I saw you walk out of the wall

fun and games with genetics ii (april 10th)

my parents used to/probably still hate-follow
my aunt's facebook feed,
and one time they dragged me over
to mom's laptop to show me
some screenshots from my aunt,
who was getting confused about why
some genealogy service
said her family wasn't german,
in spite of her maiden name
being pretty damn german.
and like, okay, my parents
could've accepted the possibility
that my aunt's family
had moved into, then out of germany
at some point, that's not impossible,
and/or that genealogy service
just kind of sucked,
either an outright scam
or a small, crappy database
of genetic information,
and really even for the major players
figuring out anything
more specific than the broad strokes
of millions of people
moving all over the place
for millennia and millennia
is a huge pain in the ass,
that service could've easily given her
a huge chunk of europe,
or some place near germany,
does she even know where germany
is on a map? or how german
bits and pieces of belgium,
the netherlands, france, austria,
denmark, hungary, czechia, poland,
etc. are? a lot to consider here,
but nah, my parents took it
completely at face value,
were really, petty, vindictive,
I don't know how to describe it,
like haha, she's not really german,
her whole family's story is fake,
unlike us, proud Scots
who are Biologically Scottish.

and I hope that gets across to you
how weird my parents are about my aunt.
and like, she's not a great person -
she's waist-deep in MLMs,
keeps trying to push her friends
into buying her supplements,
spends whatever her husband makes
on a huge house and tons of stuff
she barely uses and/or throws out constantly,
she stopped talking to my dad
over something dad doesn't even remember
a solid twenty plus years ago,
she's been trying to get my uncle
to stop talking to his own brother
and stop talking to his mom,
and she's 100% the gold cross,
holier than thou, the lord christ
told us to exterminate the vermin other,
chuck stones and build walls
MAGA southern baptist type,
I don't want anything to do with her,
and honestly not feeling that great
about my uncle or cousins either -
but with all that in mind,
with the way me and my parents
fundamentally hold her in contempt,
why are my parents so obsessed
with being better than her,
with finding the most specific ways
to mock her, a random woman
in the middle of texas
they could easily mute/block
(uh if facebook lets you do that,
I don't have an account on there)
and instead reach out to my uncle
and try to strike up a conversation?
are my parents so insecure
they have to keep proving
that they're Above her in every way
instead of, I guess, grieving
the ways she's been pulling apart dad's family,
that there really isn't much
my parents have been able
to do about it?

fun and games with genetics iii (april 11th)

sensory processing disorder is
pretty closely linked to autism,
that venn diagram's almost a circle,
and yeah, I can imagine how
feeling irritated or nauseous
by even imagining specific smells or feelings
(for me, it's always the smell of pine trees
and pressing my clipped fingernails
against squishy things like foam)
and struggling to make out people's voices,
especially in a crowd,
and freaking out easily
in stressful and/or complicated scenarios
where you need to juggle
so many sensory balls,
some of which matter more than others,
might make you more temperamental,
struggle to socialize and make friends,
take longer to pick up some skills,
(but easier to pick up other skills
that help you cope with it all),
and broadly just mess with your sense
of how to handle and navigate the world
compared to how everyone else does it.

which is all to say, with the way
my parents passed me off to
various therapists, behavioral specialists,
psychologists, an IQ tester that one time,
autism must've come up at some point, right?
especially around when I got
that sensory processing disorder diagnosis?
like hey, maybe that kid of yours
who has a habit of saying or doing
kind of baffling things,
like saying whatever they read out loud
and having meltdowns in class
because they have to talk to anyone,
to the point they're better off
staying at home taking online classes;
needs you to give them
very specific instructions
and also a reason why
before they do what you want;
gets fixated on setting up routines
and trying to Understand Everything
because they hate anything new/changing,
maybe there's something going on there?
but, as far as I can tell,
my parents never looked into
an autism diagnosis,
never followed up on any advice,
never even seemed to consider it.
at least, I never heard about it.

I could ask if the thought
ever crossed their minds, but honestly
I'm kind of afraid to?
I have an idea
what the answer might be.
like, my parents hate my aunt, right?
and part of it is that my parents
are real big health freaks,
very into working out all the time
and obsessing over these
exotic-sounding "superfoods"
because they treat nutritional science
and nutritional blogs
and random news articles
like it's all an ironclad thing
and not people throwing darts
to mad libs some answer
to the mess that is human biology,
like there's trying to be healthy
and then there's knowing
The Way To Be Healthy,
my parents are in the second group.

and my aunt is fat, she's
very self-conscious about it,
always hides behind people in photos,
but she still always eats out
and pops fried whatevers
in the microwave for the kids
and tries to manage it
with weight loss pills from her MLM
she's put way too much money into.
way worse off than my parents.
but yeah, my aunt has four kids,
two of whom have been
formally diagnosed with autism,
and I have this vague memory
of my parents telling me
that autism is environmental,
getting Poisoned by your surroundings,
not genetic, so uhhhh
it's distinctly possible
my parents used to think,
maybe still think,
my aunt ate too much ice cream
while she was pregnant
so she got punished
with autistic kids,
but me and my brothers
were raised Right and Proper,
so we're just, quirky, I guess,
eccentric, a little bit out there,
all there is to it.

fun and games with genetics iv (april 12th)

okay, there's this one time
I told my dad
I thought I was autistic.
can't really remember much
other than we were outside,
garage door open, car out,
dad was washing it or
checking on some part or
replacing some part or
some combination of those,
doesn't really matter,
but yeah, he went on some tangent
about how my maybe autism
was almost like a superpower, like uh,
how kratos's son in one of those
newer god of war games
is a half-god or something,
I don't know, he's played that game
and I haven't. even still,
what the fuck was he talking about?
was he trying to say I was
half-"normal," had all of the
good stuff, the memory
and the intelligence and whatever,
but wasn't *burdened* the way
my cousins were, with at least one
having to pretty much
stay at home supervised
for the rest of her life?
was he trying to make me feel
special and important,
that all my problems were just
balancing out my genius,
the humanity to my godhood,
and also things I could get rid of
with the power of my mind,
the way he also said
he'd fixed his childhood asthma
by growing up and
not thinking about it anymore,
and I couldn't deal with mine
because I was letting it
get to my head?

my parents still tell me
I can talk to them whenever I want,
but it's stuff like this
that makes me decide not to,
like man, I need emotional support,
maybe some financial help,
not confusing metaphors
and the lurking sense
that they think
I have the Good, or at least
Okay neurodivergences,
and really I should be happy
I got good grades
and now I get along with my coworkers,
and anything else,
any of those negative emotions
and stressful situations,
is just a skill issue,
some personal weakness
I can stoicism my way through.
which is fucking wild for me,
especially when I have to shepherd dad
because he got pissed
and now he's non-verbal,
slamming the brakes and/or gas,
looking away, glaring,
or shepherd mom when she's freaking out
about all the options on a menu
and spends forever
at the back of the restaurant
afraid to make any kind of move
or have to figure out the GPS
so she can get back home.

please think I'm cool (april 13th)

I have a hard time
getting into an argument with anyone.
I can pretend as much as I'd like
that I'm super tough, independent,
don't take shit from anyone,
a real free thinker going off
on a thousand little tangents
about a thousand little things
I have incredibly specific opinions on,
but let's be real here,
I want people to like me,
I want people to think I'm
reasonable, friendly, accepting,
calm, patient, forgiving,
even if it's someone I hate,
the idea of them running around
telling people behind my back
that I'm kind of a dickhead
over some shouting match we had,
that guts me a bit. the idea
that people I don't know,
have almost nothing in common with,
might only know about me as some
belligerent asshole, that that's
a reputation following me around
like a shadow, them not believing
that maybe I had a good reason
to pick that specific fight,
that I needed to say something
nobody else was bothering saying,
god I hate even thinking about it,
I honestly don't like butting heads
unless I feel like I have to,
please think I'm a cool person.

so half the time, even if
I probably should, I just don't
start an argument in the first place.
yeah boss, you're asking me to do
more than I'm able to handle,
you're making kind of petty comments
about how slow I'm working,
and I'm afraid to ask you
for any advice or help
because you're breaking out
that tone of voice that tells me
you're irritated I'm even asking,
but sure, whatever, I'll figure it out.
and when I do decide to argue,
I try to be as thorough as possible,
guns blazing, hundreds/thousands of words,
let me pick apart all their points
and bring up all my concerns,
I don't want to be rude here
but surely the two of us
can reach some kind of consensus.
it's like I'm playing chess,
and I honest to god lose sleep,
don't do chores, struggle to remember
why I was running around at my job
because I'm so busy
trying to figure out what they're saying,
why they're saying it,
and whether I should pick it apart
or accept at least some of it
before making my move.

and if things go on long enough,
I get to the point
my face is bright red,
I can barely hear anyone else
over the sound of my head pounding,
I'm grinding my teeth, mumbling curses,
about to scream until I pass out,
and that's usually about when
I fire out a good day to you
and burn that particular bridge,
let's not talk to each other again, or mute/block,
but I should be giving up
way sooner, like okay,
there's plenty of times
where everything works out fine,
wasn't a big deal in the first place,
the other person took the hint,
but I can usually tell from the outset
where this is all heading,
so how about I spare myself
all the grief, it's not like
they'd like me much either way,
and maybe accepting it is better
than me losing my shit like this?

people pleasing (april 14th)

it's so painful reading through
a bunch of my old forum posts
and conversations I got into
on discord servers I hung out on
a whole six plus years ago,
and see how I was so afraid
to express any kind of negative opinion,
no matter how basic, not even a
oh yeah I like this thing or
nah I wasn't a big fan of it, instead
in my opinion, I think that,
and obviously we can disagree,
really just my personal taste,
and not to be rude or upset you,
please take this with a grain of salt,
not necessarily qualified
to be talking about this thing,
you don't have to take my advice,
and let me know if you'd like me
to tone this down at all,
just an impression I got
going over this thing,
something I had rolling around
in my head for a minute there,
but it's not my favorite genre
or style or creative medium
so maybe someone else
would like this more than me,
but again, not trying to hurt you
or put you down in any way here,
hope you have a wonderful day!
I can't even find the opinion,
where did I put it, did they read it
or did their eyes just fog over,
and god, even positive opinions,
I had to make it clear that
if you don't like this thing,
that's fine!! that's good!!
whatever!! you can not like a thing
even though I liked it!!
(I mean, it's burning me up inside
because it would be awesome
if people liked the things I liked
so we could gush about them together,
but I'm not desperate enough to say that).

and part of it was just, hey,
incredibly sheltered kid
talking to anyone other than my parents
and some of the neighborhood kids
and teachers over calls/emails
for the first time in literal years,
a lot of stuff I was new to
and wanted to scope things out
before having my own opinions on them,
but also god, I was so afraid
of pissing anybody off for any reason,
losing some maybe friend,
do I even like this person that much,
who cares, don't want to scare off other people
because I said a slightly mean thing,
I don't want to die alone,
maybe if I'm cool with everything
everyone will be cool with me slipping up
by being an actual person for a second
instead of a mirror you look at
to brush yourself up and feel better
about yourself, the way my parents
flattered themselves looking
at the reflection of all their Right Opinions,
the way they scraped off/glued together
any blemishes or spots or cracks
getting in the way of their faces.

sleep pathology i (april 15th)

the last time me and my brothers
shared a room with each other
(we were crammed together
in a tiny townhouse while my dad
was trying to get a job
and the money for a house
to make moving to this state
in the middle of 2008
worth it in the end),
I'd keep bothering
my older brother late at night -
roll out of bed, walk over,
shake him, are you still awake,
hey are you up, can you wake up,
okay cool, yeah, good night,
head back to bed, repeat -
because I was so afraid
to be the last person
to go to sleep, like god
it'd just be me awake and alone
to deal with the whatever
lurking around in the dark
making the trees shake
and the wind whistle
and the floor creak
and the stair railing groan,
slipping by my parents
sleeping in their bed
and between my brothers in theirs
to reach up from under the frame
and nab me without anyone else knowing
anything was wrong at all,
and whoops, imagining that
made it way harder for me to sleep!
and I guess somehow if I was asleep
when it happened, I'd be fine,
maybe it'd just grab him instead (rude)
or decide not to bother (why),
or if the two of us were awake
we could both take it on (no)
or it'd just get scared off (how)
or whatever, I'm narrativizing here,
there's no way I was thinking
that hard about it, I was just
afraid of everything
getting all dark and quiet
and doing something that made me feel
a little less alone,
sucks for my older brother though,
does he remember me doing that,
was he even awake half the time,
did he just start sleeping through it?
not like I would've noticed,
I was happy to take a mumbled yes
most of the time.

and I'll be real here,
I can make fun of myself
for freaking out like that as a kid,
but now I'm a grown adult
with an apartment and a job,
I drive to work and pay my taxes,
I love the night because
once my eyes get used to it
it's so cool and chill,
all the soft blue-black
for me to wander around in
without having to talk to anyone,
but I still wrap myself up
in blankets so I literally
can't open my eyes and see
what could be crawling out
of the bathroom right now
oh god maybe that's not just
me moving the bedsheets around,
maybe I'm going to get ax murdered,
but as long as I lay down
a visible bump on the bed
and fall asleep/don't look
it's probably fine.

sleep pathology ii (april 16th)

I read something in a book
about how medieval peasants
would wake up around midnight
and stay awake for an hour or two
doing whatever they did, probably
wasn't hard to do some
chores, prayers, and yeah, crimes
under the light of the moon,
a candle or two blown out in time
to fall asleep or run off,
disappear until the morning.
so really it was more like
two long naps, figures, they had
their whole families to look after,
make sure nobody was trying to break in,
prep their work clothes or tools
or whatever they'd made for tomorrow,
slip out the window with whoever
and enjoy the long quiet dark
with no one around (hopefully)
to listen or look on.

and of course I was reading about that
in the middle of the night,
lights on, passing the time
until I was done panicking from whatever
nightmare had woken me up in the first place,
and/or the fear that I'd overslept,
whoops, had misread what time it was,
and now the fear of missing sleep
and being wiped out in the morning,
and also the fear of being burgled
or targeted by some serial killer,
so I had to check the bedroom lock,
couldn't lock the bathroom, I shared it
with my older brother and his room,
but I imagined that he'd hear something
and run over and lock it himself,
or, uh, I'd hear him screaming
and run over and lock it myself,
perks of keeping the lights on,
it'd either look like I was awake
or I'd wake up pretty easily,
so either they'd leave me alone
or I'd be one of the last targets,
so yeah, with all that in my head,
I'd spend a few minutes burying myself
in bedsheets, closing my eyes,
hearing my heart beat faster
the longer I noticed it beat faster,
give up, grab that book again,
repeating until I was too tired
to even notice myself falling asleep.
I read my fair share of books,
listened to music, organized things on my shelves
in between my long naps for years,
to the point I'm pretty sure I was turning on
the ceiling light in my sleep,
I'd always wake up with it on
whether I remembered doing that or not,
even when I got myself a lamp,
and ultimately it took a couple years of college
and sleeping in the dark knowing
there were so many friends
in the rooms all around me
for me to wake up, lay in bed for a minute,
and just go back to sleep.

why can't I be a computer they don't have body issues (april 17th)

like, I know logically
I'm not gaining or losing much weight -
I've been eating about the same
and running around about the same
for the last few months at least -
but wow do my feelings about my weight
change on a dime basically every day,
wearing a pair of pants
that doesn't fit like it used to?
oh god, I'm losing control of my life.
wearing that hoodie that stretches down
to my thighs? yesss, it's so cozy,
I'm so small, I can hide in it,
could probably float away on a breeze.
looking at myself from the front?
not bad, arms have a tiny bit of muscle,
stomach's sagging out a bit,
but about where I want to be.
looking at myself from the side?
oh god, everything's hanging out,
and look at all those stretch marks
I picked up over the last couple years
eating a lot of, well,
I called them white person quesadillas,
and I dipped them in blue cheese,
and had some ice cream after, why not.

and like, all that was clearly bad,
I had to put a stop to that
and learn how to make my own food
and stop stress eating (I'm still not
super sure what to do with that stress,
but whatever, finding other outlets and all),
but yeah, at this point, I'm probably fine,
I can coast off of this for the next ever,
I think I classify as overweight
but I'm pretty sure I always did,
and BMI is and has always been
an absolutely godawful index
that was never supposed to be
any kind of a rigorous medical standard,
doesn't take things like muscle into account,
and fundamentally ignores that plenty of people
have specific body types, and generally
tend to hold on to and keep a specific weight,
goes up and down a bit with time, but averages out,
and yeah, all my numbers look good,
working on some strength and flexibility stuff,
eating out less because whoops money,
but on the whole this seems to be what my body
is comfortable being, and that
should in theory be fine with me.

but uh, nope! there's still that part of me
that wants to starve myself better,
still the part of me that remembers
my parents making me stand on the scale
(and also the wii balance board stuff
that made a sad trumpet noise and your mii
would stamp the ground and look all sad
if you weren't a "healthy weight,"
does anyone else remember that?),
getting me real obsessed with the numbers
and freaking out if I was pushing overweight,
if I was closer or farther off to it
than either of my brothers,
my older brother's getting FAT but I'm fine;
remembers all the vitamins and smoothies
and superfoods and being made to run
even thought it always gave me asthma attacks;
remembers dad recording me run
to make fun of the way I moved
and make me feel guilty about it;
remembers dad talking to me quietly
by the kitchen table about how
he was worried about me eating out in college
and how I should treat diet and exercise
like an experiment, like I was a stupid baby
who needed to imagine a science
to do the thing that had been drilled
in my head for so long I'd gotten sick
of being my parents' mini-them;
remembers me laying in bed
feeling kind of sick, stomach growling,
but refusing to get up and go
to the cafeteria across the street
because my parents were visiting tomorrow
and I didn't want to hear them
make snippy comments about me
to my face.

what's prince valiant up to today (april 18th)

I must be the youngest person
in the world to have ever read
the sunday newspaper comic strips.
my parents would get a couple local papers,
pass the comics between them, smile a bit,
maybe even chortle once or twice,
then hand them off to me and my brothers.
and I don't totally know why,
but I'd spend way more time
than I really should've
going through each and every comic,
had to double-check to make sure
I hadn't missed any,
felt a bit guilty to check out
the drama ones in particular
and not remember who that person
was supposed to be,
what'd happened in the last arc,
god what even happened a week ago,
that's in the trash already,
guess I'll never know,
I'm going to be so normal about this!!

and I didn't even really like
most of those strips -
half the comedy ones
were these cobbled together
borderline clip art strips
of the same few characters
parading around the same few places
saying the darnedest things,
terrible puns, parodies
of this 1950s suburbia,
mother father daughter son
golf and church bake sales and school plays
and bike rides and baseball teams
and fourth of july fireworks,
treehouse in the backyard,
road trips around the country,
men carpooling to boring office jobs,
men watching the big game with the fellas
while the ladies hang out in the back
gossiping and sharing recipes,
all this nostalgia bait
made by and for 70-somethings
wistfully imagining a better,
simpler time when they were
too young to have to think about
anything scary or complicated;
and then on the drama end of things,
a parade of craaaaazy
villains who aren't pretty
and therefore must be evil, and crazy,
and then over there there's
a spicy bit of orientalism going on,
all hookahs and harems
and scary foreign wizard magic,
woooo aren't They so Other.
they're bad, they're so bad,
please don't read them,
unless you're doing it ironically
or as performance art or something,
otherwise don't do that to yourself.

but god I just Had to,
it was part of my sunday routine,
and god knows I love a routine,
and at some point I learned about
past vs. past perfect tense
and used comic strips/
obsessed over comic strips
to understand the time of sentences,
the has and the had and the had had,
genuinely was freaking out
over anyone mixing those tenses up
or not caring about them
because how could I tell
when things happened now??
and after a while, these strips
turned into something vaguely like friends,
familiar people doing familiar things
and playing out familiar motifs, tropes, etc.,
and that kept me reading, up until
a couple comic strips just up and said
hey the kids all grew up
and have their own lives,
the beloved family dog died
trying to pull someone from a river,
we're wrapping things up now,
and bam, replaced by a whole other strip,
or reruns that never recognized
what had just happened,
it was so weird, like god,
what do you mean they wouldn't be around
forever, that they'd just go someday,
and probably pretty soon,
the way strip after strip got removed
to make way for smaller cheaper papers
my parents just stopped buying anyways,
it was like a tiny existential crisis,
these fictional people were living
this whole life you didn't know about,
and now they're basically dead,
and you're just stuck with
the bits and pieces
you can kind of remember
about the whole thing.

the bane of college discussion groups (april 19th)

humblebragging here, but
I've had a few people tell me
they like the way I talk
when I'm making arguments,
setting up presentations,
speaking in front of an audience,
apparently I'm pretty good
at laying things out,
speaking clearly and passionately,
and summarizing things at the end.
I mean, personally I feel like
I can drone on, repeat myself,
bring back the topic at the end
because I'm afraid everybody
already forgot what I was
even talking about,
and this one professor told me
I was trying a bit too hard,
clearly trying to cram
the whole conversation in my head
and come up with some
witty comeback ASAP
(which yeah, pretty much!),
but hey, if people are happy
with that stuff in general,
feels kind of good, doesn't it?
that's a whole-ass Skill
I can bust out if I need to.

and uh, pretty sure
that's because I talk to myself
all the time. I've been doing it
as long as I can remember really,
in quiet rooms, down empty hallways,
out in parks at night,
ideally when nobody's around,
but I'm sure plenty of people
have heard me through walls
or the door of my apartment
or across the street
getting real animated,
half-shouting, dropping back down,
it's just a really easy way
for me to put my thoughts together,
kind of like poetry! like hey,
I actually have to think about
what I want to say/write down,
and then do that, instead of
wading my way through
this whole sea of words
flooding around my ankles,
grabbing my legs and demanding attention,
pulling me down into the water,
drowning me.
not that what I say or write
has to make any sense at first,
but yeah, I revise my poems
(I know, hard to believe)
and correct myself when I talk,
fix verbal typos, repeat something
until it sounds good enough for me,
figure out what's all on my mind
and if it's all related or not,
aaand yeah, act like I'm talking
to someone else, let me explain
all this stuff I already know,
let me give you the lore on myself,
I do use it to figure out
how I'm going to talk to other people,
what I'm going to argue about
if I need to argue about it,
I don't really ever improvise,
I just find an opening
and stitch together stuff
I've been ironing out how to say
for a while now, whoops,
it was a house of cards
the whole time, I just made it look
more off the top of my head
than it actually was, and okay,
thinking about all the arguments
I could have with other people,
all the things I want to have opinions about
and bounce them off of other people,
is a great way to drive myself up a wall,
but behold my very specific
and honestly kind of maladaptive power!!

yeah I was a big deal on lego dot com circa 2014 i (april 20th)

see, one of my first
real exposures to the internet
was hanging out on the lego com forums
because my younger brother was there,
we'd just seen this lego MMORPG
we'd loved get shut down,
and yeah, it seemed like visiting those forums
would give twelve-ish-year-old me a tiny bit
of that nostalgia they were craving so bad.
I couldn't, like, really make anything,
I didn't have any understanding
of perspective, arrangement, color,
all the kinds of blocks I could use,
the MMORPG had given me
plenty of presets that had been
easy to fit together,
and my younger brother had kits
and did actual research on this stuff,
but like hell was I going to learn anything,
I just scrounged together whatever blocks
my younger brother had lying in a bin
to make some blue, half above the water
oceangate nightmare you could barely see in,
had to break to open up,
and could generously fit a seated minifig in there;
other times I busted out some modeling software
and slammed brick walls together
to make tents, buildings, barricades
to plop all my/other people's characters in
and tell all these little stories,
because obviously that's what
I was really there for,
roleplaying with friends,
making a whole shared world
and going on adventures,
and using the templates
more competent people sent to me
(probably out of pity).

and I was pretty popular, I think?
at least, I sure got angry
when people posted long screeds
about being ignored by the popular crowd,
me sitting there seething like
wow maybe you should be around more
instead of yelling at me and my friends
and maybe your personality just sucks,
have you considered that huh!!
and a good part of the reason
everyone knew me is that
I felt the need to respond to
pretty much all the new posts/builds,
especially the ones from my friends.
like, I made a whole routine out of it,
spent hours churning out generic
hey wow this [x] and [y] are cool
really appreciate your stuff bye responses,
got afraid to not respond,
maybe I was afraid they'd forget about me
or someone wouldn't feel like
I appreciate their stuff bye,
at the very least it was a routine
I got anxious if I didn't do, I just Had to,
I remember breaking down and crying
out on the sidewalk by my house
because I wanted to hang out with friends
but I hadn't caught up on the forums,
and so my friends had to catch up to me
on my knees covering my eyes
not sure how to explain it to them,
not sure if I ever did.

Spoiler

ayyy thanks! about what I'm aiming for, so glad to hear it's working lol

yeah I was a big deal on lego dot com circa 2014 ii (april 21st)

maybe the first time
I ever flipped out on anyone
was over this whole contest thing
a friend set up on lego dot com.
I don't remember what it was about,
what the prize (if anything)
was supposed to be,
I don't even remember
what I submitted,
but what I do remember
is that I was in last place
or close to last place, behind
what I'm pretty sure was a TV,
like, a tiny little TV,
maybe a few blocks slapped together,
and I was so pissed
I fired off a long rant
at that friend (was it public?
not sure if there was a private chat
or DM kind of thing on there,
those forums were pretty barebones,
god, that'd be terrifying
if strangers could read it),
laying into him because I lost
to a TV? a fucking television?
he, it wasn't an apology exactly,
just kind of a hey sorry you're upset
it's not really a big deal though,
I was judging them based off of,
uhhh whatever system he used,
the thing and the story behind it,
and like, he probably just though
whatever I worked on was ugly as sin,
and he was being as nice as he could
for him being out of his depth
dealing with another emotional teenager
screaming about a lego television,
and yeah, going off what I've seen,
what I sent him probably sucked ass
and I knew it probably sucked ass
and I should've just accepted it
and accepted none of it was a big deal
and not thrown down with a friend
who didn't need to deal with my bullshit.

and it really was one of the earliest signs
that I kind of take things personally,
or, at least, take comments
on the things I make personally,
like even if it's not something
I'm putting that much effort into,
not something I care about much,
can't you see the passion in, say,
my weird scrawled out sketches
made up of wispy little lines
instead of boundaries,
can't you see I'm trying
even though I'm not really trying?!
and god forbid anyone say anything
slightly critical about my writing,
that's my Thing, that's Me, are you saying
there's something wrong with me,
you think I'm confusing or annoying
or wordy or vague, I'm a loser,
I don't belong here?!
I'm better about it these days -
I don't snap at people,
I might not be great at this,
but I've got other hobbies and a job
I know I'm pretty good at,
it's easier for me to recognize
somebody's not insulting me,
like hey, they're going
out of their way to give me advice,
I don't have to agree with it,
but that's thoughtful of them -
but I don't know if I've really
dealt with my emotions, versus
shoving them aside and coming up
with crappy coping mechanisms,
maybe I am worthless at this
and maybe I'm worthless as a person
but at least I can process
forty drinking water samples a day,
so there!!