A personal problem

[aliantha]

It's okay to talk about it here. Batty (my older daughter) is a lesbian.

So that's it! I knew something was wrong with her!













*runs for cover, laughing hysterically*

You are *so* dead, Mr. Sir.

[Dread Poet Jethro]

There is nothing wrong
With Ali's older daughter
She is just Batty

[aliantha]

Yes! Yes, she is!

[wayfriend]

There is nothing wrong
With Ali's older daughter
She is just Batty

Someone must say it:
Not that there's anything wrong
with that! [insert laughs]

[aliantha]

<debates whether to tell her kid about this>

<pretty much decides against it>

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

"There is hope in contradiction."

This is liable to sound crazy or delusional, but I try to pattern my life a lot on a lot of what I read, or read the patterns in what I read into my life. The importance of the Covenant novels to me more than anything else exemplifies how this works.

These novels were a major factor in my own, I guess you could say it was redemption, about ten years ago. It might not seem as if a 12-year old could need to be redeemed, but I think there were things I was doing that were depraved even if no one else thought they were. I wasn't pure at any rate. But Donaldson's work inspired me to make amends, as it goes, and that amendment has defined my life since.

7 months ago, I started wanting to kill myself after a roughly year-long period without having to deal with suicidal feelings. To overcome this desire in the short-term, I gave myself these last 7 months to get my writing published and thereby get on with my life, or basically change my friend's (the guy I'm in love with's) attitude towards life/persuade him to change in the way that Donaldson persuaded me to, kind of, or give up on this world. My frustration kept building as I seemingly failed to accomplish either of the constructive goals I had. These failures came after years and years more of others, an entire decade of loneliness, etc. So don't judge my willingness to surrender as if it were pure weakness on my part. I really felt like how Linden thought Covenant felt when he gave his ring to the Despiser, as if every effort of mine to connect with others or help myself or whatever would always eventually turn out corrupt or demolished. No job, kicked out of school, and so on.

But enough preemptive defensiveness... I convinced myself by yesterday that somehow Covenant's "victorious defeat" was, metaphorically, what I had to do. A dream I had a few days back played a part in it, too, as well as my own fictional writing and philosophical beliefs. It came down to almost magical thinking that I could redeem my friend in one day and night, or failing that, try to kill myself and that would fix everything.

What I didn't know how to reconcile, short of immediate success or death, was both the fact that if my friend's attitude didn't change soon, I would have to find some space apart from him for myself, and the fact that I have real reasons to think he could change and things could work out like I most want them to. But there's hope in contradiction, I'd told myself, and at the eleventh hour (ninth, actually...), it clicked. I could find space away from him without being dead, and yet in that space I could allow my one best act of redemptive force for his sake to work itself out, and in that keep going.

So after such a dark time in my life, I passed through the final dark to the light of a new year. Inasmuch as most of my last few New Year's were really bad, this is that much better for me.

The political scientist Hannah Arendt wrote that salvation is always a miracle, unpredictable. I would have to say that achieving the insight I did last night, at the edge of my life, wasn't something I predicted in virtually any way. Now that I'm here, I have enough confidence in myself again to hold on for the sake of holding on. I "endured to the end," a Christian might say, or passed the test of my life up until this point, and that's just what I had to do.

[aliantha]

So you're not going to attempt suicide then, right? If I'm reading this right, then:

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

So you're not going to attempt suicide then, right? If I'm reading this right, then:

Correct.

[Cagliostro]

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles, and I'm glad you didn't give despair the ultimate victory. I've been there a few times myself, to be honest, and I've always managed to put it aside, stand up, get outside and make myself happy again. At these times, I had figured that there was never any hope of happiness ever again, and that some of my bad choices in life would haunt me forever. A couple only mildly do anymore, but I've forgiven myself for them. But I have seen a lot of happiness since, and as alone as you feel, you will feel different in a few years if you allow yourself to be around others.

Another tip: if you are listening to Roger Waters music toward the end of his stint with Pink Floyd...stop. Listen to it only when you are happy to balance out the happy and sad.