26 July 2011

I can't believe how much sleeping it took to get myself feeling better. Now that I have slept throughout te entire day the burning in my eyes has gone away. I tried to wake up earlier in the day. I managed to go out and purchase 3 packs of smokes for 10 bucks. I was only awake a couple of hours in the afternoon and all I did was go out to get these cigarettes. I happened to see Jubal Brown, who I had decided to write a blog about yesterday, standing on Spadina with a large dog. I didn't figure saying hello to him was a good idea, so I walked past him quickly and hoped that he didn't notice me. I didn't feel like being noticed and having him scrutinize the weight I think I've put on since I last saw him. I don't know why I bother letting what happened with him trouble me as much as I do. I think his behaviour has just reopened the scar of not fitting in with the other kids growing up due to socio-economic issues. Even his mannerisms and way of speaking in a sarcastic and condescending tone reminds me of some of the kids I knew growing up.

I had actually been planning on writing a blog on his friend Suzy Divine and was loosely going over how I would phrase what I had to say on that walk over to the smoke shop. It was kind of weird to be walking over there and feel the sting of my anxities, tiredness, and burning eyes and spot the exact person I've been feeling frustrated about. But, it was Suzy's tirade I really wanted to get into. I had planned to come right home and write about Suzy, but I was feeling crappy and decided that sleep was the cure to my feelings. So, it is now after 1 o'clock in the morning and I am feeling a lot better now that I am better rested. My mental state has changed rather dramatically and I feel a little less like dwelling on my negative experiences. Now I feel a little bit worried that writing about the conflict with Suzy is just going to stir up the awful feelings I had on Sunday when I wrote the 2 blogs.

Suzy and Jubal's behaviour disgusts me and reminds me of preteen social superiority. I really don't like what they did. I can't decide if writing about the pain they have caused is actually going to help me resolve my emotional troubles or if it is just going to make matters worse. I want to empower myself and I don't want to be controlled by the social fears and feelings of alienation my experience with Jubal and Suzy caused.I think tonight I'm just going to take a risk. I'm going to test my emotional water and see how many of the details I can handle focusing on.I'll just tell the whole story from my side and see if recounting the specific details makes me feel any stronger.

Jubal and Suzy are not the only reason I no longer go out to art galleries. I can think of 3 specific art galleries which have done things to also give me some negative feelings. But, it's not fair in a way to blame the entire Toronto art scene for my feelings of being exposed to arrogance and condescended at 3 galleries. It might be more worth my while to go about listing out which art galleries have staff or gallerists who have been kind, polite, friendly and made me smile. Steven and Chris at Engine Gallery are 2 very nice people. The staff at Gallery One has been nice. If I had a positive attitude I might find myself more compelled to reward those who have been kind and just ignore those who have made the art world intimidating. 

I just don't want to be bothered with the art world at all. Often I feel like that odd girl I was growing up. The child who is surrounded by adults and ignored what with being an only child and all. In one of John Gray's books he talks about how the pain of a break up is rooted in childhood experiences 90% of the time. So, it is a thought that some of the things that have happened are simply painful because what they have reminded me of from the past. I remember standing in A Space Gallery once and trying to battle those feelings. I felt like everybody was purposely ignoring me and at the time I kept on remembering how I used to feel as an only child.

So, it's important to not let things get out of perspective and start blaming the Toronto art scene for my own insecurities. I am one of the very most sensitive people you would meet and have been known to become fixated on the hurt caused by things so subtle as tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. That is why it is sometimes hard to explain why certain experiences have caused me such pain. So, over the past couple days I have been going through what hurt with Manny, Jubal, and Suzy.

I tried to explain that I was afraid that Manny was going to become abusive. I tried writing about that night when we were alone in his house. I reread what I wrote and don't think I really got down to the bone of the abuse fears. It's not just as simple as him saying out of the blue 'Sit down, shut up, and take off your pants'. First of all, since my spiritual experiences I have a tendency to see energy off of things. When Manny has said things that are aggressive it's like I can see this grey energy moving off of him, which makes the experience more fear inducing. But, maybe my readers can understand what I have meant anyway. Maybe I don't need to bring up details like how being the only other person in the house with him made me feel unsafe. How I was frightened that I'd have to call the police.

Ironically, Manny threatened to call the police on me the day I decided to poster downtown with 4 seperate pictures of him with captions around them. See, the things that people said at work just seemed so sexist and made me so angry. I really thought the posters were going to put an end to the suffering I was going through. I put up the posters and one of them said 'I threatened to put my ex-girlfriend's head through a wall' and 'potentially violent'. At the time I thought Manny didn't deserve a new girlfriend and was probably out lady chasing with his slimy friends. I thought he needed to get help for his abusie tendencies, but was in denial of exactly how abusive he was. And, I thought I should at least give any woman he was involving in his life a little bit of a head's up so she wouldn't have to go through what I went through.

Manny was sweet as pie for the first 6 months of our relationship. He used to tell me he was my guardian angel. The contrast between his good and bad treatment led to so much confusion. That's why it was so hard to come to terms with the fact that we might have a major problem. And, originally I was just going to let Manny go. It was the sarcasm and hurtful things which happened at my job at the TSO which made the pain a lot worse and created this desperation to somehow express myself.

I've dealt with the subject before in so many blogs I have posted. I have been accused of airing my dirty laundry in public. I just didn't know what to do at the time. It was really rough. Manny had threatened to put my head through a wall the night before we broke up as I had been saying I was a 'bad girl' and picked a fight with him because I wanted to cncourage him to dump me at the time. I didn't cheat on Manny ever. I'm not exactly the kind of woman who would cheat, though when I was in a long distance relationship with Tom for those months that I lived in Montreal I got myself in a semi cheating in situation. I told Tom right away. I was brought up to be honest and don't keep secrets. I only said I was a 'bad girl' to drive Manny nuts so he would dump me.

The next day we broke up over the telephone and that was that. I had a secret and unrealistic crush. I had lots of unrealistic ideas in my head that I really don't want to get into. I might just touch on the some of the crazy stuff that went on in my mind, like the notion that I might be able to get revenge on the company I worked for by somehow getting the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to drop their relationship with Artsmarketing and become in house. And, they did go in house for a short while, but it had nothing to do with me or my plans.

But, the point is that what happened at work with Gene and Funda returning and pestering me stirred up deep resentments. Manny becoming passive aggressive was the last little emotional disturbance I could take. You know, I've had a really shit time with 2 of my break ups and it just seems that I have been incredibly unlucky in terms of emotional support in my life. I smashed up my entire room when my mother said in a taunting tone 'He obviously doesn't like you' when James just stopped calling back when I was 23. I don't have much of an emotional connection to people because I've always been maybe a little too independent. I just don't have friends who are going to try to help me out emotionally and I don't know why that is.

I've met people who tell me about how their friends have helped them get their minds off of their troubles. It seems that the people in my life just tend to make it worse. So, this guy named John who knows Manny says something to tease me. I'm really sensitive like a crab out of it's shell. John says 'You're just so fun to abuse' and I think of this as passive aggression and a blatant way of discounting my abuse fears in my relationship with Manny. And with Manny tossing out words like 'psycho' it just isn't going to sit right. Everything Gene, John, Funda, Sharon and Kasia said at the time just stirred up some pretty dark shit and I ended up exploding and putting up those posters of Manny.

Well, Manny came into work after I had plastered downtown with 200 posters. I felt so hurt that I chose paying for the Xerox copies with the last bit of money I had. You know you are at the end of the rope when you hurt so bad that you would prioritize photocopies over a pack of cigarettes. Anyway, Manny threatened to bust my teeth out and even got into how his friends told him to call the police on me. It was rotten and I felt the scapegoat. Nobody seemed to take my abuse fears seriously and lots of people were saying I'd put on weight, calling me bitter, and saying I was so fun to abuse. I still hate a lot of these people. Used to have fantasies of bashing in a couple of heads and also resorted to black magick in one case. It's incredible the shitty luck I've had.

So, Manny has gone about calling me psycho, stalker, and a criminal since that time. I've had psychosometic pains in my chest since the time of this whole experience. I've had to hospitalize myself for a few days. It really doesn't seem like the kindest world sometimes and more like if a man is handsome and charming he can get away with murder. Feels like as a young woman I am just not taken seriously and pushed to the point that I can't bear it.

What happened on the TSO campaign was such a huge emotional attack that I just can't understand where all of that shit directed at me might have come from. It's like the more I strength I tried to assert over the years, the more people wanted to bring me down. I explained in a previous blog that I have suffered from depression from as early as I can remember. In grade 2 I remember talking with a counsellor about how I felt sad all the time and she was like 'Oh. Poor thing. I'll take you out for ice cream sometime' but it never happened. I was having suicidal feelings from when I was in grade 5 or 6. So, when I was 22 and had my spiritual experience I thought I'd never feel suicidal again. 

I was so proud of recovering from those feelings and believed I was strong. At Artsmarketing I started having the psychosomatic pains in my chest. At first it didn't hurt so much and I reacted to the tension by being sing songy and acting really cheery. Well, I'm just kind of masking the pain. I guess my nerves were shot way back before Manny and I went out. I'd meow like a cat, chatter, and sing. Anything which would stop the swelling pressure in. It felt as though if I didn't do those chattery things I felt I'd start crying and never be able to stop. At first I had a sales manager who didn't care so much about the noise, but when the new managers came in they forced me tone it all down. So, I had to repress all this energy and since I couldn't release the inner pain any longer I'd just begin crying. But, the crying didn't get out of control until after Manny and I broke up. And my co-workers attacked me emotionally for whatever reason. Jealousy of me making the mosy sale. Jelousy of my looks. Some I felt were attacking me due to my lack of interest in them sexually. Some had their own insecurities and smelt blood and knew that my own weakness was something to attack. You probably wouldn't believe how horrible it was if I told you. All I can say is that I have the worst luck in finding people who care about me and the more I try to abandon feeling depressed, the more people harm me. As though trying to have a good attitude and not get down is the most annoying thing in the world.