ellenspictures

Category: Mind

  • caught in a trap… that was an elvis song, wasn’t it?

    caught in a trap… that was an elvis song, wasn’t it?

    Before the policy change (you can’t focus on my hairy legs or the white socks (in this case “anklets”)

    I get gut-aches when I’m stressed.

    I’ve endured a lot of stress, but still, when it is extra bad, I get gut aches. This didn’t start suddenly. I think that this first started when I was about 10 or 11.

    Stress starts at home – The parent child struggles

    I may have started getting stress like this when I was a kid – maybe I did have those things that I just couldn’t sort out, those conundrums of the day to day, where sometimes my mom tried to help, but when she did – telling me that everything would be alright, most of the time it didn’t turn out that way, and it was the same shit show, different day, every day.

    The issue, I’ve since realized, is that my Mom had a very limited concept of my reality. Her oversight and her policies did not fit – like they were created in another decade, more likely to have worked in a small town 15 years prior (or more). We lived in a big city. I would say that it being in the early-1960’s, and being where we lived, the culture was quite different from where my Mom had grown up, with the exception of when she was at university – but she was older then. I think that she should have known better, but, I’m not sure.

    Her understanding of my day to day was very limited to the point that sometimes, her rules made my life even more difficult. They got me bullied. Big time.

    Because of this situation, I went to extremes, at an early age, to both escape the ridicule that following her rules would bring me, and learning to shape-shift back to appearing to follow her rules by the time I got off the bus each afternoon. This was tricky, as some of the ridicule was dished out by the kids on the bus… to the last minute before I got to my stop. I look back on those days and shiver… Truly.

    This was the beginning of the time of my life that I would never want to repeat – grades 6-12. Ok, maybe grade 12, things changed somewhat, but certainly through grade 11. Total living hell.

    Yeah – that was me just before fourth grade – that’s how my Mom wanted me to look – maybe forever? Maybe until end of 12th grade? Who knows? Dig the white crew socks that I tried to make look like knee highs, oh, and that hat – those were “a thing” back then!

    Back then the policy created by my Mom, that dictated my dress code was: “not allowed to wear make-up” “must wear socks” “not allowed to shave legs, or armpits”.

    OK, the situation was that I was well into puberty. I had dark brown hair. My mom tried to dress me like I was in 3rd grade. Even in 3rd grade I didn’t want to wear what she put out for me to wear each day. I became very rebellious. This got me into trouble. Let’s say that we spent a lot of time struggling, but to no avail.

    In retrospect, I suspect that these were the seeds of my learning to troubleshoot problems, and build solutions! Put a difficult problem in front of me – given enough time, I’ll figure out the solution!

    The daily living hell

    As you could imagine, the kids at school made fun of my “hairy legs”, told me I looked ugly (no make-up), called me names that I can’t remember as I have blocked them out of my memory, and of course, wearing the white socks didn’t help with the vision of my hairy legs – complete with the dorky shoes (my Mom insisted I wear “tie up shoes” aka “Oxfords” vs. the ever popular penny-loafers, because they gave me “more arch support”. This was Texas, honey, not Boston! Let’s say that her ideas about fashion for a junior high aged girl were not aligned with reality.

    This was the age of the rock and roll emerging from England! Twiggy! Eye-lashes! Mini-skirts! Revlon “Frosted Malt” and “Sugar and Ice” lipstick. Carnaby Street! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Hey you, get off of my cloud! You get the picture.

    White socks, dorky shoes, hairy legs, no make-up, along with home-made clothes – in a school where how you looked was a top thing of importance – and there was a merciless “in crowd” that relished giving people that didn’t fit their “criteria of looks for acceptance” a cruelty filled hard time.

    I’m surprised I didn’t jump out a window or slit my wrists – oh right… we had a one-story house, and I had no access to razors (not allowed to shave my legs or armpits, remember?).

    Oh yeah, one last thing – I had achieved the puberty level, and I hadn’t been allowed to wear a bra. That was the icing on the cake.

    I walked around thinking, “kill me now.”

    Oh, and did I mention that my chunky figure didn’t help? Back then I was also taller than most of the boys, and had my paternal family’s genetics that trended heavy to extremely heavy. Thankfully, mostly, I was just heavy. Chunky, as they called it.

    The plan

    OK, so what I decided to do, with the aid of some close friends, was to figure out how to (1) buy some lipstick and eyeliner, at least, (2) try to talk my mom into the loafers or at least Keds sneakers, and (3) devise a plan to put on make-up, off load the socks, and get myself together for facing the tough crowd, then (4) unroll all of that at the end of the bus ride home at the last possible moment so that I could blitz off the bus with little attention.

    This is what you call, “classic sneaking”. That was the solution that I put into practice and did so for the better part of the last semester of sixth grade. I figured that as long as I didn’t get caught, I could work on my Mom over the summer months to get her to allow me to do those things, and to continue to work on her (badger), enduring the fights that we would have, until I wore her down and got my way.

    The Summer Break

    Let’s say that this was interesting, and as it turned out, in her counsel with my Dad’s boss’s wife, who had three older teenage girls, the advice to my Mom was, “pick your battles…the ones ahead are going to be much more difficult, and these things you’re insisting on are not helping, and trivial by comparison.”

    So, in her fashion of listening to older women, who were financially better off and a member of the right clubs, and whose husband was her husband’s boss, she issued the revised policies for my dress code – finally – before the school session resumed.

    Oh, and also, while I was attending church camp. the girls there, “helped” me shave my hairy pits and legs! I got home and synchronicity happened! The rule change + I had already had my first shaving session.

    School again

    So it went. That part improved, but in seventh grade, more stress emerged. I got gut aches. I got head aches. I had my “monthly” to deal with, that caused more “gut aches”. I was in a swirl. Eventually, I did get used to this – these never went away. My Dad told me about “Tums”. Those helped. But at the end of the day, stress management wasn’t a thing back then. It was just “deal with it the best that you can” oh… and take Tums for the tummy!

    Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!- end of seventh grade – chunky monkey – but the belly button showed and NO SOCKS + wore makeup! Dance party – crazy!

  • Another one bites the dust… Maybe we really weren’t friends…

    Another one bites the dust… Maybe we really weren’t friends…

    In my life, friends have come and gone – some really have gone, but that’s another subject for another day…

    When you look back on your life, you reflect on your actions, the setting, and mostly, the people, at least I do that. Who was there…what we did…the memorable conversation… And what? It ended, we moved on or we maybe still have some semblance of a relationship. We can think back and go, “Oh, that was really a great time..” Sometimes we forget about most of the bad parts of our episodes in life, thinking that things were hunky-dory, then someone else who was there brings up that thing that wasn’t so hunky-dory – and so it goes – everyone has their own perspectives.

    And then, there are the aspects of aging and the memories (the old noggin hard drive is getting packed with them) – and the memory capabilities – apparently, from about 40, it goes downhill from there – yet many people have very good capabilities of retention of certain memories, and zilch for others – selective…

    Then there’s the replay that we cannot seem to control. Over and over it plays, keeping us up at night when the sleep robbers are most active…

    When I think of a twenty-plus year relationship, and then suddenly you realize that it wasn’t what you thought it was, it’s that Winnie-the-Pooh quote:

    ” When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

    It’s how it is when this happens… What your premise was, is not what the other person’s premise is and suddenly, you find out in a situation whereby you go, “Wow. Really?” Then you must process that, come to grips with it, like anything else, it’s a “change management” process that your mind must go through – your emotions included – to adjust. Here we go again.

    Then, there’s the ego threat – am I right, am I wrong, is it “no-fault”? Is there any peace? Yes. There might be some peace, but you have to work for it.

    Existential Thought of the Day: “If I just sit here and be quiet, will anyone call? Will anyone write? Will I just eventually disappear?”

  • besides the state of our extremely chaotic world, everything is fine.

    besides the state of our extremely chaotic world, everything is fine.

    It doesn’t seem that long ago that things were not this crazy. In fact, it seems that about 5 years ago, things were not this crazy. NOT THIS CRAZY. I repeat.

    We had a calm guy for a president of the US. He followed process and when he made an announcement, it was over something extremely important – not this nonsense of tweeting things every day, sometimes many times a day (or night) – taunting people or firing them – using social media.

    But there were always those who fed him into their conspiracy theory machine, certain that he was the spawn of evil – and when you think about it, there has always been a conspiracy theory machine. Always.

    There was probably some sort of caveman conspiracy theory – like lights in the night sky appearing out of nowhere — or big green lizards who ate people — or that the world was flat and that you would fall off of it into some sort of terror-packed place, somewhere off the cliff of the edge of the world.

    Jesus help us.

    It’s a relief to travel, to get away from all of this for a bit…but you find that this narcissistic monster is the topic of conversation everywhere you go. Everyone is so curious. People away from here have their own opinions and there is no end to the spin.

    And… what can we say? We’re sorry… We’re embarrassed…

    Compare and contrast. It would be good to know how many who voted for him are sorry they did. I’d imagine that when asked if “she whose name is rarely spoken” was running again, she likely said “NO FUCKING WAY.”

    But, it was reported more politely than that “she” would not be running again. Why would she? Who wants to endure that torture? I wouldn’t.

    So many opponents are stepping up on the other side – but, who can beat the monster? That is the question. Will they be able to come together to defeat this horrid man and his reign of terror? If they don’t what will the next 4 years be like?

    Thinking about history, there were despots who ruled for literally decades – and the families of despots who were full of the same stuff from which the despots were made. Take “Kim” for example. There’s a piece of work. And his father before him. Holy Moly! And he is just a kid.

    This is the stuff of science fiction horror fantasies, and yet, you can’t make this shit up. “This is some weird shit!” Saith “W” at the Inauguration that was attended by the exaggerated number of people. Lying pieces of shit is what I say. And yes, weird, thanks for that insight, “W”!

    Ask someone why they support this abomination of a president. The answers are from Fox News. Everyone’s source of predigested opinion… There is a list of “reasons” – probably must have a login to access it.

    Think of it. He is – a veritable cartoon – and not a nice one – who sits in the seat, but resembles no other president – even “Tricky Dick” looks less like a dick than this guy – “Dick” pales by comparison – and he was, at the time, a very upsetting creepy guy who, if not stopped, could have done some unsavory things – geezy-weezy – probably nothing like this. He couldn’t have thought of this. He may have been unstable, but he wasn’t “MENTAL” most of the time. Not like this guy.

    And, Tricky Dick wasn’t able to play “video games” on a whim. And he probably didn’t stay up all night drinking Diet Coke, in his bathrobe, tweeting away. This guy could blow up the planet if given half a chance – or cause it to be blown up… The insight is that most people have now recognized him for what he is and are no longer shocked at what he does. It’s more of an eye rolling exercise these days. You can see it in the eyes of the beholders. They say “Seriously? Just stop now. You’re ridiculous.” At least that’s what they want to say… You can tell.

    It’s like an episode out of the Twilight Zone. Seriously. What was the one where everyone had to be nice to the little boy because if he imagined something horrible happening to someone, it would happen?

    The recent op-ed by James Comey was chilling – his assertion that the behavior of the cabinet members changes in order to survive – or else, they’re out. They either resign or get kicked out by the king of turds. Nobody seems to have the bravery to band together to stop this miserable excuse of a human being – even the party members of the legislature are unable to stand without fear – it’s a truly Adolf situation. When, if they all banded together and said, “enough already”, he couldn’t do a thing to them. Or could he? I keep waiting to hear that somewhere, there are bodies buried. Gangstas.

    Just who supports him now? That’s the question. What is the profile of voters or would-be voters?

    I have a good idea… But, at any rate, it suffices to say that we are going to have to press ourselves into voting with our core values in huge numbers (the reasonable ones) – or else… who knows?