programmed to breed

I got a message today on facebook from an old school friend. He was a senior at my school, a rather large kind of guy that was quite popular with everyone thanks to his cheeky sense of humour and (slight) charm. We got the same bus home from school every evening and it was on one of these days that we shared a shy awkward, very innocent type kiss. There was no spark there, it was just one of those things that you did at fifteen and I got ribbed for it for several weeks after. I hadn’t spoken to him in several years, until today. Our conversation went like this:

Jason: Hey stranger – seems ages since our snog down by the chapel!! How are things going? What you up to these days?

Me: I know, such a long time ago. Things are going good thanks. I’ve been living in Edinburgh for the past four years and have just left Uni where I was studying ‘Applied Psychology’. Currently I am working freelance, writing for various magazines and office temping till I sort myself out and eventually move back to Ireland – with the girlfriend in tow. What have you been doing with yourself? Good to hear from you stranger.

Jason: You with a girlfriend!? Hope that wasn’t anything to do with me kissing you?! Any pictures? x

(Oh my God. Why do straight men always have to say that?! It’s almost as if its been built into them as an automatic response to someone proclaiming their lesbianism)

Me: Yeah I’ve been with her for over six years now. Uh no, my sexuality didn’t come about because of one random kiss like ten years ago, funnily. “Any pictures?” That’s a bit sleazy isn’t it?

Jason: I am male afterall.

(‘I have a penis therefore I am a prick’?!)

Me: Thankfully not every man is a complete sleaze. Thankfully we (mostly) live in a society that respects lesbian relationships for what they are and not for the ultimate male fantasy. Do I want to see pictures of you and your girlfriend? – No, why would I?! Why would you want to see pictures just because I happen to love someone of the same sex? Have some fucking respect, please.

Jason: Hey was only messin. Chill out love.

(Firstly I fucking hate it when people drop letters in words just to save time on the keyboard. Secondly, don’t call me love, moron).

Me: You weren’t only messing Jason and it’s the attitude. That kind of attitude belongs with narrow-minded nethanderal men. Congratulations you passed, now fuck off.

Was I too harsh? I don’t think so. I couldn’t tell you the amount of times that I have come across this kind of attitude among straight men. It’s always their first response. ‘Do you have pictures?’, ‘Threesome?’, or my personal asshole best – “Lesbians don’t have real sex. You need a penis for that”. I’m so sick of hearing that shit. Why is it that gay men are taken seriously and lesbians aren’t? What is it about our society that has taught our straight men to think that two women being together is hot? In fact no, more than that – what is it that has taught them to believe that two women being together is less about connection and love and more about trying to turn men on or trying to tease them? Do I need to have a penis to be taken seriously?!

Personally I believe that the majority of straight men don’t understand the word lesbian. They don’t understand that the world does not revolve around their, or for that matter, any other mans dick. They have nurtured, idolised and indeed stroked their (tiny) little weiner from an early age and truly believe that it is the best thing ever. They clearly can’t grasp that some women do not need a penis to be sexually fulfilled. Gay men on the scene are generally the same, its all about cock and sex (even if there is more emotional depth there). Perhaps that’s why gay men are stereotypically seen as more promiscuous, while the lesbian is generally seen as the settling down type. We all know the lesbian jokes about moving in on the third date right? The lesbian seems to be more interested in the woman as a person, even if it is a purely physical affair. I’ve yet to hear a woman, straight or gay, to go on and on about how wonderful their pussy is. If I had a few years to research, perhaps I would have an answer as to why women and men are so vastly different in terms of sexuality.

“Penis: A body organ used for urination, sexual pleasure, and for making important life decisions.” – Randy L. Pendleton.

Jason Ward you have been named and shamed. One more thing; you’re an idiot.

Continuing with my slightly over personal, but honest stories, I decided to upload this; a letter I wrote to my abusive and absent father a couple of years ago. I haven’t seen my father for over eight years now, by choice. These were my thoughts, my feelings, my pain at this time. To this day, I haven’t sent this letter and I probably never will.

Picture above: My Dad and I in Dublin 1989

Dad,

I don’t know where to start, I don’t know where to end; I don’t even know what to say or how but for some reason I feel I need to do this, if at least to understand myself. I truly hope that you don’t hold this against me, use this against me even, and that you have the maturity and honesty to just except that this is your daughter being open with you for the first time in six years. Whether or not you are able to do that, I do not know for I do not know where you are in life, yet I suspect that it is not where you envisioned you would be.

If I wasn’t writing this to you now I would probably be tucked up in bed with a cigarette, watching DVDs such as ‘Six feet under’ or ‘French and Saunders’. It’s funny and also slightly sad that I’ve probably become a lot of the things you hate about the world. I smoke, I drink occasionally and I probably swear too much. I also have a partner who I have been with for nearly five years now, who is indeed female. I have fought with myself for many years because of this, not because I view it as wrong, but because the bible does, because my mother did, because society makes it clear that it’s not “the norm”. I feel assured though when I see relationships other than my own, perhaps even my own parents relationship and then realise that I have never known two people to be so close in all my life and I have never had someone love me so much or love someone so much in return. I don’t expect you to like the fact that I am with a woman, but I’m not seeking approval (I never have been the sort of person to need that) and I know that deep down somewhere you know how amazing and life changing a love like that can be. That is the important thing here. I also just want to make it clear that this is not Mum’s fault in any way, it is not something she has encouraged me into and it has taken her many years to even accept the fact that I love someone who is female. To me, love isn’t about gender and therefore I would never label myself into a corner and call myself “gay” or “straight”. I am neither; I am just a girl who is in love with another person. Love, like sexuality is fluid and it cannot be categorised and I do not wish it to be. I pray that you can at least understand this, even if you do not agree with it as I am sure you do not. Regardless of understanding, you’re right to disagree is certain, everyone deserves this right, but you’re vocalisation of what may be “disgust” or “disappointment” is not, you lost that right when you claimed disownment. Simply put, I don’t want to hear you’re negativity or narrow-mindedness on this matter. The world has come a long way since I was a child; the world no longer views same-sex relationships as “wrong”-In fact, it’s not something I keep from anyone, not from my University mates and not from my work colleagues. If my honesty and openness isolates people or makes these people feel un-comfortable then that is their issue, not my own-I will not live a lie for anyone.

I don’t want to talk about xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx or Mum here because this letter is not about them and I would feel dis-loyal to them by giving an insight into their lives when you are not in touch with them anymore. Please except that I am not doing this to hurt you, but to save their hurt, for my family means everything to me. All I can say is that everything has changed. I am not the person you once knew, I am not the naïve little girl who thought she was so tough anymore, I am not the “happy go lucky” optimist that I once was. I have grown up, I have learnt about life the hard way; a lot of which I learnt from my father. To say my childhood screwed me up is an understatement to say the least, there’s not a day goes by where I don’t feel sad for the childhood I lost. The happy memories that I do have are sparse to say the least but there are a few. Namely, trips to the custom houses in xxxxxxx, to the museums that I visited at an early age and to late night sessions of ‘Star Trek’ re-runs in the living room. All of these I am thankful for, even though I would never dream of doing any of those things now.

I don’t know how to convey my feelings for you; I don’t even know what those feelings are. Anger, disappointment, fear and resentment for sure; but also a love and longing that can never be shifted no matter how much I try to suppress it. I was always “daddy’s little girl” no matter how close I was to Mum and even though I am extremely close to Mum now, I guess I always will be your daughter and I am like you in many ways. I guess this is why I understand; it is why I can live my life to an extent anyway, in happiness and not bitterness. It is why I feel a twinge of disloyalty to you when I feel anger towards you, to what you did; to the person you were throughout my childhood. I don’t think anyone else will ever understand why you were like you were, quite like I do; because I feel so many of the things you once did and maybe still do. Not the anger, not the violence, not the simple disregard for human life that you showed so much while I was growing up but the discontentment, the sadness, the loneliness, the desperation for truth, for understanding, for knowledge and the simple feeling that this life is not “real enough” for me. Everything seems so relative and meaningless when it comes to the crunch. I think so much of this internal pain and discontentment is because life is what you make it, and when you do not truly believe in pure and everlasting happiness, how you can be truly happy. I don’t think I have ever been truly happy and I honestly don’t think I am capable of such an emotion. Who is? What is true happiness anyway? Does anyone know? Happiness is relative to the person and therefore deeply personal and not easily understood.

I have battled for many years with clinical depression, I have been prescribed pills upon pills to help me cope with the feelings I have inside of me yet I refuse to become a slave to a “happy” chemical they say will take all the pain away. I am of the opinion that my bad experiences and the pain that I feel, makes me who I am and has moulded me into the person I am today. I don’t wish to get rid of the pain, for pain is what makes me alive, human, and real. I am, probably like you, a walking contradiction. I am still very much the happy-go-lucky confident and strong person that I was when I was growing up, yet I am also a broken person. A person who on days finds it hard to leave her flat and go out into the “big scary world” for fear of rejection, of pain, of hurt, of just “living”.

I am a person of mixed emotions, of mixed opinions, of mixed ideas, of thoughts and of character. There are no words to describe who I am, and even if there were, I would not know the words to tell you for I am still changing and learning more about myself everyday. These mixed emotions also relate to how I feel about my childhood, how I feel about you, my father. There are days that I wish I had had as a child, a better father, a father who could love me the way I wanted him too, a father who would not hurt me like mine did, a father who was not hurting so much himself and was therefore able to save me from the hurt. There is though, a lot of compassion and understanding in this and I would never say I hated you; just that I hated what you did. I see only too clearly from my own experiences and mistakes how easy it is to lose yourself and to become something you do not want to be. I do not wish un-happiness upon you like so many others may do, all I wish for you is that you could really truly see how wrong you were and that you could be more of the person you could have been.

I am always reminded of a school assembly I attended when the school teacher at xxxxxx held up a white A4 piece of paper with a tiny black dot on it and asked what we saw. Of course, everyone saw only a black dot and did not comment on the fact that we actually saw a large piece of white paper with a small black dot on it. The black dot represented the bad things we did, the mistakes. No-body noticed the white of the paper; only the black dot that lay upon it. I think his point was that mistakes can’t be changed and people only too easily forget the good stuff and can only focus only the “bad”, the mistakes. This is most people’s memory of the things that you did. The good stuff is somehow erased from the un-conscious and nothing but mistakes are left. This is not how I view you and perhaps that makes me a little naive but I prefer to think of a father who did love me and who did do things right, but sometimes got it very, very wrong. Un-fortunately the black spot cannot be forgotten or forgiven or even justified, but it can be understood and you are lucky enough to have a daughter who can see the bigger picture and who can relate to how easily it is to screw up.

I don’t know what else to say except that I am happy with who I am and the person I have become and a lot of that is to do with my childhood. I had rules, I had an education and I had two parents who I do feel loved and still do love me even if they didn’t always show that to me. There is no self pity involved where my childhood is concerned. A lot of people would probably view my childhood as a tragedy, but I do not. The emotional hurt that was inflicted upon me at an early age has made me into the strong and self asserted person that I am today. Many people have had it far worse than I did and I thank God that I have been able to learn from my parents mistakes and come through the other side, with lessons learnt. For I know that I will never make the same mistakes with my own children when I have them, and that they will benefit from the lessons I have learned because of my own childhood. Although I am a person with ongoing issues and hurts, I have become a person that is respected for my opinions, for my character and for my honesty.

At seventeen I fell in love and experienced the best thing that has ever happened to me. At twenty I became a published writer of poetry and experienced an amazing sense of self achievement and happiness because I was understood, no matter how messed up I may be. Most of all, I have to be thankful for the ambition that you instilled in me at a very early age, for this drive has helped me through so many things not to mention passing my a-levels, getting into an amazing university and studying the things I enjoy so much. I started off down the route that probably won’t surprise you, ‘Information Technology’, but much to my own amazement I have now been given the opportunity to study the things that are far more important, Philosophy and Psychology. I have just finished my second year of an honours degree in ‘Applied Psychology’ which is a lot of hard work but is also very gratifying and interesting. I have no particular aim in life; only that I can fulfil my dreams, be loved and love in return. All of which, I am doing and hopefully I will continue to do. Of course, this is all most people can ever hope to achieve and I feel completely blessed to have a mother that supports me in everything I do; without her I would be nothing.

I wish you knew me Dad, I wish you had the opportunity to be proud of me as I hope you would be. There is not a day that goes by where I don’t regret the fact that we do not have a relationship because deep down I am still a scared little girl who so desperately wants the love of not only her mother, but her father; I’m just not sure that you are able right now (or ever will be) to give me the kind of love that I so deeply crave or the kind of relationship that every child should have the right too with their father. I trust that you understand what I am saying here; you yourself have suffered because of your relationship or non-relationship with your father. I just hope that you can once and for all take what I am saying here onboard and take it in the context and manner that it is intended, even if I perhaps do not completely understand it myself. I must also add that it saddens me deeply that I never received a card for my 18th or for my 21st birthday but I can understand the hurt and rejection you must have felt when I stated that I never wanted to have any contact with you. I’m not sure if I would have reacted in the same way you did if the roles were reversed, for I know only too well how much it hurt. However, that cannot be un-done now and in all honesty; it would take a lot more than that to break me for I know that I am of value even if you do not believe that to be true.

I do not know where you are in life, where you are as a person or if you even think of me at all but I am re-assured by the knowledge that you did once love me, that I am loved now by others and that I can remember times where you were the father that I wanted you to be. I don’t want to hurt anymore and I wish the same for you. I hope you have tasted a least a drop of happiness in our time apart and I pray that we both do in the future.

Emma

Apart from my new Wii obsession (we bought one this week – my arms hurt!!), I have been playing a lot of ‘The Sims 2’, the University and the Open Business edition. Besides staying up very late working at getting my Sims on track to discovering their true potential, I couldn’t help but wish that it really was just that simple. Click > Do Assignment, Click > Study Mechanical, Click > Write term paper. >> Fast forward >> Done. Que Announcement – Your Sim has passed their exam and has achieved a grade of A+. Time for a party. Blah Blah. You get the general idea. Only, in real life it really isn’t that easy to juggle your commitments alongside cooking for yourself, cleaning, going out, paying your bills.. your taxes.. your council tax.. your water rates… the list is endless and most of us spend two-thirds of the day in work sat at our desks wishing that we could go home, even though we realise that if we did go home it would probably be to take care of the rising pile of ironing that would be by now taking over the bedroom.

I also wish that I could have fast forwarded my University days. I had this notion before I moved away that University would be the best days of my life.. a journey of discovery about myself and of life, a lot of hard work sure but at the same time a hell of a lot of fun. Much to my disappointment I didn’t find any of those to be true. I remember very clearly my first day. I had been shown by enthusiastic “fresher helpers” to my small, concrete room which contained nothing but a bed, a small cramped wooden desk with graffiti all over it and a window which peered out into some other poor sods miserable room. Sitting on my bed, which I’m not even sure you could call a ‘single’, I opened my ‘fresher pack’; a collection of leaflets about all the pop-fueled ‘get me laid’ events that the union was offering. Oh and a bible. I disposed of the bible (in the bin, if you must ask) and lay on my bed wondering what I should do next. In true movie-esq. fashion (you know those really bad American teen films where the socially retarded geek goes to college) I decided to venture out and knock on the three doors beside mine. Perhaps God had cursed me after I’d un-ashamedly thrown out his ‘good book’ because my neighbours were one air-headed blonde, one non-English speaking French man and one non-English speaking German man. Ha. That night I attended the union for the freshers week events and met a curly haired guy from Carlisle who proceeded to try his luck with me, even after I repeatedly stated that I was in fact a lesbian.

Needless to say, I never went back. Perhaps that was rather defeatist of me, but the pop music gave me a headache and the atmosphere wasn’t much better than a high-school party full of teenagers trying desperately to (a) sip Wkd’s (with a straw) and get as pissed as they physically could in the least time and, (b) pull, whoever they possibly could. I just didn’t fit in. Salvation came in an un-likely place when I started dating a closeted English girl from Loughborough Uni. Victoria and I (my long-term g’f of almost seven years) had split after three years of an extremely strained, almost manipulative, online relationship. I did what any good lesbian does after a break up; I found a new girlfriend with whom I could heal my growing feelings of neglect and social abandonment.

What a mistake that was. Not only did I ostracize myself from my class mates but I was spending every other week with my new girlfriend in gay-friendly Loughborough and therefore missing a hell of a lot of classes. Worse still, I met a 4th year student at my Uni a couple of months later and quickly realised that I wasn’t attracted to my girlfriend at all. I had craved the safety that she had offered me – I was her first and she lived miles away. Close enough though that I could travel there whenever I wanted and instantly have friends – her friends. She was a sweet intelligent girl, but there was no spark there for me. This however had made me feel secure – I was detached, I could walk away at any point un-scathed. That wasn’t something that I had felt before, Victoria had always been able to push my buttons and our breakup had left me heart-broken even if I wasn’t ready to admit it, even to myself.

A couple of months later and I had moved myself from one hell straight into another. I hadn’t the guts to break it off with Loughborough girl and as I spent less and less time down there with her, escaping Uni life (my Uni life), I started spending more and more time with the 4th year student – a metal head from Camden London. She was the president of an alternative music society that ran gigs at the union, playing anything from metal to techno. I quickly became the vice president and we used that as an excuse to go out almost every night. It was the start of an extremely destructive and dangerous relationship. We would use or take anything that we could get our hands on – huge amounts of weed and alcohol, ecstasy, speed and magic mushrooms.. sometimes all of these in one night. It was all the same; it numbed me. It made life colour-less and safe.

Only a few weeks had gone by and I couldn’t sleep without her with me and without a fix of something. I had stopped visiting Loughborough girl and she really had no clue what was going on, even though I really wanted her to find out and finish things with me. I even told her one night, “I’m sleeping with someone else and I have been for some time”. Instead of freeing herself from the one-sided relationship, she forgave me. She came up to Edinburgh the following weekend and instead of spending time with her, I spent it with Camden girl. I was addicted – addicted to how she made feel, addicted to the security that she made me feel because she was older and mentally stronger, addicted to the things we did when we were together. The sex was destructive, angry, passionate and full of hurt on both sides. We had both struggled with our abusive childhoods and I had felt that she understood me. I returned from her house one evening to find my girlfriend packing. I had asked her what was going on (as if I didn’t already know) and no reply came. She left without saying a word. A few weeks later I heard from a mutual friend that she had hurt herself, badly. She had taken a kitchen knife to her arm and had been admitted to the psychiatric ward, where she would be staying for the foreseeable future. I tried to contact her but her friends blew me off (.. I don’t blame them really) and I never heard from her again.

My first year of University was over and I had attended, apparently, all off three classes. Somehow I managed to scrape through with all of my exams and had consequently passed the year, but I wasn’t happy. I didn’t even know if I knew how to be happy. January came and I had started to speak to Victoria again. Camden girl knew the situation, she knew our history and she had never been anything but understanding and supportive about it. My discontentment grew with the relationship and even though she claimed she loved me, we both knew different. It had served a purpose; our upbringings, our past, had finally come to the surface. We had destroyed ourselves in search for freedom from pain, yet all we had done was hurt ourselves and each other. I had been self-harming for months, but it all came to a climax on the night that I took a piece of telephone cable, made it into a noose and tied it to the top of a metal pipe that ran up my wall. Now let’s not get dramatic. It was nothing more than a cry for help. I had tried, twice, but I couldn’t do it. I had also known that Camden girl (I’m getting really sick of calling her that) was going to be round within the hour. I knew that if I was going to do it, I would need to do it soon, before she arrived, but I couldn’t. Pain withstanding, I knew I wasn’t a quitter. I knew that I couldn’t do that to my family and I knew that despite the pain, it would get better, eventually.

True salvation came after I had a long conversation with Victoria on the phone that night (no I didn’t retrieve the bible from the bin). I poured my heart out to her. I sobbed. I questioned my strengths and my weaknesses and I decided to make a fresh start. That fresh start saw me boarding a plane to Wales to go visit Victoria. Camden girl had agreed that it was for the best; that I needed to do it and that if it didn’t work out that she would still be there for me. I anxiously boarded the plane – it was the biggest day of my life. You’ve got to understand that Toria and I had dated for three years, but only online. We were young, naive and completely in the closet at that time. We had been too scared what our parents would say. We had been scared that it would really be ‘real’, and that the safety and security of an online relationship, safe from real rejection and disappointment would be gone. You get rejected in ‘The Sims’ and you feel sad for a nano second, shake your head, say something that sounds remarkably like Dutch to me, then you go shoot some pool and you’re happy again. If only, I hear you mutter.

I stayed at her folks for a week, all the time sharing a single bed. It felt right between us from the second I laid my eyes on her. I knew instantly that those three years that we had spent online, saving ourselves for each other, wasn’t in vain. I knew it meant something. I knew it meant everything and I knew that we had a very long future ahead of us. If I remember rightly we lay in bed together that first night and watched ‘The Secretary’– the story of a dysfunctional cutter who is released from hospital and enters a sadistic relationship with her boss who likes to spank her when she makes typing errors. The perfect romantic film I hear you say… oh yes… Actually it’s a really lovely and touching film, you should rent it… Anyway; we fell in love.. again. She moved to Edinburgh three years ago and we have been living together ever since. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that she saved me – she certainly saved me from myself. I hate to think where I could be in life if it wasn’t for her, if it wasn’t for that complete turn-around. She makes me feel happy and healthy and loved. I don’t need to escape anymore.

I dropped out of University last year, after only completing half my ‘Applied Psychology’ degree. It just wasn’t for me. Heh, it works for some people and not others right? It wasn’t productive for me. I felt lost and I’d rather focus on my life with Victoria anyway. My long-term plans include finishing my degree at home, in my spare time with the ‘Open University’.. Oh and, being happy.

Looking through my blog stats, here are my current top five:

1. “Do ginger kids have souls(?)”.

- I blogged about ginger kids having souls when I talked about the South Park episode where Kenny and his mates try to kill off all the ginger children because they think that they’re evil (and have no souls). Fabulous episode – especially good when high – and I must add that I sincerely hope that ‘Z’ person was searching for info. on the South Park episode, not posing a serious question!

2. “Peaches lyrics impeach my crush”.

- A spotty prepubescent teenager searching for lyrics to a song that his or her parents probably wouldn’t let them listen to? Oh and it’s ‘Impeach my bush’. Doh.

3. Bette. Helen Stewart. Lesbian. Kiss.

Perv. Plus, Bette and Helen Stewart? – Grose.

4. “Gingervitus”.

Lots of hits for this one.. pretty amusing. See above (no. 1)

5. “Bureaucracy arseholes”.

- I think I like this one the best.

I’ll blog properly tomorrow… it’s time for bed and I have a hectic day tomorrow.