I want to speak.

[President Television]

I want to speak, but I don't know what to say. I don't have anything to say. Even when I do have something to say, someone else has said it. I don't have words anymore, so much as a general sense of terror and dread, and no particular reason for either one. I'm living in Calgary, capital of the richest province in the country, and I can't find a job. You see, whatever thoughts I have, such as they are, are terribly selfish, and never even tangentially connected to the subject at hand. But too much is better than not enough, as "Bob" said, so I might as well vomit up everything I can manage, coherency be damned. I'm afraid Roger would hate me if I spoke. I'm afraid one day soon this place'll come crashing down around our ears, and when the dust settles it'll be Nigel and LMNO and Twid and ECH and all the rest standing ankle-deep in it like giants, and I'll be a gnat nibbling at their heels.

I'm afraid I'll never get along with my grandparents. They're too nice, and I'm too much of an asshole. I love them, but I hate being around them, because I always feel like I have to pull my punches. I hate pulling my punches. It's the only thing I ever get to do. Last time I didn't, I got fired, and then I headed out west to be unemployed in Calgary. I'm afraid I'll end up like Gilligan, too boring for heaven or hell. I'm afraid I'll sign up for university, and I'll fail at everything because I have such a shitty attention span. I'm afraid I'm dancing around the fact that it's really just simple stupidity, and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm afraid that's just cowardice, and I'm just too pathetic to take responsibility for my own laziness. I'm afraid I'm too weak for the military. I'm afraid it's the only place I'd ever feel at home anyway.
TRIGGER WARNING, FOLKS
I'm afraid there's a rapist around every corner. Some of them have a badge and a gun, and some of them don't, but it doesn't matter, because if you fight the ones that don't have guns they'll just call the ones that do, and then the rapists with badges will come to throw you in a cage with rapists in bright orange uniforms. I'm afraid that the voice in my head that tells me to be afraid isn't really mine, it's something my stepdad jammed into my head years ago, and that's the scariest part, because how many of the rest of my thoughts are mine? I can't trust my fear, I can't trust my thoughts. In the back of my skull there's a leering face, the face of evil, a snaggle-toothed ape of a man stinking of tobacco and salivating in pleasure at the thought of stepping on throats in jackboots or maybe pinning down a little boy, and whispering in my ears, all the time.

And every time I see the man in person, or hear him on the phone, it's GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT and I can't hear myself over it because I guess it is myself, all of myself, so there's nothing left of me to speak. I'm afraid I'll be a virgin for the rest of my life. I guess I'm not technically a virgin, but I'm afraid I'll never go there by choice, I'll never know for sure that it isn't really the way it's always been for me, forced, hated pleasure at the barrel of a gun. I'm afraid I'll trigger someone by writing this. I'm afraid I'll never understand or respect the need for trigger warnings, and I'm afraid that makes me a sociopath. I feel like a monster when I don't feel weak, and I feel weak when I don't feel like a monster. Always snapping, always shrinking away, always cowering one way or another because talking to people to their faces and hearing their derision is just too scary of a prospect.

I'm afraid I'm one-dimensional for failing to forget about it, failing to find anything else to think about but it's this all day every day and this is why I look down my nose at the rest of these pussies with flashbacks because I don't need a trigger, I live it every day. But still I'm afraid it makes me flat. I'm afraid it makes me an attention whore. Worse, I'm afraid it was good for me. I'm afraid that if you took it away, there'd be nothing left of me. I'm afraid the man knows what I've been up to, I'm afraid he'll leave behind everything he's spent his life hoarding, the greedy fuck he is, and he'll drive across the country for a week with a rifle and shoot me, and maybe shoot everyone I love along the way. I ended it with a deal, a bargain, a pact, you see. Nobody finds out, and he doesn't kill himself, but I'm pretty sure there was another implicit deal that if I keep my mouth shut I get to keep my head. And this is why I don't speak.

[Reginald Ret]

Wow. I don't know what to say other than that. I hope you find a way to deal with this shit and I hope you find something amazing to do with your life.

[President Television]

Wow. I don't know what to say other than that. I hope you find a way to deal with this shit and I hope you find something amazing to do with your life.

It's nothing new. Just the same shit I've been whining about intermittently for the past few years. I used to keep quiet out of courtesy, since it gets a bit monotonous after a while, but fuck it. I'll probably be writing a second part, to clarify a few details that were embellished and hopefully go off on another tangent.

[LMNO]

Keep writing.  Keep going off on tangents.

[Junkenstein]

Seconding that, Keep writing PT, there's good stuff in here.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thirded!

[President Television]

Yeah, sorry. I tried writing a second part, but I don't have anything else to say. Sorry to disappoint you all.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Ain't no disappointment. There's a lot in your head to unpack. Write it when you got it.

[President Television]

Fuck the bit about the gun. It was a lie. The fact is, the man didn't need a gun. He didn't even need to make a threat. Not a direct one, anyway. He was a salesman, so he did it all with deals, bargains, arrangements, allusions, and jokes. That last part really fucked with me. I still have a hard time laughing at anything. He knew exactly where my handles were, and which strings to pull, and I was young enough that he could install some of his own, and so he made me complicit in my own abuse. I guess that's why I see myself the way I do. I was a kid, and I raped myself, and who rapes a kid? A monster, that's who. It isn't really rational, but these are the terms in which I view myself. An abomination that needs to be put down. I guess this is how I justify a good part of my own evil: It's simply in character. Mind you, I've never done anything along the lines of what my stepdad did to me. I do at least have that. But I still have a hard time feeling anything for other people, even as I recoil from hurting them. I find the idea of exploiting or abusing other people repulsive on an abstract level, but I don't think I actually have any empathy, and that scares me. I never miss people when they're gone. I never feel anything when they die. I find myself in the unusual position of lacking a heart and desperately wanting to have one.

Half the reason I moved across the country was to get away from the man, and the other half was that I got fired and there wasn't any more work on that end. I got fired because they were afraid of me, more or less. They talked about me behind my back. They said I'd shoot up the place. It's a shitty position to be in no matter who you are, but I think the worst part for me was that they were only off by a few years. There was a point in my life at which I'd seriously considered it, but I was a teenager in Canada, so I couldn't acquire the weapons. There's no way I'd do it now, but the fact that it was ever an option makes me want to bash my head against something until I stop moving. If I could kill my former selves, my history would be an abattoir. The only explanation I can offer is that when you're in the midst of that degree of despair, violence becomes nothing more than a medium of expression. There was a scream building up in me to which a voice could never have done justice. It's one hell of a shitty reason for murder, though. I guess I'm past the point of actively wanting to kill myself, but I do genuinely think that I deserve to die, for that reason if nothing else.

Speaking of murder, the man used to taunt me with it. He'd get me to help him with his work, which I guess is pretty common for a stepdad and his kid, but the whole thing had an incredible tension to it that would have been invisible to anyone else. He'd get me to hold his power tools when he wasn't using them, and I could never tell if he actually needed me to hold them or he was doing it to mess with me. I'd have a reciprocating saw, and he'd be bent over working on something with his back to me. It was like he was daring me to off him once and for all. I guess if it was deliberate, he knew I wouldn't have the guts to do it. It had looked like he was doing it just to demonstrate how much he owned my ass. Though I wouldn't have had to anyway. The fucker tried to kill himself eventually. Not out of remorse or anything like that, of course. It was over gambling debt. I remember showing up at the hospital and being told by the cops what had happened, and I was glad. Finally, I knew that I was stronger than him. Except that then he turned it around and used it as leverage, because of course he did. I ended up basically working a second job for free because of that. He said a few times that family's just a source of cheap labour. I'll never question his conviction on that front.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I hope you don't mind me speculating, but I suspect that what's going on for you empathy-wise is not a lack of capacity, but a lack of activation, and that can be fixed, though it will be harrowing and take a great deal of work. From your description, you have become proficient at compartmentalizing and dissociating, which are really great survival skills when you're a kid being abused but not so adaptive as an adult trying to connect.

What you're doing now, writing about it, is a really, really good start. It's the processing, the reviewing/reliving, that actually helps people (and animals) to work through and integrate their traumatic experiences.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Two cents, if you want it.

Fuck the bit about the gun. It was a lie. The fact is, the man didn't need a gun. He didn't even need to make a threat. Not a direct one, anyway. He was a salesman, so he did it all with deals, bargains, arrangements, allusions, and jokes. That last part really fucked with me. I still have a hard time laughing at anything. He knew exactly where my handles were, and which strings to pull, and I was young enough that he could install some of his own, and so he made me complicit in my own abuse. I guess that's why I see myself the way I do. I was a kid, and I raped myself, and who rapes a kid? A monster, that's who. It isn't really rational, but these are the terms in which I view myself. An abomination that needs to be put down. I guess this is how I justify a good part of my own evil: It's simply in character. Mind you, I've never done anything along the lines of what my stepdad did to me. I do at least have that. But I still have a hard time feeling anything for other people, even as I recoil from hurting them. I find the idea of exploiting or abusing other people repulsive on an abstract level, but I don't think I actually have any empathy, and that scares me. I never miss people when they're gone. I never feel anything when they die. I find myself in the unusual position of lacking a heart and desperately wanting to have one.

We are often made complicit in our own abuse. It gives them an extra thrill and also, to them, plausible deniability. It's our fault they feel this way, want to do these things. We make them want it. Because we're the broken, twisted ones - not them.

Important note : It was not your fault and you did nothing to deserve or cause it.

You're not alone on the lacking a heart and wanting to have one scene.

Nigel's right.

I hope you don't mind me speculating, but I suspect that what's going on for you empathy-wise is not a lack of capacity, but a lack of activation, and that can be fixed, though it will be harrowing and take a great deal of work. From your description, you have become proficient at compartmentalizing and dissociating, which are really great survival skills when you're a kid being abused but not so adaptive as an adult trying to connect.

What you're doing now, writing about it, is a really, really good start. It's the processing, the reviewing/reliving, that actually helps people (and animals) to work through and integrate their traumatic experiences.

Compartmentalizing and disassociating become our super powers. We've got a shut-off switch or distancing maneuver for everything.

Keep writing it out, there's an on switch in there somewhere.

[President Television]

Two cents, if you want it.

Fuck the bit about the gun. It was a lie. The fact is, the man didn't need a gun. He didn't even need to make a threat. Not a direct one, anyway. He was a salesman, so he did it all with deals, bargains, arrangements, allusions, and jokes. That last part really fucked with me. I still have a hard time laughing at anything. He knew exactly where my handles were, and which strings to pull, and I was young enough that he could install some of his own, and so he made me complicit in my own abuse. I guess that's why I see myself the way I do. I was a kid, and I raped myself, and who rapes a kid? A monster, that's who. It isn't really rational, but these are the terms in which I view myself. An abomination that needs to be put down. I guess this is how I justify a good part of my own evil: It's simply in character. Mind you, I've never done anything along the lines of what my stepdad did to me. I do at least have that. But I still have a hard time feeling anything for other people, even as I recoil from hurting them. I find the idea of exploiting or abusing other people repulsive on an abstract level, but I don't think I actually have any empathy, and that scares me. I never miss people when they're gone. I never feel anything when they die. I find myself in the unusual position of lacking a heart and desperately wanting to have one.

We are often made complicit in our own abuse. It gives them an extra thrill and also, to them, plausible deniability. It's our fault they feel this way, want to do these things. We make them want it. Because we're the broken, twisted ones - not them.

Important note : It was not your fault and you did nothing to deserve or cause it.

You're not alone on the lacking a heart and wanting to have one scene.

Nigel's right.

Normally, I'd agree with you, but one of the things that's actually helped me deal with this is that when I finally realized I wasn't hideous, it occurred to me that I was a goddamn pimp at age 12. But then, it's probably more of a temporary measure than anything else, and probably not a genuinely useful one, and exactly the sort of thing that would lead to narcissism if I actually bought it. It's more of an idea that I occasionally amuse myself with.

I hope you don't mind me speculating, but I suspect that what's going on for you empathy-wise is not a lack of capacity, but a lack of activation, and that can be fixed, though it will be harrowing and take a great deal of work. From your description, you have become proficient at compartmentalizing and dissociating, which are really great survival skills when you're a kid being abused but not so adaptive as an adult trying to connect.

What you're doing now, writing about it, is a really, really good start. It's the processing, the reviewing/reliving, that actually helps people (and animals) to work through and integrate their traumatic experiences.

Compartmentalizing and disassociating become our super powers. We've got a shut-off switch or distancing maneuver for everything.

Keep writing it out, there's an on switch in there somewhere.

I agree with both of you on this. I think that's a large part of what got me fired, actually. The first seven years that I worked in my life, it was for the guy that abused me, so I got used to being a cold, bitter, angry asshole and filtering everything out but the task at hand when I worked, and I couldn't stop doing it when I finally got a job washing dishes. Work was associated with the rapist, and I think it still is, and I feel really shitty about that because it sounds like an excuse to get out of work. It made me very effective on a technical level, but in the end I was miserable and everyone hated me. According to the boss, I was fired because the waitresses felt threatened when I was around. I didn't really get it, but I couldn't blame them. People always think I'm either adorable or horrifying, and it's never the opinion I want them to have.