I love my lurkers!

Posted on April 7, 2015 by luckyotter

Butchcountry67 gave me an idea for a new post tonight. (By the way, his blog about living on the Canadian prairie with his young son is wonderful, so please follow him.) In my earlier post, “What Do You Like Best (and Least) About Blogging,” a comment of his really got me thinking.

Butch said (as one of the things he likes least),

[…]the uncertainty of just who is reading my blogs … not so much those that follow my blog, but those that do not and read it nonetheless.

My reply:
If I stop and think about the hundreds of strangers every day reading this blog–not fellow bloggers from WP who already follow me–but everyone else (and there’s so many more of them than WP bloggers!) it can freak you out just a little. I try not to think about it when hitting the Publish button, especially if it’s a post about a personal or sensitive subject.

But at the same time, it’s exciting and thrilling, because you never know what sort of important people who can help you (or that you may be helping!) may be reading your words.

I’ve had a few people read this blog or a post on this blog I never expected to in a million years.
Some examples:

1. Sam Vaknin was one of the first, and he even used to comment and helped my visibility so much for awhile (seriously, whether or not you like the guy, this blog would not be where it is today were it not for him, and Sam, if you are still reading, thank you!)
2. a researcher and Ph.D candidate from the University of Georgia who wanted me to help disseminate a study questionnaire. I’m still waiting for the results of that study and will post them as soon as I get the information, which has been promised to me and I do have permission to post the results.
3. Owners and admins of non-WP blogs that are well established in the narcissistic abuse community
4. various other authors of both fiction and nonfiction who I can’t remember the names of at the moment.

Sometimes I don’t find out until I check Twitter and find out someone I never expected favorited, DM’d me with thanks, or retweeted one of my posts (which meant they probably read at least the post concerning them). Two that come to mind are Eric Casaccio, director of the short film “Narcissist” and Christian singer Danny Gokey. Both expressed gratitude for my attention (and in so doing, helped me out too).

The 90-9-1 rule of online community participation. 90% of your readership consists of lurkers.

It’s such a cool feeling when something like that happens. It’s one of the highlights of having a slightly visible blog. You should have a Twitter account connected to your blog. It’s the easiest way to find out who some of your important lurkers may be and helps give your blog visibility.

You just never know who your “lurkers” may be. 🙂 Don’t be afraid of them–love your lurkers! It’s not your friends and followers, but your lurkers, who help your blog gain visibility, and you just might be helping them out too.

And thanks to Butch too, for giving me this idea tonight.

I feel like an explanation is in order

Posted on April 7, 2015 by luckyotter

I’ve been thinking about (and feeling guilty about) the fact I follow so many blogs, but rarely comment on anyone’s blog posts anymore.

It makes me feel bad too, because I don’t want any of you to think I don’t care about what you write or am not reading your posts. I am (when I can).

When I first started blogging, I used to read a lot of other blogs and comment a lot on other people’s posts, but due to the sheer volume of comments I have been receiving lately (and still having to work for a living, run a household, take care of pets, maintain this blog, sort through spam, write new posts, etc.), I simply cannot find the time to comment as much as I’d like to, because I’m so busy replying to mine.

I try to read other blogs when I can, but to read everything I want to read and comment on posts too, I would not be able to get any sleep! When I do read, I may “like” your post, but will probably not comment, because there just isn’t any time anymore. I’ve received so much inspiration from so many of you, even when I don’t Like or comment on a post of yours.

This is the problem I dreamed of having when I started this blog in September. Please keep the comments coming! 🙂

Nobody knew who I was.

Posted on March 21, 2015 by luckyotter

Woodcut by Käthe Kollwitz, 1867-1945

I used to be a nobody.

Or, as my malignant narcissist mother would have put it, “a nothing.”

Before I started this blog, years of psychological abuse had sealed my lips and closed my eyes to what I could be. I rarely spoke to the people around me, and when I did, I revealed nothing because I was too afraid and was convinced I was a boring person who lived an equally boring life. I never ever revealed anything about my emotional life to people outside my immediate family, and even with them, I was reticent.

I’ve always found it difficult to make friends offline, due to my Aspergers and my avoidant personality, as well as my fear of revealing too much. I still almost never talk about my feelings offline. When I was a child I revealed way too much. I was highly sensitive and vulnerable but didn’t know how to handle it. That kind of openness got me bullied and as a result, I learned it was best to say nothing at all. I didn’t realize my high sensitivity was in reality a wonderful gift.

I shut and locked all my psychological doors. After a while, I couldn’t remember how to unlock them. For me, writing was the key, but I assumed the lock was broken and the key would not work.

For most of my adulthood, although I managed to marry and have a family (with a narcissistic bully who was all wrong for me or for anyone) I had practically no social life outside of that and hardly ever engaged in any interesting activities. I gave up easily. I never completed anything I started due to my dismally low self esteem that told me I was sure to fail. I gave up writing and art and all the things I had loved when I was younger. I feared being boring but boring is exactly what I became. I was just too afraid of everything to be anything else.

I believed my purpose in this life was to be an example to others of how not to be. Hell, even my own mother called me a loser and a failure, and if your own mother has no faith in you, how can you believe in yourself? Mother knows best, right?

Wrong.

I thought about writing a blog, but didn’t because I feared I would have nothing to say that would interest anyone. I also thought it would be too hard and I would give up in frustration, like I had given up on so many other things when they became too difficult. My irrational fear of failure crippled me.

Even if I could think of something to write about, I was afraid people would hate my words and ideas. Ideas? I didn’t think I had any anyway. In my own mind I was the most boring person in the world. I felt like a walking zombie, marking time until death.

I was so wrong. So very wrong. I’m free to reveal the self on this blog that was in hiding for decades and many times was hidden even from myself. I’m finding it’s safe to be open and vulnerable, at least online. And I’m finding there is so much joy to be had if you just open your eyes and your heart and let yourself feel life. It really wasn’t that hard to do, once my psychopathic sperm donor was out of the way.

I never thought I could help anyone, least of all myself. I felt impotent and helpless in the world, someone born to be a victim, a source of narcissistic supply to others, because that was how I was trained. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t really stupid, uncreative and boring. I wasn’t a loser and I only failed because I was too afraid to try anything and would give up easily the few times I did try. I didn’t realize it was my PTSD and depression that turned me into a walking zombie. Mental illness is a powerful dark beast and can engulf and eclipse your true spirit.

My creativity is blossoming. I always had ideas, but now they’ve revealed themselves as I’ve let go of my debilitating fear and self hatred. Sometimes I feel like I have too many ideas and can’t write them down fast enough.

Although my external circumstances haven’t changed very much (outside the narc being gone), I have hope now. I feel like a real person again, an interesting person who can even be a friend to others. I’m even starting to like myself, and think I’m a pretty interesting person. I’m even becoming proud of my high sensitivity I used to be so ashamed of. In its highest form, high sensitivity can reveal empathic ability.

I truly believe that once I got the narc out of my life, that God stepped in and took things over. He has shown me who I really am and what my purpose is in this world, and it’s not to be an example to others of how not to be. A plan for my life is taking shape and every day it amazes me. There’s so much to be amazed by. He is teaching me how to use the gift of writing that I had been wasting for so long on bullshit or not using at all.

Becoming vulnerable again through my writing is a beautiful thing. If you like yourself, you can handle the bullies, but chances are there will be fewer than you think, and most people will admire your willingness to be open and can relate to that. Your voice will be heard by those who are really listening. It can penetrate the darkness in other people’s lives.

Being vulnerable is about being honest. It’s embracing the truth rather than believing the lies.

Becoming vulnerable takes courage. Rather than being a trait of a weak person, it really takes a strong person to be willing to feel life in its kaleidoscope of colors. Before, I only saw in shades of gray.

I used to believe there was nothing left to look forward to. Now I know there is still so much ahead of me.

Nobody knew who I was. I wouldn’t let them in. Now the door is wide open. Come on in.

The dumbing down of the Internet

Posted on March 12, 2015 by luckyotter

Even Bart Simpson knows what’s going on.

Up until 9/11 and its aftermath, and especially since the twin-monster births of Facebook and Twitter (and their older retarded brother MySpace), the Internet was like being set loose in New York City during the 1970s and 1980s or Paris during the 1920s and 1930s.

Ever since Facebook, Twitter and other major corporate-run websites came along and steamrolled the entire web, visiting the Internet is more like taking tours of the world’s most depressing slums with weekends spent in Disneyland.

It’s March!

Posted on March 1, 2015 by luckyotter

By the end of this month, some places will look like this.

I cannot believe we’re already into the third month of 2015. Where did the winter go? It can’t go away too fast for me!

March is a special month. Once it arrives, I start to realize the season of darkness, ice, cold, flu, and high heating bills is finally in its death throes. Sure, March is still cold in most of the non-tropical northern hemisphere. There can still be snowstorms and some of the worst blizzards in history have happened in March. It’s not quite time to put away the winter coats and gloves and take off the snow tires yet.

But in March, the snow that falls tends to melt faster, the days are getting noticeably longer (don’t forget to set your clocks AHEAD next Sunday!), and by mid-month, at least in my part of the country, the weather gets a bit warmer too.

The first thunderstorms of the year arrive, and people living in Tornado Alley must be wary of severe weather again. I happen to love big storms and like to sit outside on my covered porch and watch them roll in.

On some days and nights, you may even be able to keep the heat turned off, which lowers your heating bill.

In many southern and mid-Atlantic states, some trees begin to show a hazy pale greenish tint by the end of the month. Other trees take on a diluted version of the same colors you see on them in the fall, before their chlorophyll kicks in. (Has anyone ever noticed this? I never did until a few years ago). The forsythias and first crocuses and other early-spring flowers begin to bloom. You may see a robin or two in your backyard. Although most trees are still bare, many are sporting fat buds on their branches.

March is the month the intrepid (some might say insane) hikers who decide to take on all 2,168 miles of the Appalachian trail begin their trek in Georgia (and won’t complete their journey until late August or September, when they arrive in Maine just as it starts to turn colder). Hiking the entire Appalachian Trail is actually on my Bucket List of things to do before I die. I’m crazy enough to do it if I can ever afford to take off the six months it requires to just drop out of modernity and normal life (which would not be a problem for me at all!)

Very early spring along the Appalachian Trail.

If you live in a rural area you start to notice fields being tilled in preparation for sowing the year’s crops.

Easter stuff is being sold everywhere. Hell, it’s been out there in the stores since February 15th! Garden centers start stocking up again.

By the end of this month, if it gets at all warm, I will probably need to uncover the lawnmower and push that creaky old rusted machine through the grass for the first time this year.

I love this time of year, because of the way it represents the promise of new life and another cycle of nature at its very beginning. The world is like a person stirring in light sleep just before waking up to start a new day.

In just three weeks, it will be officially Spring, even if we still need to keep our coats and sweaters handy for a few more weeks.

I think March is underrated. Everyone gets so excited about the coming of Fall, but as beautiful as that time of year is, I have always found it a bit depressing. Everything is dying and the days are getting colder and shorter. This time of year, while the weather is still not ideal and there’s no big holiday season to look forward to (outside of Easter), the mood of lengthening days and stronger and warmer sunlight nurtures my spirit.

If you love spring, you will love this book I read several years ago called “Chasing Spring: An American Journey through a Changing Season,” which describes a road trip that follows the progress of the season starting in the deep South as early as late February and progressing northward until the middle of June, when spring weather finally arrives in northern Canada.

Go away, winter.

Posted on February 24, 2015 by luckyotter

When I opened my front door this morning, I saw this lovely scene.

I’ve had it. This hasn’t been such a bad winter overall, until this month. If we’re going to get snow and sub-zero temperatures here in western North Carolina, it’s most likely going to be in February and March.

Nature, you’re so predictable.

This month has been hell for me climatically. Last week the temperatures dropped down into the single digits and my pipes froze, even though I kept them dripping at a fast clip to keep them from freezing. The only water I still had was a little trickle of ICE COLD water from the kitchen sink. Things stayed like this for an entire week.

Two days ago, the temperatures rose to the low 50’s and I waited impatiently for the water to return. Instead, when I went into the kitchen yesterday morning, I noticed the laminate parquet-look floor I just put in a year ago was soaking wet and squishy under my feet. Further investigation revealed its source–a pipe had burst behind the wall of the kitchen and water was seeping through the floor. I listened and heard what sounded like someone taking a shower inside the wall.

My landlord told me to turn off the water (which requires going outside and lifting the manhole cover by the road) and he’d send someone out to look. His handyman, a drunk named Roger who never really fixes anything because he’s cheap (my landlord doesn’t want to spend any money), is famous for just jimmy rigging things instead of fixing or replacing them. He might as well just carry Duct tape around to use for everything. Last year when this happened, he “fixed” the pipes even though they are probably the original ones that came with the house when it was built in 1908. Because the pipes are uninsulated and UNDER the house, he had to rip out part of the kitchen floor and an entire wall to get to the pipes. Of course he never insulated them, just patched them up somehow (probably using Duct tape). He replaced the original kitchen wall with an ugly piece of ill-fitting plywood. I painted it to make it at least a little presentable. I put the new kitchen floor in because of the damage done to the old one (and the old one was really ugly anyway–dark brown 1970s speckled linoleum).

So of course the pipes burst again and now there’s no water at all because I had to turn it off to keep the leak from doing further damage. I haven’t had a proper shower in a week. The dishes are piled in the sink and starting to stink. I may go to the truck stop today to take a shower if I can drive there later because the feeling of dirty grunginess is very depressing and I probably smell. I can’t get to my job today (again!) because of the snow on the roads and it’s still snowing. I think I might go out and fill a bunch of milk jugs (which I keep handy for such emergencies) with snow, let them melt by the heat, heat the water on the stove, and fill the tub so I can take a bath. It will probably take hours to do this and about 100 milk jugs worth of snow, but I really need a fucking bath! My hair is hanging in greasy strings and my scalp is starting to itch. How did people before the days of indoor plumbing stand all the dirtiness?

I am also losing money. Last week I only worked two days: one day the office closed due to the icy road conditions and the other two days (when my car was having its transmission rebuilt) there wasn’t enough work to justify having anyone pick me up. My roommate’s car won’t start either and there was no one else to drive me back and forth to work. Thank the Lord, my car’s fixed now (and runs better than it has in two years) but I still have no f*cking water.

Now the temperatures are dropping again, into the teens, and the handyman, who apparently finally realized the house needed replumbing and was going to come out today to start working on that, just called to say he wouldn’t be able to do it with the temperatures this low. It’s supposed to remain this cold all week.

This really bites. I hate winter with all my body, mind, and soul. Maybe I need to just move to Florida or something where I will never have to deal with freezing pipes, cars too cold to start, icy and snowy mountain roads, and just plain being cold all the time.

Why anyone in their right mind could love winter (except for wealthy people who don’t have to drive to a job and get to ski and snowboard all winter) is beyond my comprehension.

Spring, hurry up and get here! PLEASE.

No water. Is this 2015 or 1915?

Posted on February 19, 2015 by luckyotter

What century am I living in?

Now I’m without water or a car. My car’s still in the shop (probably until Monday), my roommate’s car needs a new battery, and for two days the bathroom pipes have been frozen even though I let them drip when the temperatures dropped below freezing the other night. The only running water in the house is the toilet and the kitchen faucet.

But two hours ago I lost those too. And I can’t get to the store to fill my water jugs that I keep around for emergencies, or even buy bottled water. It’s -2 degrees out, with an even colder wind chill. That’s somewhat unusual in this part of the country, where even in the mountains, the temperatures rarely get below the 20’s if you’re in a valley (as I am).

There’s a little hard, icy snow on the ground but not much. I may have to go outside and try to withstand the ice cold temps to scrape some off the ground to fill some pots and pans, which I can then boil. At least there’s electricity.
Oops, I had better shut up. I could jinx that too.

I called the water company to find out if the problem was my pipes (since my tub and bathroom sink haven’t worked for two days) or something else. It turns out there’s a water outage that is effecting the entire neighborhood. I was assured it should be back on by 10 PM tonight–that is if the pipes to my kitchen sink and toilet don’t freeze too, since I haven’t been able to drip the faucet or flush the toilet.

But you know what? People lived like this for thousands of years. You will never miss what you never had, or have no concept of. People even today, in developing countries, live with no running water or electricity, and they never complain. We have become so entitled.

At least I have the Internet so I can whine.

One old friend and 4 little anecdotes

Posted on February 18, 2015 by luckyotter

A friend of mine from way back in the late 1970s and early 80s (we were high school BFF’s) who I have been in and out of touch with over the years emailed me today and wanted to call. I emailed her back with my cell # and we talked for about an hour.

She has been reading my blog and here is what she said:
“I’m so proud of you. This is what you were always meant to do. I always knew you could write, but wow! I’m really impressed with what you’re doing and you should be proud of yourself.”

She asked me not to talk about her on this blog (which I won’t) but she gave me the okay to share a few of our absurd little adventures from way back in the day. We both still laugh about these things.

Anecdote #1: Babushka Landlady, the lawnmower, and the clanking pipes.

In 1978 and 1979 we shared a cheap two bedroom apartment in Queens, NY. We had a crazy landlady, a Russian immigrant woman, squat and always dressed in layers and layers of old world skirts and aprons and homemade knit sweaters. She always wore a babushka with huge brown combat boots.

Babushka Landlady did some nutty things:
–Mowed the lawn at 2 AM on a regular basis. Said it was better for the grass. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, look out my window and see her down there wearing her combat boots, her many skirts flapping, pushing that lawnmower back and forth, scowling and grunting whenever she passed under my window. I could just forget about getting back to sleep on nights she decided to mow the damn grass.

Mowing the lawn at 2 AM. Who does that?

–Babushka Landlady had a “partner”–an extremely elderly man of about 90 who was hunched over and could barely walk. We used to see the two of them entering the basement of the building through a back door. We’d wait for them to come out but they never did. We never talked about what they might be doing in there.

–Babushka Landlady and/or her “partner” went to the basement and banged on the pipes with metal rods to fool the tenants into thinking the heat was working. The boiler was always off or very low. I caught them doing this. After that they stopped and the heat suddenly started working again.

Anecdote #2: El Presidente beer and the rotting bathroom rug.

Same year, the same apartment: My friend and I had no car but we’d walk over to the Cuban deli and buy a case of El Presidente beer. It was terrible beer that tasted like old wet cigarette butts but we’d go through the whole thing, sitting in the tiny single bathroom getting drunk. The bathroom was carpeted with a rug that had once been plushy grey but had turned into a rotting clay-like substance from the cat peeing on it all the time.

It was disgusting sitting in there but we always sat in there anyway, for reasons we could never explain because we could have sat anywhere else in that apartment. One of us would sit Indian style on the lid of the toilet, the other propped on the side of the tub. We’d talk and talk and drink until the room began to spin. Our feet made squishy sounds in the sodden rug, and I contracted a bad case of Athlete’s foot. Athlete’s foot is no joke, by the way.

That isn’t a picture of us, just a couple of girls we probably wished we looked like. And they’re in a bathroom too.

Anecdote #3: The flying Oxtail soup.

Don’t open that pot.

Once my friend decided she’d make some Oxtail soup. In the middle of July. She started the soup in a big tureen, then left for a weekend trip with her boyfriend. I was spending the night somewhere so didn’t arrive home until the next day. Obviously she had forgotten about the soup she started.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. I thought my cat was dead somewhere. I cautiously approached the kitchen and opened the lid of the tureen where the smell seemed to be coming from. I took one look at the green-white mold growing on top of what looked like chunks of rotten meat and started dry heaving, then picked up the whole tureen, opened the window, and tossed it out into the alley. It was too disgusting to even attempt to wash. I have never been able to eat Oxtail soup since then.

Anecdote #4: The Folded Fish

Okay, it wasn’t an Origami fish. He wasn’t smiling either.

It was 1981. My friend had a new apartment. She asked me to house-sit while she went on a trip, and that meant feeding her fish too. There was one particular fish bowl I kept forgetting about. It contained one tiny golfish. The day she was to return I finally noticed the fishbowl and floating on top was its tenant, partly rotted and folded in half. I felt terrible about killing her fish and tried to hide him under some of the stones but that didn’t really work and he floated back to the top. Fortunately my friend wasn’t too upset and laughed because he was folded in half.

There are other stories but these are the ones I always think of when I think of us back in the day.
I miss you, my friend.

ETA: I just realized 3 of these stories involve rotting things. What does that mean?

When my worlds collide.

Posted on February 17, 2015 by luckyotter

Worlds Collide-Phaeton: by Meckie at Deviantart.com

I have lived in several different online worlds at different times of my life, each as remote from each other as the Milky Way is from The Great Magellanic Cloud. They may even inhabit different cyber-universes. But on Facebook, these universes have a disturbing and slightly eerie way of all melding together into a single, writhing, freaky ass clusterf*ck.

I recently became somewhat active on Facebook again, even though I really can’t stand it. This happened because I decided to start linking my blog posts there (it does help visibility), and, well, you start poking around looking at stuff and before you know it, you’re updating your status and talking to people who want to comment about your updates.

One thing that always happens that drives me insane, but is really sort of cool when you think about it, is when people from different areas of my life start conversing because they’re both my Facebook friends and they both wind up commenting about something I posted.

My friend Kevin, from a political/history forum I used to be active on (the site has become pretty much overrun by trolls but has a FB page now) got into a heated debate with another friend of mine I just met because she’s active on Sam Vaknin’s page. They got into a discussion over the religious implications of malignant narcissism and whether or not Vaknin would be saved by the Holy Spirit. It was an interesting if somewhat strange conversation. I got a kind of odd thrill from seeing two people from completely different compartments/timeframes of my online life get to know each other on my wall.

Okay, I admit it. It’s cool as hell.

I always wondered about the freakiness of my worlds colliding. When different areas of my life–or different times–somehow “meet” it’s very freaky. They don’t belong together.

This reminds me of when I was about 4. I was in the grocery store with my mother, and suddenly a woman appeared with a cart of groceries and started speaking to my mom…she was MY TEACHER and I started crying because it scared me because THE GROCERY STORE was where you bought GROCERIES and the TEACHER BELONGED IN SCHOOL so what in the name of all that is holy was my teacher doing in the GROCERY STORE?
It’s a little like that, but not scary or upsetting, because I’m not 4…..but its still weird.

That’s one of the reasons why Facebook scares me. It makes me wary and inhibited about posting ir some things or sharing certain blog posts there. There’s some topics I like to keep separate from people who inhabit one of my other universes. Why that is, I can’t explain. I don’t know myself well enough to explain why I have this strange neurosis about my worlds touching. Is this some bizarro world cyberspace version of a kid who freaks out because the gravy on their plate is touching their peas?

Most disturbing (but really just more annoying) of all is constantly seeing updates from old coworkers I lost contact with years ago and having friends I don’t recognize because I can’t remember why I added them or where I knew them from. Also many members of my FOO post on FB too but I have quietly defriended most of them. I HATE mixing my IRL life with my online one.

Pinecones.

Posted on February 6, 2015 by luckyotter

I am seeing pinecones everywhere. I love stepping on them and hearing that satisfying crunch under my feet. Stepping on pinecones is a great stress reliever, and at the same time it helps them release their seeds.

If that sounds crazy, try it. You’ll instantly feel better. I’m serious. It’s almost as good as bubble wrap.