Why We're Bowing Out of Blog Hops
By
Cie Cheesemeister
Head Buttmunch in Charge of Team Netherworld
Prompt used:
Note:
For the foreseeable future, Team Netherworld will not be participating in blog hops. We'll still be utilizing writing prompts because they help our productivity, and we appreciate these.
There are several reasons for this, and one of them will be explained in the form of a lazy-ass cut and paste originally published at Poetry of the Netherworld.
To boil it down, the big reason is me.
I am very tired and probably very depressed, although it isn't the type of depression that completely sidelines a person. I'm still working, and my job is part of my problem. I don't have the option to quit, so don't even suggest that. Nor do I have the option to take a hiatus.
I don't need to "change my meds." I love how that's the first thing most people suggest to a person dealing with depression. The only "med" I take is a low dose of Lithium, which is a naturally occurring mineral salt. Everything else I take is a natural supplement, i.e. 5 HTP, B vitamins, a mega-dose of Vitamin D, EFA's, and magnesium, which serves multiple purposes. The Magic Meds (SSRIs and the like) make me psychotic, which I never have been even before I started treating my bipolar. Strangely, I don't like being psychotic, so, I'm not going to take them. End of story.
So, what does this have to do with participating in blog hops?
The team started doing so in order to interact with people outside our very tight little circle. But at this point it just makes me feel like I'm being put under a microscope. It stifles my creativity. I've noticed that when I really let my emotions come out, either people get uncomfortable and don't comment on the work, or they say insensitive things. I'm really not up to dealing with either of these issues.
I used to be part of a little blogging community that had a very friendly and welcoming repartee. We would leave clever and often humorous comments on each other's work. We would address the characters rather than picking the work apart. We would sometimes create things based on each other's work and keep the flow going. It was a wonderful experience, but it ended badly. I've always hoped to recreate a similar experience, and thought that maybe blog hops were the way to go.
Sadly, I've found that most of the world is very closed-minded, even among creative types.
I want to be able to be unfettered, to actually create what I want to create no matter how outlandish. I don't want to feel scrutinized.
Also, I haven't felt much up to returning visits recently. I simply don't have the energy or the will. I know how that sounds, and it sounds bad. I don't want to be like that. So I figure it's better just to back off.
We may occasionally participate in some of the smaller hops. For general purposes, however, we are on hiatus.
I know that this increases my aloneness, but I have come to feel alone even in a crowd. I marvel at the fact that with seven billion people on the planet, it is still possible to feel completely alone.
You can stop reading here, or you can go on and read the rest, which goes "off the rails." If you aren't willing to consider things from a metaphysical perspective, please stop here, because I really am not in the mood for 3D logic when it comes to emotions.
I wish everyone well. Maybe I'll see you around.
The bits below explain things further.
~Cie~
I need to watch out for me
I am not a curiosity
I was not made as a target
For your scorn and scrutiny
You put me under the microscope
And study me like a disease
You think you've sussed the freak
But the truth is, you can't see
My complexities
My insecurities
You don't know a thing
About me
You think it's your right
To judge and ridicule
What I love
The depths thereof
You've branded me a fool
You think that makes you cool
"Come and share," they said
But what they neglected to add
Is "those who are normal and happy"
"Don't bother if you're strange or sad"
I don't belong in this world
But I can't be anything except me
I know no-one will ever understand
I know that no-one will ever see
I am me
I feel what I feel
I love what I love
I am what I am
And I always will be
I'd rather walk alone
Than live a lie
~Cie~
Prompt used:
Alone in a Private Hell
An amicable soul, in some ways childlike
Unadorned and understated, sometimes silly, never frivolous
In some ways always lonely and misunderstood
Now trapped within a mind like a house long abandoned
Where the light of love cannot touch the soul-crushing loneliness
~Cie~
Notes:
We are currently not participating in blog hops although we still like to use the writing prompts.
I personally am not really up to doing much in the way of return visits, and it's kind of rude to ask people to visit me if I'm not going to visit them back.
I'm also not much up to having me or my work be scrutinized right now.
I'm sick and tired of being the crazy person getting the conciliatory pat on the head.
"There there, Crazy Cie. Isn't it nice that you express these feels of yours through your art? Aw, how broken you are. So glad I'm superior to you."
I'm tired of having it be implied that the way I feel is somehow wrong or childish or sick and twisted.
I'm tired of having it implied that there should be a time limit on my grief.
I'm tired of it being implied that my every thought is due to my fucking brain chemistry.
I'm tired of being told that I shouldn't express my heart because the soul is an outdated concept.
I once had a (sanctimonious) person ask why I publish what I write if I don't want to receive "constructive criticism" on it.
Well, I didn't publish it for you, Asshole.
I publish it on the off chance that there's someone out there who's like me; someone who's adrift in a sea of misunderstanding, who may really need to hear what I have to say, to know that they aren't the only lonely, misunderstood weirdo in the Universe.
That is who I do it for.
Then I do something else.
I read it aloud to the man in the picture above.
I'm not in the room with him, so I'm not reading it where his physical ears can hear it.
I read it to his soul.
Because he's lonely and afraid and doesn't know what's happened to him.
So I hope his soul can sense that someone cares about him, and maybe he'll be a little less afraid and sad.
I do this, and I believe it may help, because I choose to believe it does.
The end.
He would actually get this better than most people.
Which is one of the big reasons why I've loved him for the past 38 years, and will for all time.
AFTERTHOUGHTS:
I love Malcolm Young.
Interpret that any way you want. I really don't care.
Go ahead and interpret it as meaning I want to fuck his brains out and nothing more than that. That's the way most people interpret it when someone says the word "love." There are no nuances, no subtleties, no beauty, just rutting. It's a soulless and discouraging interpretation. If I meant "I want to bang the man," that's what I'd say and be done with it. I wouldn't be inspired to write poetry for him.
Now, let me put in the nuances so those who have souls can understand.
I was twelve. I was horrifically bullied.
I had a few friends. The main draw for the friendships may have been smoking pot and sneaking liquor, but they were friendships.
One of these friends had a brother who was a few years older. He was a nice guy, though most people probably thought of him as a burnout. He was in high school. I thought he was the coolest person.
He had these records. It was harder music than I usually listened to. I liked it. I liked the "fuck the establishment" attitude. More than that, I liked the attitude which said "welcome freaks. We're freaks too. Come party with us."
There is nothing normal about this, and that made me happy. To me, normal had come to mean cruelty from others and feeling ostracized. I did not like normal. I'm still not keen on it, but at that juncture of my life, my distaste for normal was even more pronounced.
Never content to leave things on a surface level, I needed to find out more about these fellow freaks who lived half a world away. What I found out about them made me love them even more. Keep in mind, this was happening in the late 1970s. There was no Internet to assist in my research. I had to go to record stores and magazine shops, some of which were very seedy places.
Even though I've always enjoyed learning, I had no use for school, which is a place where I endured hatred and reinforcement of my already low self-esteem. I kept up with my schoolwork but started cutting classes. We'd go to the houses of people whose parents were working and get high and listen to music. I was closing in on thirteen, and my fancies turned to love. I loved a guy named Jason who was two years older than me and thought of me as a little sister. And I loved this man.
Mr. Bon Scott and his kilt, folks
There's a meme going around Tumblr which asks participants to name someone you'd fuck, someone you'd marry, and someone you'd party with. I've always been a good girl, despite the rumors circulating about me back in 1977, which were really ugly. I wouldn't fuck someone whom I wouldn't marry. So, if you asked young Cie who the answer to these questions would be, the answer to the first two would have been the same: Bon Scott. The answer to the third would have been "the members of AC/DC, duh!"
Introspective, understated, shy Malcolm
Research led me to realize that I had a kindred spirit in Malcolm Young, the brains behind the band I loved so much. If you blinked, you might miss him. He was the one on the periphery, the one that people tended to overlook. He and I would be the ones lurking in the corner at a party, the ones the more raucous folk don't really think about. People like us find it hard to speak up without a little shot of courage--or six.
I would later find out that we had more in common than I even realized back in the day. Struggles with depression being the big one, although he's never self-injured as I have. I don't know about the suicide ideation aspect, although it wouldn't surprise me. He's tenacious as hell, which means he never would have carried it out.
I'll eat my shoes if this man didn't deal with OCD issues. Certain aspects of his behavior scream "OCD." Takes one to know one.
Young Cie envisioned Malcolm as the platonic friend who would help her win the heart of his bawdy buddy, Bad Bon.
I am now being arrested for abusing alliteration.
In retrospect, Malcolm would be the better catch for someone with my personality. However, people tend to pursue things that are obvious. If these people were fires, Bon would definitely be a bonfire. Malcolm is a slow-burning ember. Subtle things are easy to overlook.
Things come and things go, but my love for these people has been a constant. I suppose that people who have a better support system in their life can't understand how devastating it was for me to discover that someone who has meant so much to me is dying in an absolutely horrific fashion.
In spite of the messages drilled into us that getting old is something to be reviled, there's actually no shame in aging. It happens to all of us. Aging isn't the problem. These guys are great. They look fine. You aren't going to be 25 forever. It shouldn't be expected that you have to look 25 when you're sixty. There's nothing wrong with being sixty.
I have worked with people with dementia for all but five years since 1988. Dementia is not a slow, gentle fade into twilight. It is a descent into hell. It is killing me to know that this person is in hell.
At the time when this picture was taken, he was already having trouble recognizing people he'd known for years, including the man touching his shoulder: his brother.
The expression of tenderness in this photo is beautiful and heartbreaking.
In any case, I want to be able to express my feelings, to give my own peculiar gifts to a person who touched my life and hope that on some level he feels what I wish to impart. I need to be able to be myself. Putting myself up for scrutiny does not allow for that.
I hope people will give me the courtesy of trying to understand my point of view, even if what I'm feeling is foreign to them.
I wish you all well. You may see me here and there, not that I imagine I'll be terribly missed.
~Cie~
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