This blog often contains uncomfortable subject matter and occasional sexual content. If you don't want to read about it, empower yourself to close the page. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I submitted this to Dealbreaker There is a website that I read when I want to feel horrified about society. It's called Dealbreaker. People write in to share their "dealbreakers" for a potential partner, you know, the traits or behaviors that they just can't tolerate in a mate, no matter how many other positive qualities this person might have. Most of the time they are utterly stupid and shallow, and I find myself asking why I ever started reading the contents of this website in the first place. Stuff like, "You're a vegetarian," or "You used to have dreadlocks." Stuff that really shouldn't matter to someone who is willing to allow their partner to be their own person. But sometimes, there are really good dealbreakers, like "You order for me" or "You put something in my drink." These are examples of people who do awful, misogynistic or disrespectful things to their dates or loved ones. They are usually pretty funny, because the writers are so insulted that they don't hold back. It reminded me of DMark. I couldn't help but submit my own, anonymously of course. I liked it so much I decided to copy and paste it here for posterity: "Dealbreaker: You talk down to me (Also, are you a pedophile?) I know it makes some people uncomfortable to see an eighteen year old young woman with a twenty-four year old man. I thought it was refreshing that the age difference didn't bother you. In fact, you seem oddly enthusiastic about the fact that I "look like jailbait" next to you when we go out together. Creepy comments aside, I chose an older man because most guys my age are not at the level of maturity that I seek. I assumed you'd be wise in the ways of the world, having been an adult in the "real world" longer than I have. But let's get one thing straight: Just because you're six years older than me, and just because I am fresh out of high school, does not automatically make you smarter than me. The first couple of times you corrected me in that condescending tone, I let it go because I thought you were just trying to be helpful. Never mind the fact that usually when you correct me, you are actually the one who's got the facts wrong. Most of the time I don't bother to correct you because I don't want to hurt your feelings. I may be young, but I can clearly see that inside this grown man is an insecure little boy who is ashamed of his intellectual deficiencies. And I realize I'm sexually inexperienced, you being the first man I've had intercourse with and all. I know you think you're a stud, what with a whopping two more partners than I've had. But when you tried to tell me that my thighs clamped shut on your head when you hit my G-spot during the one (and only) time you performed oral sex on me, I couldn't help but correct you. No, you didn't hit my G-spot. I know from plenty of self-study where my G-spot is located, thank you very much. You'd have to have some kind of Gene Simmons super-tongue in order to reach that. You responded in that familiar, patronizing tone, "You have more than one G-spot, dear." No. No, I don't. You are thinking of the clitoris. And when I try to gently explain this to you, you refuse to accept that I'm right. Is it because I'm young, or because I'm a woman, or is it just because you're an idiot? Do you even take me seriously at all, or are you just dating me so you can brag to your loser friends about how you're banging a petite, barely legal blonde? You keep saying I look younger than my age, and how you love how small and perky my breasts are. You know, your room mate told me that you lied to me about your age, and that your driver's license says you're twenty-six. Did you think that because I'm eighteen, I'd be naive and subservient, that I wouldn't dare to stand up for myself when you treat me more like your daughter than your girlfriend? You are sorely mistaken, old man. Have fun with your creepy porn collection full of shaved, flat-chested eighteen and nineteen year old girls. I have a feeling you'll get a lot of use out of it now that I'm on my way out the door. Thanks for the mediocre sex, it was good practice for when I find a real man who respects me as an equal. From Anonymous" 10:21 p.m. - 2010-03-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why I am so batshit crazy Let me tell you why I'm crazy. I am crazy because my mother is crazy, my maternal grandmother was crazy, and so on. Generation after generation, my family has passed down very messed up notions of how a woman should behave, how she should think, even how she should feel. I come from an Anglo-Christian family and I was taught that women and girls should be modest to the point of refusing to accept compliments, and we should strive for mediocrity rather than reaching our full potential. I was raised to believe that standing up for yourself is absolutely intolerable, in fact until just a few months ago, I didn't understand that I had the option to make my own decisions. Because women in my family are expected to silently suffer while others dictate their behavior, nobody in my family makes their needs clear. Women, after all, are supposed to be self-sacrificing, to put everyone else's needs first, and theirs last. Asking someone to fulfill your needs is selfish because you should be catering to their needs instead. Since we are discouraged from stating our needs directly to the person we wish to fulfill them, instead the other party is expected to guess what our needs are. And if they fail to guess correctly, they are a terrible person, just terrible. This is where guilt and shame come in, and this is why I am so batshit insane and afraid to get close to people, or even interact with them. As early as I can remember, I had no control in my life. My mom was so reactive to everything I did, I never knew what was allowed and what wasn't. She made up new rules on the fly, when she "caught" me doing something I didn't even know I wasn't supposed to do in the first place. Imagine for a moment, being four years old, doing something completely innocent in the comfort and privacy of your own home, without a care in the world. Suddenly your mother swoops in to tell you that what you're doing is bad, that you're misbehaving, that you're "being bad" and that "you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" If you try to defend yourself, you're "talking back." If you try to say you didn't know that you weren't supposed to do that, that nobody ever told you that you shouldn't do that, you are told that "You know better than that!" or "I shouldn't have to tell you, you should have known better!" You are expected to read your mother's mind, to know what's expected of you without ever being told, and if you guess wrong, then you are a terrible, naughty kid and your mother is now "disappointed in you." Now that you are in trouble, now that your mother has established for you that you are being bad, you will remain bad until you accept the blame and apologize. Imagine being four, and not understanding why mommy is mad at you with no advance warning. You know that saying, that "mother is the word for god on the lips and hearts of all children"? Here is this woman who gave you life, who feeds you, holds you, kisses your boo-boos when you fall. Here is the woman who has rocked you to sleep since infancy, the most important person in your life, telling you that you are not a good child. Imagine the intense fear that if you don't accept that it's all your fault, she might not love you anymore. That if you don't tearfully and sincerely apologize, she might stop doing all of those wonderful things for you. You know what my mother told me once? She told me that when I was very little, I used to put myself in time-out. What's worse, is that she didn't see why that was fucked up. She thought it was cute, endearing, that her child had such a strong sense of guilt at such a young age that she would take it upon herself to administer her own punishment. As I got older I stopped forming my own personality. I was afraid to even develop my own opinions. In my family, disagreeing is considered atrociously disloyal. So is standing up for yourself or saying no, putting your needs first, or feeling angry or resentful. I became what my mother needed me to be, in a desperate effort to keep her happy, to avoid losing her regard. This was reflected in my other relationships, too. I let my friends push me around, tell me what to think, even tell me why I shouldn't feel the way I was feeling at any given time. I don't know how many times I backed down from an argument because I was told that I didn't have a right to be angry, or that I was being too selfish, too uptight, for not complying with their every wish. My desperate attempts to keep everyone happy at all times often led to even more complications, because I was trying to do the impossible. Fast forward to high school, when I just stopped trying. I couldn't possibly live up to everyone's expectations. I stopped doing homework, stopped excelling in choir, stopped drawing, stopped writing stories and eventually poetry. I decided not to attend college by junior year, because I felt that I wasn't good enough. I falsely believed that I was stupid, worthless, a failure at life, because I couldn't meet everyone's goals for me. Nevermind my goals; I simply didn't have any. I haven't even started on my father. Let's rewind back to childhood. My father is and has been an alcoholic for as long as I can remember. He is useless when drunk, and irritable and impatient when sober. Let's play that imagination game again, only this time we'll put my dad in the picture. Imagine being five, and daddy's this charismatic, friendly guy in the evenings. He gets out his acoustic guitar and sings, he plays the same old blues song on the piano all the time, he teaches you all these neat "facts" about the world (nevermind the fact that these were largely made up to fuck with me, because he thought my gullibility was cute). To you, he is the smartest man alive, and really fun to play with. Then in the mornings, it's time to wake up so he can drop you off at the baby-sitter's before he goes to work. He's different in the mornings. He's gruffer, grumpier, and not very gentle. He tries to comb your hair into something resembling a ponytail or pigtails, and he doesn't go easy on the tangles. He yells at you to hold still when he yanks your hair with the brush. If he's running late, he yells at you to "Get your Got-damn shoes on!" Imagine the confusion you would feel if this man who is the second most important in your life, this man who was so much fun last night, is suddenly yelling at you and losing his patience. Now imagine that you don't go to the baby-sitter's because dad didn't have to work today, and instead of interacting with you, he lies on the couch all day in the dark, watching old cowboy shows. You have nothing to do but sit in the family room and watch cartoons all day, or play by yourself in your room because daddy doesn't like when you make too much noise. When lunchtime rolls around, he cooks you macaroni shells with canned tomatoes even though you keep telling him you don't like it. Imagine dad storming out of his bedroom, wild-eyed and snorting like a rampaging bull, because you made too much noise during one of his four-hour afternoon naps. Fuck, imagine a dad that sleeps all day instead of watching his child! But then, on other days, he takes you out on bike rides, or on outings to the natural history museum to see all the taxidermied animals you love so much. You learn that daddy is unpredictable, unstable, and unreliable. You learn to fear his anger, and just like with mommy, you never know when he'll find something wrong with your behavior. This is common behavior in alcoholic parents, but how is a small child supposed to understand that? I didn't even realize that my dad was a drunk until I was thirteen. By then he was going to the bar almost every evening after work. He spent hours there. I used to tell myself that he just liked to see his friends and have a few drinks. But that didn't explain why he'd sometimes drink alone on the front patio, why he was drunk every night, why he acted so god-damned stupid all the time. I felt so ashamed when I finally realized that my dad was an alcoholic. I felt betrayed. I didn't want my friends to come over anymore. I hated him, and I still do. He started to realize that his daughter hated him, and he'd make snide comments, "Oh, I'm just a stupid drunk." We started fighting all the time. I felt resentful. I missed being young and naive enough to think that my dad was cool, smart, fun to be around instead of just an insufferable alcoholic. I wanted a dad and instead I had a drunk old room mate. He still liked my sisters because they were too young to understand that he had an addiction. I worked pretty hard to change it, to tell them the truth about our dad. I'm not proud of encouraging my sisters to have a relationship with me at the expense of my father. But at the time, I thought that I was protecting them from the betrayal that I had felt. I thought it was my duty as their older sister to keep them away from him. In high school, I was desperate for male attention. Since I was ostracized by my peers (which I won't even get into in this entry, because it's already far too long) most of the attention I received from the boys was negative, derogatory, and dismissive. I was a crazy bitch to them, devalued for my "ugliness" simply because at some point in elementary school, most kids had decided that "We don't like ANS." I had resigned myself to the fact that I would never get a boyfriend unless I totally abandoned my sense of self. Since I had gotten it into my head that I would never be considered attractive, I thought that my only hope was to be sexy instead. I developed a hyper-sexual persona. I became addicted to porn and bragged about it constantly. I was entirely too open about my sexuality. I dressed like a god-damned whore, with my cleavage on display and my jeans painted on. It backfired. They still didn't want me because I had made them even more uncomfortable. Anyway, BK has arrived home early and with news that he will be leaving me home alone all weekend! So now I am cutting this entry short to maybe finish later, if I remember. 7:45 p.m. - 2010-03-18 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My weird coworker So I have this older male coworker named MW. He caught me "displaying frustration" (aka immaturely slamming a door when I thought nobody was around) one day and instead of tattling on me, he acted all sympathetic. Now he works in my department for some reason. He is weird. He either stands or kneels on the floor at his desk. He never uses the chair. He's also really awkward and speaks kind of haltingly and slowly, like he's hesitating or something. That's no big deal, he's probably either shy or really introverted, or both. He makes up for it by being super nice. However lately he's made a point to talk to me all the time. Especially since last Tuesday, when he asked to borrow a CD. He flipped out when he saw my Starflyer 59 CD. I let him borrow Silver, and promised to burn him a copy when I came back from my three day "vacation". Now he won't leave me alone. I need to get my work done and instead here he is talking about music. He keeps asking what else I like to listen to even though I have already told him: more shoegaze bands that sound like Starflyer, and metal. He tells me he likes metal too, but he doesn't. He likes Christian industrial rock. He has not listed a single band that he likes that is not Christian. And he keeps trying to get me to listen to them. I have checked a few of his favorite bands out at home, and they are terrible. I think he assumes that since I like Starflyer 59, I must be into Christian rock. The thing is, I didn't know Starflyer was a Christian band at first. I just thought they were another shoegaze band, like My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, only a little sludgier and a bit more aggressive. Once I found out they were Christian, I was surprised, but I didn't let that change my opinion of them because it is some damn good shoegaze music. I can't understand the lyrics anyway, so who cares if they're secretly preaching to me? But now he won't stop talking about all these Christian bands and pressuring me to listen to them. I heard Zao in high school, man. It's not my style. I don't care how aggressive the music is. I don't care how scary that guy's death growl is. I don't care if he's singing about Christ or about murdering kittens, I still don't like the music. He likes these bands first because they are Christian bands, and second because he likes the music. I just feel kind of insulted by what I think he's trying to imply. That I need Jesus or something. Like, oh here's this very troubled girl at work, here's my chance to show her the light! Who knows, maybe I'm reading way too much into this. I'll give it some time to see if he backs off, and if he doesn't, I'll have to just come right out and tell him I'm not interested in what he's trying to sell me on. 8:24 p.m. - 2010-02-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Days of Our Shrieking Neighbors' Lives So my downstairs neighbors fight on a daily basis. I have no idea what they are so pissed off about all the time. I can never understand what they're saying. I feel like some sort of creepy voyeur, but I can't help but eavesdrop and peek out the blinds (because yes, on an almost nightly basis they even fight outside). I've become really reactive to their fighting. It's really hard to stay calm in this environment. She shrieks at him, and he talks down to her. You can hear it in his tone of voice. I read about this in those Harriet Lerner books. It's the extreme "irrational" emotional reactor versus the extreme rational "robot" reactor. She reacts to something he did or said with emotional disapproval. He then proceeds to calmly, but firmly, defend himself. His condescending tone and refusal to react emotionally really pisses her off, and her anger escalates, and she starts yelling. He then responds even more calmly. This goes on for a while until he can't stay calm anymore, and they're both yelling. And slamming bedroom doors, cabinets, closets, shower doors, drawers, you name it. They especially like to slam the front door when one of them storms out, presumably as an empty threat to leave, and then the other one follows them outside. Once outside, they stand on the porch and talk in hushed voices until one or both of them can't keep their voice down, and then they go inside to yell some more. Sometimes though, they don't both go back inside, and one of them drives off. And then sometimes the other one drives off after them? And then they come home after a while, and fight more until they fall asleep. She cries really loudly and dramatically, like someone just ran over her dog or something. I don't mean to dismiss her genuine distress, it's just that I can't imagine what she would be crying so hard about. Which is what makes me so anxious, because I do come up with possible scenarios, and I feel like someone might get seriously hurt if nobody intervenes. I know she hits him, and I'm pretty sure he hits her, too. My upstairs neighbor told BK that he saw them fighting through the window, and she reached for the first thing she could find, in this case a spatula, and hit him with it. And sometimes I swear I hear what sounds like a hand smacking skin, in the arm or the face or something. Or worse, that sickening thump of a closed fist. This makes the crying even more distressing. I called apartment security on them, and that did absolutely nothing. They went right back to fighting and screaming and throwing stuff a few days later. A few months later, when she was screaming like she was getting hit, I called the cops. Someone else had already called security on them, and they both showed up at about the same time. BK and I were eavesdropping, of course, because we are creepy neighbors with no lives of our own. He told the cop that this was really no reason for police to intervene, and that it was all very embarrassing. So it doesn't really matter what I do. They are going to keep fighting every day, and hurting each other, and if someone calls the cops, they'll both act like everything's under control. I don't understand it. That kind of life must be so depressing. How do you live with someone who puts you down all the time? How do you keep coming back to someone who you fight with literally every day? I couldn't live like that. They must have had really fucked up childhoods. I feel really bad for them. At the same time, I wish they'd just break up already so I can get some peace and quiet. 9:57 p.m. - 2010-02-12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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