which is Buddha's point. well, really, want to hear what I think of Buddha the man?  he's a spoiled little shit who abandoned his family to lay around living on the largess of a poverty stricken public rather than his own family's wealth, so he could sit preaching and playing virtue boy.

But the guy who recorded his words? Now that guy was a genius. He made something of it.  And the guys who followed up on the line of thought have done a brilliant job with it too. The collective knowlege of buddhism is definitely wise. Several millenia later. But The Buddha? He's a symbol. The guy himself was a prat. My Hanuman on the wall seems to be laughing his ass off at that.  Even my plaster buddha's smile seems a bit smirky.  Ok, that settles it, I've never seen Kwan Yin laugh before, always just a modest smile. 

My spirituality is slowly returning as pagan idolatry and I love it.  Does it matter how we find our connection to magic and a sense of power for ourselves?    

Pity about the not going to be friendships, but I did have fun at the party anyway. I really was fooled that day into feeling cared about. 

No, Becky, that doesn't justify what you all did.  It just consoles me for it.

Becky is my new favorite Karen name.  I never liked Karen, whoopi goldberg is the only karen I ever knew who fitted the image. 

Becky?  I've never known a Becky, although I've known rebecca. But Becky is what you get if you slur bitch far enough.  Bitch. Becha (glottal fricative), becka, becky.

Code works best when few people know it anyway. 

Lemme whine about my health, I haven't and it is bothering me. 

My asthma is getting worse. I upped my dose but the coughing and nose running is just overriding it again.  Every time I have a fit of coughing or sneezing (sometimes both) I'm wiped out and everything hurts and it takes awhile to recover.  If they happen too frequently they run into each other and I'm useless all day, this is not happy.

My hernia.  How to explain. Well, the hole through which my bowels protude through the inner lining is now large enough they just fall through. I can't use belts at all, they pinch the loops. I put it all back in with massage on my back as often as I can, but with all this coughing it just seems pointless.

I am slightly panicking because my chest is inflamed on the left side and I can't get to see a doctor for antibiotics. So I'm using home remedies and prayer.  It has arrested progress but I can't tell if the redness is less or not because it changes based on the light.  It hurts. It's swollen. It scares me. I can't get to a doctor in a timely manner.  It's three business days, minimum, if I can handle the cold, which I couldn't, and it's about to get cold again.  I could have booked for today on last monday if I wasn't too panicked to decide what to do. By the time I got calm again and started treating myself, days had passed and now it would be next week before an appointment is available. And so it goes. By wednesday, which is about when I could get one if I called now, it's going to be too cold again.

So golden seal root powder, garlic, cayenne, chicken stock, and applying heat are my therapies. 

I sincerely doubt I'm going to die.  I've always known I'm stuck here till I'm 108 and after the cancer, it looks pretty locked in. so that means this is going to work.  Which is good because the health system isnt' finished dying yet and may not be revived.  

Personally, I think the response to the outcry for better health care is going to be to open it up to privatization, like everything else they touch. Our goverment has consistently maltreated and mismanaged it's crown responsibilities until they no longer function, then privatized them as the solution.  Of course they'll do this with health care, they just have to dismantle some fundamental rights first so we can't sue them for it. Then folks like me will find out just how good health care really was once upon a time.  It really doesn't look like the next fifty years will be any better than the last, to be honest.