This Happened

[Phoebe]

The question is really whether you have the healing touch and can TCB like Elvis, if that's an inherited trait on the Dad's side.

[Tahlvin]

That's awesome, Zen!

I was able to track my mom's family surname, which arrived in America from Britain in the 1600's. I've been able to track my dad's family surname back to someone that was born in Pennsylvania in the early-to-mid 1700's, but haven't been able to get any further back to that, or find which relative actually immigrated or when he arrived. But they were German, so the story about the immigrants from Germany in the early 1700's is very interesting.

[Iantha]

Paul was assaulted... again. Just two open wounds, but one hell of a concussion. He's going to be home for a while. Now I'm researching concussion recovery programs in our area and seeing what I can cajole Worker's Comp into referring him to.

[mimekiller]

a post concussion throw up is one of the worst things ever, ya got the spins and you're just yakking, worse then booze throw up! Wish him the best.

[Tahlvin]

Hope he feels better soon!

[Phoebe]

[Zen]

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

All is mostly ok here. Stressful evening but mostly ok.

[Phoebe]

Not a great night, this.

It's not as bad as I thought earlier, when we were finishing with runelords, but it's bad in other special ways. We are rolling down a long track to nowhere good. Nobody wants to be on this track.

[Tahlvin]

I'm glad it's not as bad as you thought when we were ending Runelords. That was quite a scare!

[Phoebe]

Oh, it was indeed! Things are pretty bad, but not that bad, thank God!

I don't know if I'm just too tired for my brain to function or if I had some type of epiphany. I forced others to take all the kids to school, almost like that was something a normal person should have volunteered to do under the circumstances, and like I volunteer to do regularly for any slight reason. I also despair about the purpose of human life. But that seems less like an epiphany and more like an abyss.

[Phoebe]

My face when people lie, lol. Why even bother.

[Phoebe]

Never mind; I can't post that! Jesus. The relevant point is, I have somehow transformed in every facet of life, from parenting to work, into a great and horrid ogre, and a bunch of harrowing things happened last week so I rolled into the weekend already completely shook and depressed, and maybe the gods decided to give me an unmistakable series of signs that I am a repugnant stain on the earth. Anyway, I should take some time to de-ogrefy myself, maybe change into a completely new human being, maybe lobotomized or brain transplant, dunno, and I'll come back when I have my head fixed.

[mimekiller]

Was at a party and tripped over a weight bench and crashed into a barbell and now my left ass cheek is more bruise then ass.

[Zen]

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

OK, I have a question. If anyone has answers, I genuinely want to hear them even if it may be unpleasant. However, I would prefer that you let me know privately rather than airing my failures to the world here. I don't want to hear anything nice from anyone, honestly; at the moment, people offering reassurance merely assure me that they don't know how bad I actually am, so...

I would like to know what it is I do that is so offensive to other people on the internet. I am way too old to be asking this, way too old not to understand the answer and too old to care. However, after coming through a thankfully brief wanting-to-die period, hope of self-improvement remains. So, what is it that causes people to think I am a troll, an idiot, a pest, a menace, a bore, and generally offensive? Because I ask people irl and it seems this is an Internet Problem. In a way that should make me happy, but in another way it seems like people who see some purer essence of your inner stream of thought are the ones finding it wanting, where other people's opinions can be easily diverted through pleasantries and generosities of the sort real-life friends normally engage in. Someone shows up smiling and offering you gifts and inquiring about your day enough times, and you probably think they're nice. But then, maybe if you could see what and how they think about things, you'd think they were a horrid bitch. Who knows!

My husband's view is, internet people are not and never will be your friends, unless somehow you start hanging out with them irl. Which sometimes happens. Or maybe if you truly would do this, if only you lived closer. He also doesn't care. He's totally self-confident to the core. My parents' view is that people must be somehow jealous of my awesomeness. That's really nice, parents, but isn't helping because literally nobody else would think that besides your parents. My few close-enough irl friends do not get it; they think I'm as charming on the internet as off it, or else they're unwilling to say it to my face because I will boot them from our criminal organization if they cross me. I don't know. Yet however nice people seem to think I am, or how friendly on the surface, it is still really, really hard for me, even way out here on this advanced downslope of age, to make friends beyond the surface levels. Is that just a problem of our times, our culture, our work life and parenting? Or is something wrong with me and the way I go about things? Do I not act like other humans? Legit I feel like some kind of grotesque ogre of a creature, something not even fully human.

You may wonder: what of the dear friend who stopped speaking to me? That wasn't an internet problem, so... ? Well, I had to know the answer to that myself! I talked to her husband; he claims it is legit only because they moved away, were overwhelmed with stuff afterward, and after a while it becomes awkward to "reach out". Not sure what to think of that, because it's not like they moved to Mars, but okay. It wasn't something I said or did to offend - or if it was, it was a whole package deal that accumulated over time. He insists; what else can I do but accept that at face value?

So that leaves me wondering, what is it about the internet, and people on it, that makes me such a walking disaster? Why would a person choose to be friends with me one day and then be so repulsed the next that I have to be blocked, banned, erased entirely? Did I make a bad joke? Did I say too much? Too little? Too ... what? I have no idea. Was my information bad? Did I offer too much of it? Am I disgusting in a more general sense? Why do people here, on this site, sometimes think I am basically an internet troll, like some chan-dwelling shitlord (of the sort I get to encounter at work IRL!) and decide they too need to block me on their "social media"? Is this a fad I can expect to spread? I mean, I am happy to return the favor if that's how we're all going to be, but What The Hell am I doing that is so wrong? How do I offend people so much? I honestly don't know. I don't get it. I'm in a bad place right now, as those of you who were playing Runelords the other day can probably infer; there is some bad happening right now. Also, in case you don't know, I have similar bad to anticipate in my own life, maybe a little taste of its first fruits now, which creates some real ambivalence about what the point of anything is. I'm a crap parent, a crap housewife, crap at my job, a crap caregiver to others, a crap friend, a crap everything. All of it! It is horrible to inflict your presence on others, under those circumstances, but you keep having to get up and go out in the world and encounter people. I don't know what else to do besides more of that same.

[Phoebe]

I don't know how to describe this, especially without giving away the names of the innocent. I looked at a thing on The Internet. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be looking at it, if I wasn't - it was sitting right there and it was a completely harmless picture of a thing. Right there upon it was a request for information about what it was a picture of. I happen to know the answer, and even better, I have a real expert to call on for backup so people don't think I'm just talking out my ass like always. I provide this information. Before I can even get to the accompanying diagram, my info is deleted. Not only this, I am banned, blocked, erased as if a vomit stain on the white carpet of life. But now the expert in question keeps sending me more info. And it's fascinating info. And each time I get more I feel just a little bit more like s***, because a happy little person is trying to spread some joy and understanding in the world about something they love, and yet because I'm the messenger it's totally offensive somehow. I don't know man, I think I just don't do whatever it is with humans. I don't understand humans. Someday I'm going to be knitting away furiously in the common room of the nursing home and those other b****** are going to be rolling their wheelchairs away as fast as they can. Well I probably won't be knitting, I'll just be sitting there tapping a stick on the wall incessantly.

[mimekiller]