To post or not to post

I’m a writer. Sort of. I’ve written over a thousand pages of stories, but save fanfiction, which is self-published anyway, I’ve never had anything published.

I know I don’t have much time left. I maybe have a decade, give or take. I don’t want to die without my stories being finished, read, and enjoyed by at least one person. But fear of rejection keeps holding me back. Fear of rejection, of being flamed, of being called a hack or a shitty writer…

But then I thought, okay. But you never even try. You have to try.

A few years ago, I once tried to write a serial online story on LiveJournal, a funny first-person fantasy that I would write on the fly with very loose notes and have the inclusion of fans in the content as it went on.

But it never caught on. No one cared. No one wanted to read it. So after a while, I stopped writing it, and no one noticed.

Recently, with my sudden increase in online writing, I’ve suddenly reconsidered. I’ve been working on a rewrite for the story for months, now, but I never thought about republishing it. I admit that if I did, I risk being plagiarised, especially since WordPress doesn’t have copyright protection on original content (I think?).

But then I noticed that there actually are writers on this website, who post their original work and become quite successful. So once again I’m struck with the idea of writing a free, web-based online serial of a story, in hopes of getting my name and style out there and thus helping me get my other stuff published, too.

So now I ask anyone who reads this: Would you be interested in seeing fiction from me? If so, can you help me find out if I’m protected? Or, better yet, spread the word and help me get a readership, so I can get input and have people reading and commenting and caring. That’d be cool.

So… Shall I jump in feet-first to the pool of online story-writing? Comment and let me know, or simply like this post as a “yes” in my favour. Dislike if you would rather me not do it.

I wouldn’t use this blog (TaraRambles) to write it, but create a new one attached to this. I would also probably update at least once a week with a new chapter, the very worst being once a month. And to get a taste of the story, it stares a plucky hero, his childhood friends a sorceress and a healer, and the main character and narrator is a dry, cynical “Reader”, hired to do a simple translation that would inevitably make an adventurer out of her, too, no matter how hard she protested.

Sounds good or bad? You know the drill. Lemme know! 😀

Fiendship

Or, How To Lose Friends and Never Get Them Back

You know, I think I’ve finally figured out what my problem is when it comes to making friends: I don’t know how to be one, so I don’t know how to pick them.

It’s stupidly simple when I think of it, really. As a child constantly on the short end of every single stick given to her, it’s no wonder that friends would fall in that category as well. Especially when I couldn’t be a friend to myself.

To fully understand this, let’s go back in time, say, a quarter of a century. Ancient times, I know. When phones barely were cordless and the internet was still hidden in the heads of its creators, I stumbled to Catholic school with my heart on my sleeve coupled with fear of the unknown. I’m a mama’s girl, and I shuddered at the thought of leaving the safety of the nest, even if for only half a day. I was barely used to the new life I had, with my mom and my sisters, and my dad barely on the side, in a new home with new everything. I’m pretty sure I had hoped to find people in the same ship, who could understand me.

And honestly, I have no real memories of that time, save a few snippets here and there, usually filled with anxiety or fear. I’m not sure what clued the kids in that I was an easy target that they could test their hatred on, but it started very early, needless to say. And I don’t know when or how I got the idea that stuffed animals were the key to happiness, but I did, and I decided that I had earned several toys that school had to offer, including a very gentle-looking stuffed dog that I still own.

Yep. I was a five-year-old kleptomaniac.

I don’t know to this day whether or not my parents or teachers caught on, and, if they did, whether my parents paid for what I stole, or my teachers felt enough pity for me to never tell them. Either way, I very often came home with stuffed dogs that weren’t mine, but I lied and said that there was a ‘toy raffle’ or some such thing, and I ‘won’ every time. Yes, I’m still that bad a liar.

Those stuffed, stolen animals were my only friends. They had names, needs, and were always loyal. I rarely left home without a toy. My family soon caught on, and to this day, I still get at least one stuffed animal for my birthday or Christmas. And I still find comfort in hugging one when I cry.

I’m not gonna lie and say that my childhood was perfect, but I’m also not gonna pretend I was a very tragic case. There are many instances on which I look back and think, ‘That could have gone another, worse, way. You got lucky.’ Even though much of what I’ve been through isn’t typical, it certainly could have been worse. But, to a child with no sense of retrospect, every single moment of school was hell.

No, seriously. From day one, I’m pretty sure I was bullied the moment I stepped in the door. I wasn’t pretty, or cute, nor was I quiet or reserved. I was loud and high-energy, in hand-me-downs and crooked bangs, and I had no filter when it came to what I wanted. By grade two, one of my teachers was pretty sure I was either ‘retarded’ – actual phrase here, please don’t be mad – or in need of sedation. I actually went through testing. I’m not lying. I actually have clear snippets of those tests. And you know what? I wasn’t either of those things, like they thought: I was just my own kid.

My mom likes to joke that I didn’t learn to speak English until I was three, and had invented my own language for myself and had convinced myself so well that it was real that I would actually get pissed off at my family for not understanding me. That’s how deluded I was – and still can be at times. So obviously I wasn’t 100% all there in my head, but I wasn’t as bad as they thought. You could probably peg it down to ‘excessive imagination with penchant for sugar’.

In fact, I was pretty smart. I could have been a really annoying egghead, except I was getting bullied so badly that I didn’t know how to ride above that abuse and focus my hate and hurt on educating myself (like I know now). Instead, my grades dropped, and I would always bring home notes that said that I had potential, but I never used it.

Now, here’s where I must butt in and state that this was how it was in the 90’s and aught’s. If you mention bullying now, especially the kind of shit I went through, I would probably have been better protected and fought for. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have been as fucked up (though I do wonder if the internet abuse that is so prevalent now would have killed me). The major difference from then and now when it comes to bullying is so simple and yet so frustrating that I still feel angry thinking about it, but here it is.

Back then, no one listened. It’s true. Oh, sure, sometimes they had to listen, like when my mom had to furiously intervene in order to get someone to do something, but most of the time, whenever I would plead for help and name my abusers to any adult, I would be told that I had to learn to ignore it, learn to deal with it, not to point fingers, and also, the abusers say they’re innocent, so you’re obviously lying.

Yeah. That shit happened a lot when I went to school. And this was Catholic schooling. You know, where all your tax dollars go to in order to teach kids about the peaceful way of Christ, and also how to abuse your fellow man without getting busted by authority? Yup. Money well spent.

(Never EVER believe the lie that Catholic schools are more peaceful and have less bullying. It’s pure bullshit and actually the opposite. Public schools allow for diversity and tolerance. Catholic kids are taught how NOT to tolerate. Anyone who says otherwise is either in denial, a bully, or a liar who benefits from the system. Fuck Catholic schooling to its own hell.)

Catholics like to pretend like everything is okay. If you bring up anything negative, then you’re the problem, and thus you must keep it to yourself. I would walk into the office crying, uniform torn, injury obvious, and was told to go get cleaned up first before coming into the office, because showing up out of uniform was rude and against the rules.

I’m not shitting you. This was reality. Back then, no one cared nearly as much when a kid killed themselves for being bullied. They were labeled ‘weak’ and the school moved on. In fact, Catholic schools didn’t even report suicides to their own students. They lied, or they danced around it.

Now, this is a really long wind to exhale when talking about friendship, but it is connected completely. In the span of the decade and a half that I was in school, I was beaten up, stolen from, lied to, framed, called a liar for telling the truth, had my work vandalised; was made fun of no matter what I wore, was mocked when I spoke up and smirked at when silent… When I was shoved into a window and told to grow up by adults I was supposed to trust with my education when I pleaded for justice; was groped in my ‘boyfriend’s’ apartment after coming forward with the fact that he cheated on me with my ‘best friend’… When I thought I finally found a good guy and was told, by that same guy, that I was just warming his lap while he waited for my then best friend to get with him (only to later spread rumours about our non-sex-life)… When I thought the internet was finally a good place to be and I’d met a good guy, only to find that he no longer wanted me and, shortly after breaking up, was already in love with his future-wife, whom I had introduced to him… In the span of all of this, having maybe only two friends I thought I could trust who have to date let me down completely in the span of a year, when I have done nothing short of lick their toes…

I get it now.

I can’t keep friends because all I know how to do is be a chameleon. All my life I’ve been trying so hard to fit in. I can zero in on a person and know exactly how to tweak myself in order to be civil, rude, or appealing to them. To date, I still get screamed at to ‘go to the gym, fatty’ or ‘wear a bag over your head, uggo!’ How the hell am I supposed to know how to keep people in my life when I barely know how to walk down a street without being reminded that no matter what, I will never be good enough, never be smart enough, never be thin, or pretty, or engaging enough, no matter how many skins I try to wear? I’m a novelty, the type of person who can be in your life for maybe a few months before you realise that they’re pretty much way more complicated than you thought and thus aren’t worth your time, because you have your own shit to deal with.

Fine, I get that. I do. I don’t try with new people anymore. I know my shelf life is very short. I get old once I reveal that I’m a human that also wants love and support, too, instead of a toy that only provides those things for others when needed.

But old friends, friends I’ve spent half my life with, people I’ve sacrificed so much for, including time, energy, health, emotional stability, and yes, even other friends, only to be dumped without any reason why?

I think you owe me more than silence. I think you owe me more than spite. Because I’ve done so much for you. And I’m not being all ‘I’m perfect’, because I know I’ve fucked up. But I can think of three clear cases in my mind in which I was used for years with firm belief and trust that these people loved me, too, and had my back, too, only to ditch me once my use is spent.

I’m 30. I’m sick. I’m dying quicker each day. I don’t have time for this shit anymore.

If you don’t want to be my friend, that’s fine. You don’t even have to tell me why. But if I’m trying to contact you, at least give me something, ANYTHING, that explains why you suddenly hate me now. Because as far as I can tell,  you should be licking MY toes now, and not the other way around.

I no longer have the time nor patience to maintain these kinds of relationships anymore. I’m tired of chasing after people I love, only to be tossed aside with a flick of boredom, and picked up again only when there are no other toys to play with. I’m not a fucking toy. I’m a human. I’m a person. And you know what? I fucking deserve better than you. And now I know I do for sure.

I said it before: How could I ever expect to make the right kind of friends if I didn’t know how to even befriend myself? No wonder the people I thought were my friends have ended up being horrible abusers, worse than those bullies, because there’s love there, on my side, and it’s being beaten out of me, day by day.

And I’m done with it. Count me the fuck out.