Why?

I think, if one were to look up the most pointless existence in the human world, my life might be one of the top five. I honestly don't know why I'm here. There's always been variations of this sentiment littered throughout the rest of these pointless monologues, but only recently have I begun to really wonder why am I here again. For as long as I can remember, my first key to happiness was my family. I loved them dearly. I was total ride or die, do a blood bond, you go to jail, I go to jail committed. I would have died to protect every last one of them and I would never do anything to hurt them, only to discover over the past, er, 14 years or more, that none of them feel the same.  I am a target to hurt, to maim, to betray, and to forget so long as it suits them. Losing them left a deep wound, I never thought could heal, then came the dreaded search for a mate. At first it was some weird misguided belief that if some random dude whisked me away, physical pain of first intercourse would replace emotional turmoil in my heart. I was a weirdo, hoping some random movie star would drive by, find young me interesting and whisk me away from where  I was. Needless to say that didn't happen and thank god. What a psychotic and dangerous situation that would have been. So I resolved to be a hermit and go live in the mountains. I had a weird, firm, set of what I would do and where I would go, should I have no reason to return to my splintering home. Pretty sure had  I lived in Japan, I would have become a monk. In fact, I even began to look up how to become a monk. Short answer, I can't. I'm female. Boo. I want to give up worldly vices and live in peace on a mountaintop and still have some respect, but nope. We get stuck in a stupid convent, locked away in a garden. Oh joy. So, I settled for when I get older, I'm living alone. Total Kevin sentiments there, only I kept getting people thrown in my way. This person would go far out of their way to befriend me, that person would invite me to dances, but I was the pity kid. I wasn't so much a popular we like you kid, it was more like meet our charity case. She's awkward, shy, and rarely speaks, but she's harmless. I was like some sort of pet, but I just wanted friendship. Then as those little kindnesses spread and people seemed to like me, I gave up the mate dream and went running towards friends. Most girls want a romance with a childhood friend like they see in the movies. Where the boy and girl grow up next to each other and find out one day they're perfect for each other and love ensues. Yeah, I was more enamored with the sisterhood of the traveling pants of life. I wanted a best friend from elementary school, who knows me throughout the rest of our lives. We visit each other, plan to live in the same city, I attend her wedding and child classes, or we travel together and are like super sophisticated. I didn't care what, but I just wanted someone to want to be there for me, for me. Because they actually liked me as a friend, a mate, a sibling. Instead, I have no one.
I go to school and come back home to solve problems. That's literally all my life is. I go on trips with friends who want to achieve what they want to do and I go to experience it as separate but together. I allow myself to be dragged all over timbuktu, because sometimes travelling with others is worth the hassle than going alone, but I end up alone anyway, so what does it matter? Everyone is willing to leave me behind if it furthers their own ends. Most of my guy friends just can't stand being alone, so proposition some sort of attachment together and I'm like thank you for making me feel even more worthless. I get to be picked last and as a last resort, because I have a pulse and a vagina. Woo-fucking-hoo. The bitterness inside is boiling over to the point, I just don't really want to be around anybody anymore. I'm ready to hole up in an apartment somewhere in a city, so no one cares who I am and cut off all ties. No electronics, or rather no social media. No phones, except a prepaid one for emergencies. Just disappearing, because there is nothing left for me anymore. My disappearance won't be missed and I guess instead of thinking about it, I should just do it. I guess some people are all talk. I need to learn to be action. I seem to have only goodbyes left. I guess that's my legacy.

Left Behind

As I trudged along behind my friend who was the first to ever visit me from out of town, I saw black squirrels on the ground for the first time ever. I was so excited and I wanted to take a picture. My friends receding back, got further and further away from me, So I said enthusiastically, look, look black squirrels. She just made a dismissive gesture with her hand and said, who cares, they're everywhere. I don't want to see a black squirrel and kept moving. As I stood in shock absorbing this dismissal, I took out my camera and snapped a few pictures of the rambunctious black squirrels. I didn't look to see where she went, I didn't try to hurry to catch up. I had experienced this before. In fact, it became startlingly clear to me that I'm somehow always surrounded by people with one foot out the door. I'm forever stuck with people who don't look back to see if I caught up, nor do they come to see me to begin with. I tagged along. I just wanted to be close to my friends. I'm not doing that anymore. I don't chase after people. We eventually somehow happened to both need an emptying of the bladder and she waited for me to complete my own ablutions, but if she hadn't, had she left, I would have left and never turned back. Which sounds stupid. Like you forced her into hanging out with you, why should you be upset if she left you behind? And the answer is surprisingly simple. Because I wanted to hang out with her. I could have let her explore Vancouver and Seattle on her own as was her original plan. I could have let her get a hotel and be on her schedule and had we met up, we would have met up, though I doubt it, because I would've gone home and bypassed her altogether. So I stayed, I put my grades in jeopardy to play a good host and I was constantly threatened with being left behind. 

Beyond complaining, I also realized, this is a recurring theme with, if not 100%, then 90% of all of my friends. I go to see them, I want to hang out with them. Yes, their city, state, or country is gorgeous and it's nice to explore, but really I just want to sit down and talk to them, walk with them, get to know them. I have only been able to do that once. One time where I felt like I was cared about, encouraged to visit, and actually friends with someone. Every other time has been a distant rush towards getting me out of their life faster. A vague affirmation of some sort of positive emotion towards me coming to visit or just plain and simple far too busy. And I wonder, what is the point anymore? I mean I don't just travel for my friends, but if I can to meet them, hang out with them, affirm a bond, then I don't mind, as long as I'm wanted. Turns out I've never been wanted. Apparently, I've just thrown myself into people's lives, insinuated myself, and fooled myself into thinking people really care, when they don't. I've only ever been selfish in ways of survival and usually it's so that I can reach back and save someone else. Help them or teach them to survive by leading by example.

Not to mention every time I try to give up humanity, some other poor sucker is thrown in my path to be cheerful, make me feel less alone, less isolated, less angry, only when I try to grasp the proferred invisible hand of friendship, it completely vanishes. It's no longer there, no longer, beckoning to me to hope, to want to be close. 

I am just tired now. Tired of being left behind. See, not like the move. Lame joke, but no more. No more am I reaching out and no more will I accept those who are thrown in my life for whatever reason. I am done. I hope my writing will some day be good and have a market, so I can just withdraw from the world. My mom will be by my side, but...well, besides her, I want to be alone. Message received loud and clear. No one wants you and no one ever will. 

Only Human

It seems, no matter how hard I try, I will never be normal. I know, it's the hipsters and outcasts pride to not be like everyone else, but I've kind of been trying to be like everyone else. I want to be normal, but I am unaware of which ways I am not normal. Case in point, my sister says she's mad at me. Color me surprised, because  I can't think of anything I've done wrong. She says your nephew was hurt, you didn't call. I was like I heard through the grapevine he was all right. She says that's not the way it works. If you love your nieces and nephews and hear something has happened to them, you call to check on them personally. I'm like really? Why? You already have the information that they're okay through the grapevine. Apparently, the goal is to show you care.
I was a little non-plussed and promised to try and do better, but mostly I need to overthink this. Like obviously, I can't be the only one to trust the grapevine that someone is doing well, but it felt frustrating, and also like a gulf opened up between me and where I want to be. In my mind, I'm showing I care. In my mind, learning from someone else, how someone is doing, is sufficient to show I care enough to ask. To learn.
My idea of showing I care is that I genuinely want to know if you're okay or not, no matter how this information is obtained.  The problem is that, once I know you're okay, I tend to vanish back into whatever has absorbed me from the beginning.
I feel like there's this detachment of sorts from me and everything around me, but I am unaware of its existence until someone points it out. Then it's like I can't unsee it. I've never been one to think oh this is how they say you should act, so I should act it. It's more like if I feel logically it makes sense, then I wonder why didn't I do it? The answer is usually as simple as I didn't think about it, and as I don't have natural reactions, it leads to weird conversations of familial propriety.
I attribute most of it to being raised away from most people. I wasn't isolated, but in a situation of in a crowd full of people, still feel alone. Everyone did their thing and I endured whatever I was going through in silence.
I wish I could say my silence was sort of an oppressed thing, but really it didn't get that way until years later. The first times it happened, it was because I didn't really care about certain situations. Being shunned by popular girls who giggled all day like airheads, put me of the opinion that they were idiots, so I was better off. Sure it hurt when they invited my sisters to birthday parties, but not me, but for the most part, I didn't notice it. My brain always felt preoccupied with something else. Like seeing another world.
I've always been especially enamored of the outdoors, but it feels like someone is always watching and listening and as if there are two worlds and not just this one. I didn't think much of that, until I started to see the second world, then it's almost like am I crazy? My response is probably, but I'm okay with that.
However, I realized that animals and nature don't often speak.They have noises and for everyday functions use sounds, but I feel like they aren't really speaking. Their bodies speak for them. Their actions speak for them. I think it's why I've always had a hard time believing words over actions. Words are empty. They are broken, separated, torn apart, and spread like ashes whenever the speaker chooses. However, their actions are consistent.
If you tell me, you'll always be there, but you're almost never physically there. Then I'm not going to believe you'll always be there. A lot of my friends show their actions by asking about how I'm doing, coming around specifically to check in with me and other stuff. Things that over time with their words, let's me know, they're there for good.
Humans don't have tails to raise in times of dominance or lower in times of fear. They don't have twitchy, lashy tails when irritated, or use them as tools. Humans use words, but words lie. However, the reliance on words reveals the truth behind them. Some people don't mean what they say and some people don't know what they mean.
I miss the simplicity of my word is my bond and not being okay with actions that feel misleading. I suppose it's why I need to stop looking at people's body language and start listening to what they say. Maybe it's reverse and everything I need to know is only human words and not animal actions. I suppose in the long run we'll see.

Kids

For someone who at one point didn't want kids, the past few years of my life have been surprisingly inundated with me potentially acquiring kids. This comes in light of a proposal by my sis to possibly watch her two kids for a year or so, while she deploys. If she had asked me this ten years ago, I think I would have been freaking out and telling her to ask someone, anyone else. Instead, I'm strangely calm about it and feel...capable. After being desensitized to kids, then engendering a love of certain ones, it changed a lot of my outlook concerning the little buggers. Now, they're just my cubbies. Five of them to one auntie, but I've come to care about each of them in turn. 

In fact, contrary to popular familial belief, I've never specifically not wanted kids or rather, I've never said I didn't want any of my own. I just said I didn't like kids. So, what's the difference? Well, kids, are usually other peoples kids. They've influenced them, raised them, and done different things that just make them super unlikable. For instance, my initial dislike of kids, was due to one of my sisters babysitting jobs falling through on account of she was MIA. So, the duty, which became quite literal a few hours later, fell to me. Newbornish baby boy. Crying non-stop. 12 year old me, baffled on what to do with it. Someone suggests a diaper change. I'm the unlucky one to unravel the bubbling mass of witches brew that was the babies poop. It was liquid, horrifying, and indelibly etched into my brain as a really good reason to avoid kids. Exhibit B was my bio sperm donor having me watch his girlfriends kids like I was their mama. I had to bathe them, feed them, help them with their homework, go grocery shopping, and then some. Again at 12. If not for my canine pal White Wolf, I would have been a miserable mess. Hmm, okay, I was, but that's of no consequence for what I'm talking about. The point is, being responsible for kids, the eldest who was only three years younger than myself was the straw that broke the camels back. I felt like if I ever saw another kid again, it would be too soon.

So, fast forward 10 or 11 years, my eldest sis reenters my life with two kids. I'm foresworn to have nothing to do with them, then I end up babysitting them. Resentment is strong. Then we take them to the bay and they grow on me. When I'm at work, my niece runs to her mom to give her a hug, screaming mom and I wonder what it'd be like to have a cub run to me and call me mom. My small shrunken heart grew a size, half an inch, bigger. I start to think of them with terms like cute, adorable, smart, intelligent, and likable. I introduce one to anime and am comfortable with the close distance. Then another is on the way and I'm like this isn't a two year old or a five year old. This will be one of those spit up, diarrhea, creatures that I've dreaded. She comes into my life and I don't see her. Literally. My sis says there she is and I see a pink blanket and that's it. I ask where is she, and go closer for a sniff. My nose always investigates first. There she is. A smaller lump than a blanket, extremely fragile, and she looks like an alien. I tell my sis and she's not amused. Every animal instinct I own starts to reach out towards her. Much like it tried to do when she was in the womb. I avoid holding her for two days, then comes the dreaded hold the baby. A thousand scenarios of dropping her enters my mind, but instead she lies there and squints. I'm squinting too, but it's because of light sensitivity. I ask for the lights to be lowered just in case it's a problem for her too and she smiles at me. We've bonded.

I took care of her like she was my own cub and taught her the same body language. Nose touches nose. Forehead presses and cheek rubs. My friends know her intimately as she becomes my shadow. Everyone is astonished, including me. I ponder the idea of if a mate wanted cubs, would I be willing to have one and the answer is a surprising yes. If only, he would stay with me. Not to say, if it was a choice of stay with him, have a kid or leave, because I'd choose leave. Don't put an ultimatum on me. However, I would rather have his help in raising a cub, more than doing it all alone. It doesn't matter, but it is there. 

My time watching kids goes from a few hours, to days, to a week and a half. More and more I feel confident that I can do it alone, instead of feeling far out of my depth. I'm known as the strict one, but the kids are happiest with me. Punishment is endured by all. Hard to single a kid out for wanting to be with their siblings, even in punishment. So, to the corner my cub went. We adults tried not to laugh. Memories compile and  I feel a sense of power with knowledge, but still fear in watching kids. However, now I'm no longer afraid to watch them. I'm comfortable with it. 

My sister is contemplating employing me after I graduate to help with her kids. Maybe a year or two or until she retires in five years. I'm not sure and not really worried. I'm flexible after June. I just marvel at how the idea of watching two kids for a year no longer terrifies me. I believe I can do it and that's kind of the most amazing thing at all. Although, to tie back in to the top, that's why I feel like even though I don't have kids of my own, I feel like an accidental mom. One way or another, I've spent way more time watching kids these past few years than normal, but then I wonder, is this normal? Is this what aunties do? Spend all their time with the kids in their family? I feel like although I'm comfortable with kids, I'm still a far cry away from reacting as humans do, but that's a thought for another time.