Tesk Rambles Because Tesk Can

I have problems remembering that my idealistic view of the world is not quite reality so that when someone does something that is entirely in their character but below what I expect from them I feel hurt, a little betrayed, and miserable. I know it's all my fault. I look at the world from a perspective that many people would call naive.


Because I am naive, in a way, really. I believe that everyone has in them the potential to be good. That everyone is inherently a good person but that societal expectations and personal grievances often overcome their good nature. I believe that everyone battles between wanting to be good and the easier ability to be bad. So when I interact with people I expect them to be good. I honestly believe they are. I feel they are capable of so very much and that they are trying to be a better person. I have hope in every single person that I meet and some that I never do.

This expectation- this faith in the people I know- has hurt me so much. I have spent so many days being miserable, being hurt, feeling betrayed by the people I love and the people I have hopes for and I will spend many more the same way. I wouldn't trade one miserable, forlorn day for an instant of expecting people to be less than they are capable of. I feel such a natural capacity for love and I don't want to dampen it, to let it wither away. I want to keep believing in people, in second chances, having faith in humanity, in my loved ones.

People make mistakes, they stumble, falter, fall, trip up, get upset, do things they know they shouldn't... I know they do. I do it to. I get terrified by things that most people spend their life chasing, I am scared so much, paranoid so often, hurt so habitually... My life has not been easy. At all. My life has been a stew of rot, mold, lies, treachery, betrayal, negligence, and a constant state of lacking. I have seen the worst in humanity. Raised by a murderer, birthed by a prostitute, left with a pederast, abandoned, starved, beaten, ignored, and betrayed repeatedly. My body is littered with the scars of a difficult life, my mind is a mass of them. I am so scared all the time. Afraid to have my back to doors, afraid to sleep in the open, afraid to speak too loud or too much, afraid to ask for what I want, terrified to depend on someone.

The majority of my friends are at least five years older than me. This isn't something I've done on purpose but a natural sort of gravity. I have always been old for my age. I get along better with older people. People my age just always seem so young, so free, so unburdened, so inexperienced and it bothers me. They bother me. Make me ache with an age I haven't earned, make me burn with this sort of jealousy for the easy life they have had. Sometimes they just frustrate me. I find these people my age who have gone through things like mine, maybe not so much or so severe or maybe they just had it hard in different ways and they're still so young, so free, so their age. Sometimes it has nothing to do with their maturity and more to do with their intelligence.

I am smart. I am. This isn't some egotistical statement brought about by a self-delusion but a conclusion arrived at by assessment of various factors. I am intelligent. There are people out there leagues beyond me and people out there at the same level as me that simply hold more general knowledge. I prefer to feel a bit stupid when I am in a group of people. I don't like to be the smartest person in the room. I like it when others know more than me. Now here is a distinction I draw: there are people out there who have had years and years more education than I, who have spent their lives in a higher socio-economic spectrum than me and thus have more knowledge- this does not make them more intelligent than me. More knowledgable, yes, and I appreciate that, but not more intelligent.

There are people out there who think that age and knowledge equate with a type of better-ness. This is not true. No one is my better. We humans are all equals. No one is better than another. I may not be their peer but I am always their equal. I always deserve the same level of respect. I always deserve to be treated like the equal I am. Any less than that and I cannot respect you as much as I once had. There is no better way to turn me off of you than to condescend to me, than to underestimate me because I am poor, because I am young, because I am not as educated. Especially if you know me. Strangers can be forgotten, they do not know better even though they should. But loved ones who do this hurt the most.

I have spent my life living under an enforced divide because of people who love me and as such believe it is ok to withhold things from me or to treat me different. Because I am female is no reason to treat me any differently. Because I am young is no reason to withhold things from me. Because I have not yet obtained a "proper" education is no reason to condescend to me.

I promise you that I have been torn up inside and out to such a degree that many people would not have survived. I have grown up in hell and I deserve the respect and regard that I should receive. I may be a woman. I may be young. I may be small and blond and bubbly and naive. But I can promise you that I am tougher than you think and I am stronger than you could believe. I have always survived and I will continue to do so. If you treat me like I am fragile, like I will break, like I can't handle things, then I can guarantee you that the only thing that will break is our relationship.

I can promise you something else, though: if you try, if you want to do better, if you recognize your mistakes and apologize for your wrong-doings then I will forgive. It may take me a while to trust again but if you come to me and try then I will try as well. I am human. I make mistakes. There are things I wish that I had done differently, people I have hurt that I wish I could mend, mistakes I have made that I desire strongly to correct. I understand what it's like to battle with those dark things inside and to lose. I know what it's like to give in to fears and insecurities when I know I shouldn't. So much of my life I spend afraid and fighting.

So yeah, maybe I am a fool. Maybe I am naive and maybe I let my hopes get too high but damn it, it's worth it. It's worth it to believe in the utter goodness of people. It's worth it to hope for the best. It's worth it to cling to some "idealistic" perspective. To me it's like loving. It's always worth it to love. Sometimes you get hurt. Sometimes you get broken. Sometimes love leaves you in a landfill of despair but it's always worth it. The pain is worth the trust, the warmth, the respect, the learning, the companionship.

Sometimes when you leap from tree branches you hit the ground (and every branch on the way down) but always when you leap you fly. Maybe briefly, maybe for a while, and sometimes if you're very lucky you leap and you just keep on soaring.

Sharing Is Daring.

SOmetimes my biggest fear isn't sharable because that is what the fear is about. Not that I can't share something but that the burden of knowing my fears or bad memories or nightmares is too much for the person I entrust them to. I know it's ridiculous and I know it's stupid but I can't help it. I don't mind sharing things when people ask questions. I don't mind sharing the facts of my life with people but it's the things that make me press my lips together against my front teeth, it's the things that ball up tight and acidic in the middle of my spine, it's the things that make me feel breathless and empty that I don't like to share.

I don't mind telling people that my mother was a prostitute. I don't mind telling that my father has been hooked on speed and other various drugs my entire life. I don't like sharing my fear of becoming an addict. I don't like sharing what my mother being a prostitute makes me feel deep in the back of my head where sometimes a pressure builds and is painful to even think about. I don't like sharing these things because it means that the person I tell them to now has to hold them up to and they're so heavy and thick that it just seems like too much to ask someone.

I don't think I'll ever get a psychiatrist. Not because I'm uncomfortable with the thought of talking to one but because I don't want them to make my experiences into excuses. Because they're just not. My dysfunction is something I own. My weirdness, my quirks, and eccentricities make up who I am. They are part of me just as much as my experiences are and I don't want someone going: Oh well, you know, she was molested as a child and that's why she's obsessed with sex. Because it's just not fucking good enough to think that. I was molested as a kid. I do have a preoccupation with sex. The two may be linked but that doesn't mean I have an event to blame, an excuse for how I act. I act the way I do because I so choose. The end.

Sure, I could blame my parents, blame my siblings, blame my relatives for how I act but that makes my actions not my own and I just won't fucking hear that. Because my actions are my own and I won't let anyone else have them. If I blame something then it just means that that part of me is no longer mine and that is unacceptable.

Like Grown Ups Do (Unsettling Content)

Today I was watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and the two elderly people I live with were sitting there next to me and neither of them seemed as interested in the program as I.
I was sitting there durring a commercial and it got me thinking. Why do I like this program? It's unpleasant and never happy and it's uncomfortable to the other people in the room as I since I only ever watch it on the T.V.

But I don't really know why I asked this because I know why I watch these kind of shows.




I'm obsessed with them.


I'm obsessed with sexual assault. But it's not a kink or any sort of physical thing for me. It's sort of cathartic to watch police officers run about and try to solve these crimes because it never happened for me or those I know that these sort of things have happened to.
I watch these types of shows because it helps me live with what happened to me.

There is a lot of things I've heard about my childhood but I've blocked so much of it out that I don't feel comfortable relying on other's heresy. I know what is said is at least partially true because I'll have dreams or moments where I remember something from when I was little that I don't actively know. I have memories of seeing my mother get fucked by strangers. I have memories of strange people coming in to my room at night when I lived with her and doing things. Most of my memories are very vague and convoluted because I've spent so long trying to forget them that they're not quite reliable anymore but...

I remember one instance when I was older that I've never been able to forget.
There had been some emergency that called away both my father and my mum and they hadn't been able to find anyone to watch us so they left us with the only option available: my uncle Dale. He was nice, if a bit strange at times but he wasn't so odd for a member of our family. He lived with my other uncle, Steven, who I loved intensely.  Steven collected Star Trek memorabilia and those little plaster houses from the Dollar Store, just to give you an idea of what 'normal' constituted in the family.

Anyway, we stayed over and during the day it was fine. We played at a creek and I was mostly left alone, as most people do with me. I was very into myself from a young age. By that I don't mean that I loved myself and only paid attention to myself but that I spent most of my time in the imaginary world in my head. So my two brothers played with each other and I joined in sort of. My uncle always seemed to like my brothers better so I didn't really mind. I didn't know him too well and he was no Uncle Steven so I didn't really pay any mind to him.

But come that evening is when the strange started. I didn't think it at the time, probably because I was young and because I didn't know any better. But when he took each of us alone into his room to pat down with powder (I assume it was baby powder or something similar) it was strange and it should have sounded an alarm but it didn't. It sounded so reasonable when he took me in there after one of my brothers to "check for ticks" and apply this powder for some reason. He was an adult and as such I trusted him, as most children trust adults of their family.

I remember being confused because I could check myself in the mirror for ticks but I trusted him because I didn't know what a tick was or what they looked like. I know he convinced me to kiss him under some line about doing things like "grown ups". Applying the powder and checking for ticks constituted an all-body search.
An all over the body search.
But he treated me like a "grown up"
I was happy. I was fucking happy because adults never treated me like a grown up. I was small, blond, and had one of those little girl voices and no one took me seriously. Usually they just ignored me or pandered to me.
It ended quickly because one of my brothers was waiting for his tick-check but it didn't stop there.

Later, when we were watching a movie, he sat me in his lap and asked me again if I wanted to learn to kiss like the grown ups do. I was eager because I was small and young and he's my uncle and family means safe, right?
So he showed me what a grown up kiss was and he touched me and made me touch him.

And I think this is about the last time I ever really trusted my family or adults in general.
Because in the back of my head I knew he did something wrong. That he wasn't supposed to do that with little girls like me and the older I got the more revolted I was at what he had done.
The more it made me hate my family and it even got me to start to distrust my brothers and pull away from them. Before this it had always been big brother, me, then little brother against everyone else but I couldn't trust them anymore.

They were there for the second come around of this. They were sitting right there in the room and they did nothing. Not even my older brother who I know has gone through enough bad-touch moments to know better.

I couldn't trust them. I couldn't like them. They had betrayed me. My whole family. I know this sounds a bit melodramatic but that's just the sentiment I have. I can't trust them because they made me damaged.

They have damaged me so much and I doubt there is recovery from this ever. There only seems to be coping. But I don't know if I want to cope with the things that happened to me while I was growing up. Sometimes I just want to drown myself in recklessness so that I can at least pretend not to care about myself. I hate my family and I hate myself and I hate the world because we all let this happen to me and it just makes me so angry all the time.

All this anger and hurt and rage and pain and guilt just makes me feel like I don't quite belong to the human race because there's no way the rest of them burn in their center with this massive craving to destroy everything because it all just makes it hurt and the destruction will make them feel alive and whole. It seems perverted to want to set everything on fire just to be able to appreciate how alive it was.

I love life and I love existence and I love the passion and energy that is humanity but I spend so much of my life inside this contradiction.

I hate everyone and everything but in the same breath I love them all and I feel so much. I don't understand how I don't feel at ends. I suppose, though, that it's simply my nature. I hate and I love in the same breath because I feel as if with every breath I live that I die. I revel in this contradiction. It feels so human and I need that sometimes because there are moments where I'd rather see the world burn than continue on with this mass of sickening and depraved individuals that make up the glorious race I am apart of.