Category: Life

Reclamation

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

It’s been almost a year and a half since I have written anything on these pages.  I have missed it greatly, but I have stayed away because of the things that drove me away to begin with.

For a long time, I wrote about myself and about my life in the various and sundry essays I posted here.  I exposed myself and bore my soul to the readers who graced me with their presence, and I experienced a fair amount of healing in the process.  There are those in my life who do not understand how that can be possible; people who do not write to begin with, let alone express their very being in their words.  Anyway, I engaged in this soul baring, self exposing exercise in vulnerability naively, with the hope, and even the belief, that certain people, people who were specifically not welcome to this exposure would never stumble across the information contained here-in.  I developed a false sense of security the more time that passed without incident, without revelation.  I developed a small but great circle of people who read my words and offered their own words of encouragement and support, and the longer this went on, the more I allowed myself to believe that was how it would always be.

I was wrong.

One day something happened, an honest and true thing was said, which does not bear delving into now, but which instigated a conflict with someone, mostly, I suspect, out of that individuals defensiveness.  Then a day or two later, something much worse happened, and one of those not welcome individuals found their way here and invaded the near Utopic space I had created for myself and blew it to smithereens, in part because that’s what this individual does and in part because I allowed it to happen

My life has changed a lot since the last time I wrote anything here; for the better ,I might add.  And I’ve learned some important lessons in the process.  I’ve tried to write about them in other places.  I’ve tried to recreate some semblance of what I had here before, but nothing ever fit.  Nothing felt right.  Nothing else was “home”…  Because this! is home.  And so, after much consideration, and some mental struggle against myself, I have decided to return to the only place that felt like home and reclaim what was always mine in the first place.  A few people may have driven me away for a time, but they could never take what was rightfully my own.

So here’s the biggest lesson I learned over the past fifteen months:  Not everyone is going to like me, or what I have to say, 100% of the time.  But that?  That is not my problem!  I don’t like everyone else 100% of the time.  When I voluntarily expose myself to someone who I  turn out not to like?  I stop!  Maybe some people aren’t as smart as I am.  But I have learned that if I’m going to maintain a public website, I’m going to encounter people who don’t fit into my sweet little Utopia.  Those people are not my problem.  I can’t stop them from coming around, but I don’t have to engage with them, or in fact, even acknowledge them, either.

I also learned that I can’t let my displeasure for what I consider an unjust and inappropriate business practice stop me from doing what I love, and what I so desperately need to do.  This is still my little world and I’m not walking away again.

So let’s just be plain for a moment.  There are people who will read these words – people I can’t stop from reading these words, though I would like to – those people do not belong here and they know it.  If they continue to come, that’s on them.  They are not part of my Utopia.  I’ll not engage with those people.  If, over time, their ranks are increased, I’ll not engage with those new members of their club.  But as the sole author and proprietor of this space, I have the right to say what I want (as long as I believe it to be truth) and manage the site as I want.  These means I’ll continue to tell my stories as they come up and my stories will include the truth of who I am and what my experiences are or have been.  It’s impossible to tell ones’s stories of themselves, without sharing details about the people who are, or were, around them.  I never have, and never will, lie.  I might misremember, but if I do, that’s not a lie, because I don’t know it’s not the truth.  I will talk about my experiences and the people involved in them with truth and honor.

I’ll continue to moderate my comments, because I firmly and completely believe that is my right, just as I firmly and completely believe I have the right to refuse to publish any comment I think is offensive, or vitriolic.  If someone has a differing opinion from mine and knows how to present it in a respectful and non-confrontational manner, I’ll gladly entertain a dialog with the community, within the comments.  I won’t allow hatred or harshness and I won’t think twice of deleting a comment or banning a commenter (and that technology does exist), if their tone turns or they begin to abuse.

This is my space and I’ll manage it as I see fit.  I won’t allow those who do not belong to drive me away again.  The platform and the technology may not permit me to block anyone from stopping in, but that doesn’t mean I have to engage with, or cater to them.  Anyone who is viewing these pages and doesn’t belong should stop.  I can’t block them from the site, but they can certainly take measures into their own hands to end the cycle.  Unsubscribe from the e-mails, delete the RSS feeds, stop their dirty little fingers from keying up the URL, whatever.

As for me, I’ll be living my life, and behaving as if those individuals don’t really exist, which means, no censoring, no coddling, and no responding.  Anyone who doesn’t like it can fuck off.

I’m back!  And I’m better than ever!

The End

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

I grew up in a family and a world full of abuse: some violent, some physical, mostly emotional, all horrific.  I never learned how to care for myself in that world and was constantly subject to the whims and mood swings of my abusers, be they family or school mates or even the occasional teacher.  Because of this, or maybe in addition to it, I was cripplingly clinically depressed for most of my life.

Almost four years ago, I started blogging.  I didn’t really know what would come of it and it was hard at times, because the truth is, I don’t know how to censor myself or not be open and honest in my writing.  This is a good thing since I’m not really capable of being completely open and honest in my face to face communications.  I’m constantly censoring myself and holding back.  As it turned out, blogging was very therapeutic for me.  Where I’m not any good at developing relationships in the real world, I’m good at dealing with people on-line.  While I’m not able to cultivate friendships face to face, people on-line and in the blogging community are very nice, friendly, supportive people.  Obviously, that’s all about the circles in which one travels, but I managed to develop some good circles; surround myself with good, decent, honest, caring people… Or so I thought.

I let my guard down.  I began to trust people; something I’ve never done easily.  I couldn’t trust my own family, why would I trust outsiders?  But this blog and the people who have been around it showed me that there are people out there one can trust… Or so I thought.

But I got complacent.  And now this safe little world of mine has been invaded.  Now, now that my blog has really gotten a good readership.  Now that there are actually people who like me and want to read my words.  Now there are people who feel it’s appropriate to stalk and terrorize me.  People who think that just because this is a “public website” they have the right to force their way in.  People who think that they have the right to treat me like shit, just because they don’t like something I wrote on MY  blog.  People who relish taking the control over my life away from me.

I have taken the rational, reasonable measures I can take to put a stop to these activities, but unfortunately, the mechanism does not exist in this world for me to protect myself and my rights.

So I have to take drastic measures.

I have to take myself, out of this world.

A Hard Lesson

~ riggledo ~ 3 Comments

Well, this has been a kind of stressful week-end, but it paid off in the end.  It gave me an opportunity to do some introspection and really think about what matters and what doesn’t.

After growing up surrounded by unkind, uncaring, hateful, hurtful people, I have managed to make a life for myself without those people in it.  I have been isolated from that kind of behavior (for the most part) and I had forgotten that those people existed.  I guess I got a little too comfortable, a little complacent and I allowed my guard to come down a bit too far.

I had forgotten what matters and what doesn’t and I guess I needed a little kick to remind myself.  There will always be people in this world who mean to do you harm.  You can’t avoid it.  You can only take care of yourself.

But now I remember what matters to me and what doesn’t.  Being kind to humanity.  Doing the right thing, even when it’s difficult.  Taking care of others.  Being honest and fair.  Those are the things that matter.

What doesn’t matter is people who will try to hurt you.  People who don’t respect you and keep their commitments to you.  People who think they have a right to impose themselves on you uninvited.  Those are things that don’t matter.

I care about nurturing and developing the friendships that I already have and developing new ones where the opportunity arises, with people who will show respect and courtesy toward others.  I care about doing the right thing and showing support for the right purposes and causes, things that will better the world.  I care about the health and well-being of the people in my life.   I care about making the world a better place.

I don’t care about the insults or opinions of small-minded, insecure people.  I don’t care about trying to get through to people who aren’t interested in the first place.  I don’t care about justifying myself to people  and I don’t care about people who would judge and condemn, especially ones who do not know about what they speak.

This is my life and my world and I’ll live in it the way I believe is right.  Others can come along, or they can follow their own path and leave me out of it.  But I will not be swayed toward other people’s paths again.  I will not stoop to their levels.  I will not allow the behavior of others to negatively influence me.

It’s too bad I had begun to forget these things and that the reminder had to be such a tough one, but I’m better now.  I know who I am.  I know what I stand for.  I know what matters.  I know what I believe and I won’t be swayed by the arrogance and ignorance of others.

Know What I Can’t Understand?

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

How anyone could want to hurt someone else.  That’s what I can’t understand.

These people set out to harm other people, either physically or emotionally.  Somehow they think it’s fun.  Somehow they think what they’re doing is right.  Of course it’s not.  But they do not seem to understand that.  Day to day, some people set out to deliberately hurt other people in the simplest, smallest of ways.

I’m not saying I’m perfect, either.  I’m not saying I’ve never hurt anyone.  I’ve hurt people.  I certainly didn’t do it on purpose and I’ve felt terribly badly about it afterward, and I’ve done the best that I can do, while still being truthful, to make it up to the person.  Unfortunately, sometimes there’s nothing you can do.  Sometimes you can’t make things right with the person and still be honest.  Sometimes the person is just determined to stay hurt.  That’s a terrible situation to be in, but occasionally unavoidable.

But I cannot understand deliberately setting out to hurt someone else.  Not that I haven’t wanted to do so.  The truth is, on almost a daily basis, I want to hurt someone.  Someone will irk me so much that I want to just punch them, or slap them, or stab them, or say just the right thing, in just the right way that it will get under their skin and make them feel small and worthless.  This makes me less of a man and I’d really like to see it change, but it’s true, nonetheless.  I’m grateful, however, that I am man enough to keep my mouth shut and keep my hands to myself.  There’s no benefit to hurting someone else.  It doesn’t make me a better person.  It doesn’t elevate my worth in any way.  And if I need to hurt someone else to make myself feel better, well then, I’m a really sad human being indeed.

I hate hurting others.  It makes me feel horrible.  And I hate seeing anyone or anything hurt.  When I’m watching late night, or cable television and those awful animal rescue commercials with the Sarah McLachlan song come on, I have to fast forward over them so I don’t see those poor animals’ faces.  Today I drove by a dead animal on the side of the road and I felt badly because it had been hurt.  I hate seeing children cry.  I hate when someone feels helpless and alone because someone has mistreated them.

I simply cannot understand how harassment and abuse is the solution to anything.  I can not comprehend how treating someone this way can make the person doing the harassing feel good.  How someone can wake up in the morning with the determination to harm someone else is beyond me.

When you consider the number of teen suicides and attempted suicides over the last year or so, all because those children have been bullied by people who made it their goal in life to belittle and humiliate the victim, it is simply incomprehensible that anyone, particularly adults, could behave this way, but it happens just as much among adults as it does children.

So, if you’ve been the victim of this kind of abuse or harassment, what have you done about it?  What have you done to make it stop?

And if you are, or have been guilty of abusing or harassing someone else, please dig deep and really think about what is damaged within you, that you feel good about your behavior.  I promise you, you are in the minority.

 

Probably Not So Popular Opinion

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

I usually look forward to Fridays here on ye old blog.  Well let’s not kid ourselves.  I look forward to Fridays in general and I know I’m not alone in that.  Fridays are meant to be wind down days.  If you can work from home you probably do (I, sadly, do not have that luxury).  Certainly you work with less vim and vigor than you probably do the rest of the week.

I have been looking forward to Fridays here on the blog lately though, because that’s when Write on Edge posts the link-up for the Red Writing Hood prompts that I’ve been participating in lately.  It is not my intention to be bragging (so if it sounds that way, I’m sorry) when I say that I usually bust those short fiction pieces out in the course of an hour or so.  The hard part with those prompts isn’t writing the pieces, it’s deciding what I’m going to write about.  Sometimes the prompts seem so vague and indecipherable.  I usually figure out something eventually though.  Most of the time I just have to kick my literal thinking mind out of the way and let it be a little more – well, vague.

This week though, that just didn’t work out.  This week’s prompt goes something like this:

This week we’d like you to stir up some conflict, using the following quote as inspiration.

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948)

Well…  Not “something like” that.  That’s a cut and paste, so it goes exactly like that.  Only the problem is I’m not sure if I truly understand the quote, and what I think I understand of it, I do not agree with.

Honestly, the quote seems to be self-contradictory.

I do not believe in violence, period.  There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.  I do not believe in violence.

I also do not really see a connection between “be violent, if there is violence in your heart” and a “cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.”  How these two things even relate to each other, I do not know.

When I read the quote though, the first thing that comes to mind is some of the recent political protest activity that has happened around this here country of ours.  Thinking specifically of the “occupy” protests or, going back a little further, the Oscar Grant riots that happened here in Oakland a while back.  Things that were supposed to be “peaceful” but turn violent without much provocation.  Things that I heard lots of people argue in favor of, under the guise that “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”  Sounds like a “cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence” to me.

Only we aren’t impotent.  We can do something.  There are steps we can take that don’t involve breaking laws and destroying public or private property.  There are ways we can get our point across without belligerently disobeying the police.

Angry does not have to mean violent.  It does not have to mean disruptive.  It does not have to be destructive.

Impotence is laziness.

Impotence is an excuse.

If anything we tend to use violence, not nonviolence, as the cover for impotence.