68 posts tagged “qotd”

Would you rather have one best friend or ten acquaintances? Why?

One best friend, hands down.  I've got acquaintances out the ying-yang, but those aren't the sort of people you can call on when you're staring down your razor or watching a bus come whizzing down the street towards you.  They are the people who as a last-ditch effort to not be alone might consider calling you, but then decide against it and just go out to the bar alone.  Best friends won't walk away from you when you're melting down and they don't dismiss it when you say that you think you're broken.

When was the last time you were disappointed?

Yesterday.  I'm extremely glad that my dad and Tem helped me celebrate my birthday, but with them being the only two, it just made me feel very alone and really angry that not one of my "friends" in "real life" even thought to message me.

Have you ever burned yourself?

Oh, lots of times.  As a matter of fact, I just did it again last night.  I've got a new inch long 3rd degree burn (all blistery bubbly and whatnot) on my forearm because of a baked potato pan.

When I was really young, my sister dropped a lit lamp on my leg and I got this round blister that was probably an inch in diameter, and my mom told me it'd heal faster if I popped it, so I did... and it got infected because you're not supposed to pop it...

Rargh.

What would you like written on your tombstone?

I actually plan on being cremated, but my siblings insist that I have a grave marker anyway, so I want something weird written on it.  Like, "I like bananas.  Bananas are good."  or "I am the terror that quacks in the night."  I don't want to die and then have everyone trying to remember me as someone that I wasn't.  I am a weird, random person, and I always will be.  After I die, I don't want people to sit there and try to convince themselves that I was normal.  And I know that my family is going to do that.  They're going to sit around and try to make it seem like I wasn't the little freaky outcast even among them and so my little grave marker is going to be my last little hurrah to make sure that I am who I am, even after I've moved on to the next time around.

What question do you hate being asked?

1.  Are you coming to mom's?

2.  Have you decided you're into girls yet?

3.  Are you really wearing that?

I haven't been to my mother's house in 5 years.  I've been openly into guys since I was 13 years old.  I have a weird sense of fashion that is more concerned with being comfortable than being trendy and I don't think I should have to apologize for that; if I want to go outside in a cape with a wand tucked behind my ear, I'm allowed to do that because I am an adult and my painted-on whiskers look wicked.

If you had to teach something, what would you teach?

I'm going to school to be an English teacher.  It was a toss up between that or applied mathematics.

What keeps you up at night?

A lot of things.  The voices.  Fear.  Nightmares.  Inadequacy.  Being alone.  Pain.

I am not ready for a lot of things.  I'm definitely not ready to be a grown-up, and I'm definitely never going to be able to fit into what society has dubbed as normal, and that does make me anxious, and it does scare me and it does make me feel incredibly, absolutely alone.  And the things that make me different: the voices that whisper to me, more clearly when I'm on the verge of sleep; the people and objects that I sometimes see that aren't there; the fact that I could do so much and haven't done anything--they keep me up for hours, tossing and turning and trying to find some sort of equilibrium.  There are things that I know... and so many others that I don't know... and all of them warring for my attention the second that I stop concentrating on everything else.  It's why I keep busy.  Why I would volunteer to work all the time or tutor people or study any number of other things.  Just anything to keep me from really getting down to the things that bother me.  To keep me from being left alone with the parts of me that I can't share.

I just want to move on.  I keep thinking that if I can just get to the place I'm supposed to be then things will be okay.  I'll sleep normally.  I'll at least be able to function in normal society.  But I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be.  And every time I think I'm close, something goes wrong and I end up even farther away.  

What challenges in life have you conquered and emerged from a better person?
Sponsored by Nature Made.

I've survived.  Of course, that probably doesn't seem like a lot.  I mean, most of the time, it doesn't seem like all that great of an achievement to me.  Lots of people survive.  Lots of people survive a lot worse things than the things that I've been through.  

The way I see it, though, is that no two troubles are the same.  Circumstances can be similar, challenges can be set in the same terms, and yet it's never the same.  

I was not molested by a trusted family friend, my parents did not chain me up in the closet and feed me table scraps, I was not any more neglected than the next kid from a big family.  Which makes my life seem incredibly easy to survive, you know?  No severe physical trauma, no birth defects, no learning disabilities, just... me.

So what does it matter if I survived?  So far, I've not even faced any challenges.  But everyone's life is an overall challenge, we just have different smaller (and not so small) challenges along the way.  But surviving long enough to consider these sort of questions is pretty hard for a lot of people, and the fact that I've managed to do it surprises me sometimes.  

So, my little challenges that've made it so hard to survive up until now: physically, emotionally, and psychologically abusive siblings.  The loss of my twin.  Being disowned by a parent.  Being gay.  A total loss of self.  Depression.  Anxiety.  Nervous breakdowns.  Being outcast to the point where I quite literally had nobody that I could even consider a friendly face.  Rape.  Being mugged.  Permanently damaging my ACL (it's a tendon in your knee, damaging it affects your ability to do almost anything physical on it until it's fixed, usually by surgery.  I never had the surgery.).  Asthma.  

And I'm sure there's more, they're just too little to even remember.  The thing is, we're challenged.  Every day.  Every hour.  Every minute.  Every second.  Life pushes us, and we've got to push back or we'll be pushed down, and if you're pushed down enough, there are times when you won't be able to get back up.  Life is this series of challenges, but the challenges themselves don't matter.  It's how you deal with them and how you emerge after them.  I'm not proud of the way that I've handled some of my challenges.  I didn't handle them well and I have to live with how I've handled them, and, if possible, try to fix them.  But it's not so much about fixing the past.  You can't, really.  You can just make yourself feel better about them.  You can make yourself accept that you've done some things wrong, but you can learn from them and you can move on.  I think one Alabaster Willem said it best: "It's the things ye've done that can't be changed.  All ye can do is figure out what comes next."

It's something I've learned recently.  It's not the challenges that matter.  Everyone's got challenges.  It's how we react to them and how we endure after them.  There's an old saying/song lyric that goes, "Life's a journey, not a destination."  Well, the challenges are just the pot holes and speed bumps.

On this day in 1888, Vincent van Gough cut off his left ear. In keeping with that spirit, what's the craziest thing you've ever done?

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that the asker of this question spelled the artist's name wrong?  It's Gogh.  

ANYWAY.  Craziest thing...  I threw an empty pop bottle at two drunk guys in a car that was circling round the school block at 4 a.m.  I got in a car with a strange man who said he was from Turkey and needed directions (I seriously don't recommend this).  I was involved in a high speed chase through heavy traffic with my older brother and his friends (they were chasing me, I was incredibly lucky).  I cussed out a drunk marine.

What would you attempt to do if you knew you wouldn't fail?
Submitted by Beautifully Broken

Fly.  Absolutely.  Fuck airplanes, fuck wings, fuck pixie dust.  I'd love to just fly.