Struggling long
term with abuse as a child, detaching from it and living inside of my head,
inside of some kind of made-up world I made to feel safe and okay, was my only
option of survival. I didn’t have anyone to turn to, I could tell nobody cared
if I was in distress or pain, I plunged into my own fantasies and stayed there
as long as I could. However, doing this long term caused a side effect, I was
starting to lose any emotion connected to the real world. I would live my life
like a zombie, not caring about anything, not being able to feel a thing. I
would only feel like I’m alive while inside of the fantasy, and anything else
was irrelevant, it might have been non existent.
I would stay
emotionless zombie for months, and it would scare me. I would eventually
realize that I can’t feel anything, that I have no emotions. It made me feel
even less human than I already felt. I ended up doing anything to regain some
sense of feeling, some sense of care, because I was turning into a person I
didn’t like, or want to be. It would take weeks, or even months to somehow make
myself normal again, to make myself indulge with anything in real life, because
real life proved terrifying and unbearable, but living without emotions wasn’t
bearable either.
And so I went thru
all this alone, not having anyone to talk to, to admit that I was going thru
something that scared me, that I didn’t know why it was going on. I remained
cautious for a long time not to lose my emotions, not to turn into a zombie. I
could tell it wasn’t what I wanted for myself. And finally, I forgot all about
it. Because it was another fairly traumatic thing for a child to go thru, and I
couldn’t comfortably think about it until I was ready to admit that my life was
filled with horrors. I’m sharing it now because I’m certain I wasn’t the only
one struggling with this. If you remember a similar experience, share it with
me.
@tinawiththeglasses Hdjskdhfkdjs Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac is an actual historical figure, a libertine, who wrote Les Etats et Empires de la Lune and du Soleil, inspired by Lucian’s True History – and basically the books are constantly saying “wtf is going on”. Rostand wrote his play inspired by the character ahaha !
Frédé (Frédérique Baulé, 1914 – 1976) was called the “Amazon of Parisian Nights” and “Queen of Paris Lesbians”.
Twenty-two-year-old Frédé was working in the famous underground cabaret, Le Monocle, in Montparnasse. Marlene Dietrich, at the time the best-known and best-paid actress in the world, falls for deeply shy Frédé. In 1936 they embark on a relationship which witnesses say looked totally unbalanced, but it continues for more than 20 years, as evidenced by their correspondence.
Soon after meeting, Marlene set Frédé up in business with a nightclub called La Silhouette (after Marlene’s favourite bar in Berlin). It became known as Chez Frédé and catered to lesbians and cross-dressing women, but also to celebrities.
Errol Flynn describes Frédé in his autobiography:
“She dressed better than any man I had ever seen. … her overall effect that of a sophisticated English schoolboy. Her man’s haircut looked better on her than on any man.”
La Silhouette did so well that in the late 1940s Frédé moved to a larger place, Carroll’s.
Frédé had a number of passionate relationships, and then she met American Marilyn Leff (Miki), seen above. In the 60s the trend of discotheques killed the cabaret, and the deeply loving marriage of Frédé and Miki killed the customers’ fantasy of seducing the mythical butch. Frédé and Miki swore fidelity and stayed together till the end. Frédé was diagnosed with leukaemia and moved with Miki to an old barn in Mareil-le-Guyon where she kept busy painting and planning her next club. She passed in February 1976, just before its opening.
do you think ants get confused when they accidentally get on buses and end up really far away
Fun fact: if ants enter the territory of another colony, the other colony will smell that they’re different and rip them to pieces.
unless that colony happens to belong to the vast, interconnected megacolony of argentine ants that extends across the americas, europe, and japan; the members of which will interact with and accept ants from the other branches far more readily than ants from other supercolonies (unless unless they’re from one of the smaller subunits of the megacolony, in which case they might react aggressively which is super interesting)
a friend of mine told me about her friend i think from high school who was gay but not out, and he pretended for a while to have a girlfriend named Amanda who he would go see a lot, and they’d be all, come hang out with us and he’d be like sorry I’ve got a date with Amanda, and they were like when are we gonna meet this Amanda??? anyway he kept this up for like a year until he finally came out; and when his friends were like, “wait, what about Amanda?” he said, “IT’S A MAN, DUH.”
i have literally never admired anyone’s commitment to a joke more
Mormons have some kind of list of which houses NOT to stop at; they will pass you by when they are out doing their missionary thing.
From the corner window, I saw two young guys in the white shirts and the ties walking up the block towards my sidewalk. Then they passed by and went up to the next house.
I assume it’s because I engaged the last pair of Mormon missionaries with questions: why no one ever told them the truth about old Joe Smith who was a conman arrested twice in New York before he invented Mormonism, why a supposed divinely-inspired text would be full of untruths about Native Americans, how old Joe Smith’s doctrine of religious polygamy was an attempt to bamboozle people who thought he was immoral for marrying several young girls …
I also assume they reported my questions back to their mission leader and he (well, it would be a he, wouldn’t it, knowing Mormon views of women in leadership) must have put my address on a no-go list to avoid the chance that I might contaminate the faith of a future Mormon.
Poor kids. They are lied to their whole lives. Poor me, I missed my chance to enlighten a couple of ‘em.
LOL They absolutely do X your house. My dad was a shift worker and they once woke him up about 30 minutes after he’d gone to bed. He answered the door, naked as the day he was born and furious, and threatened to strangle them all with their ties. They never ever returned–and my parents lived in that house for 25 years.
oh lord what a great story! Glad I wasn’t there to see it, though 🍑
Piling on:
I lived for a while in a communal household with a bunch of people who rescued animals, and for a while we had this incredibly sweet Burmese python named Dolores that we were caring for. She rebounded from neglect very quickly and was basically a joyful and energetic bundle of sunshine, but she’d had mites and they were hard to get rid of. Treatment includes coating the snake with olive oil and waiting an hour, which causes the mites to suffocate. Now, it’s not a good idea to put an eleven-foot long greased snake into a glass habitat, so the best bet was to hold her for the hour. This was a formidable task, as Dolores weighed almost seventy pounds, but as i am a robust and muscular individual i stripped down to my underpants, picked up Dolores, and went about my business in a very slippery and greasy way (i was test-fitting new fangs for halloween).
Which was when the mormons stopped by. My housemates had seen them from the front windows, which was why they insisted i answer the door.
Me, befanged, mohawked, tattooed, pierced, greased, naked except for a ripped and sagging pair of drawers and an enthusiastic and friendly seventy-pound oily snake: hi!
Dolores, who was really having such an awesome day: new friends? yes? hello? you have treats?
Mormons: sorry wrong house. (they actually turned whiter i did not think that would have been possible)
Me (to housemates): keep an eye out for the assembly of god folks, okay? we might as well do this right.
One of my SCA buddies was dressed to go to an event when the Mormons knocked. He answered the door in his black, hooded cloak, long knife strapped on, and then looked back and called, “Brothers! The sacrifices have arrived!”
As you might imagine, those were the last Mormons he ever saw at that house.
Not as dramatic as the above stories, but my stepdad was once moving into a 2nd story apartment and the Mormons dropped by. My stepdad, always on the hunt for an opportunity to be “a cheap bastard,” asked if they’d help him move his couch up the staircase. To their credit, they did help move the couch … but strangely enough he never got visited by the Mormons ever again after that day.
Wasn’t present for this as it happened before my birth, but it’s something of a family legend.
It was springtime during the years where my grandfather was making a go at being a farmer again, post retirement from the telephone company. Part of this was raising goats, so there were many baby goats bouncing around.
My grandparents had also just gotten a load of gravel delivered with the intent of covering the driveway with it. That hadn’t happened yet but the family children had leveled off a sort of plateau in the big pile while playing.
Enter the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
My mom was tasked with restraining Grandma’s gangster dogs, Clyde, Mugsy, and Ralph who were all offering to chase off the intruders very vocally. This landed my mom a front row seat for what went down next.
Grandma Sharon listens to the whole pitch very enthusiastically, smiling and nodding along. Eventually they get to the end and ask if she would like to attend services with them.
“Oh we’d love to,” she replied with her best, most innocent of smiles. “And in return we’d like you to come worship with us! We’re sacrificing a goat to Diana at the full moon!” And she swept her arm out to point at the impromptu rock pile alter.
As my mom says, “never saw two people leave so fast. And they never came back.”
Alas, I was never willing to do more than just explain I had a morman relative, was pagan, had read the book, and had no interest in converting. But should you want to be taken off the list, Mormons are told not to talk to people that have no interest in converting and are inclined to debate Christian theory, Mormonism, or really anything that might inspire doubt in the missionaries.
Jehovah’s Witnesses also have a list. I got my house off it once because I knew the two who came to the door. I did not know they were JW, I just knew they tipped well.
Mostly they were just thrilled to actually meet my dog (telling stories about your dog and how great she is while making coffee earns you better tips if you do it right) and then offered to take me off the list.
I know not as exciting as the other stories but Sybil was a great dog.
You: I lived for a while in a communal household with a bunch of people who rescued animals, and for a while we had this incredibly sweet Burmese python named Dolores that we were caring for.
Me: However this story ends, I will love it.
When I was an exchange student I always pretended i couldn’t speak the language to the JWs. Now I pretend I don’t speak English.
That sounds like a great idea
What if you talk to them about The Book of Mormon or answer your door and start singing?
medusa-avenging-squad 