And you know what? i don't care. In my quest last year to obliterate all previously known personal family traditions surrounding the holidays, I apparently started one. Not giving a shit how the holiday goes, knowing that there is no fear of me ending up in the hospital sometime in January because I couldn't take the onslaught of memories and triggers and everything. No fear of that at all.
The tree goes up tonight. There were no icicles (long strands of loose tinsel you drape over the tree's boughs) at the dollar store when he went today. No worries. He'll find some. I have to assemble it and get all the lights working and decorate it with ornaments first, anyway.
The only problem with archiving all of my audio and video, is that I need to have Blue Max plugged in to listen to U2 now. And it's not "Songs of Innocence", it's "The Joshua Tree". Yesterday it was "Boy" and "The Unforgettable Fire". I don't know why I skipped some, I'll go back to them. I think I was afraid of the memories associated with them, so I just pretended they didn't exist. It's kind of funny how I don't know the titles or proper lyrics to any of the songs. I wasn't allowed to buy music, so my friends dubbed them onto cassettes for me and I usually didn't have song lists. Now I can go look all that stuff up and finally know what Bono was really singing about.
Yes, I've been pirating music for a very long time. But I eventually buy what I love. I have U2's discography on vinyl and CD. And mp3. I just couldn't buy it then. My parents were horrified by my first music purchases; The Go-Go's, The Human League, Berlin. They found something immoral about each of them. Although with the Berlin album it wasn't a real stretch. So among my family, it was Lex de Azevedo musical soundtracks and Disney soundtracks, along with Kenny Rogers, Carole King, The Carpenters and finally the Mormon Tabernacle Choir because pious and shit.
When we moved from SoCal (I was 15), to Pittsburgh, PA, I kind of lost it. I had spent the summer in a mental hospital, my favorite grandma died three days before they told me I was moving, and they told me I was moving a week before we moved. From heaven to hell. I made the conscious decision to fully identify myself as a "punk", and started wearing boots with skirts and dark tights accordingly. I went to one school to finish out my sophomore year, another for my junior year in another district, where I further solidified my punk persona with music and vintage clothes and combat boots. My parents had given in at this point. They thought my friends in CA were dangerous, and weren't phased by my mohawked friends in PA. My mom even encouraged me with bits from the costume departments she worked in and clothes she made for me and tons and tons of hair bleach.
Then for my senior year, I went back to where I had finished up 10th grade. I barely remembered anyone from before. Those that remembered me from before had mostly gone the way I had, new wave or punk, this is 86-87 we're talking, and they welcomed me back. But I was full-on crazy that year. Too many moves, too many transitions just made me snap. This whole time we're moving around. we're going back and visiting CA and adopting more kids and moving every 9 months and I just couldn't hold my shit together anymore.
I started suffering crippling headaches that would, at times, just drop me to the ground with their sudden stabs of pain. The throb never really went away. I spent half of my senior year being tested for a reason for the pain. My psychological history was never brought up. The second half of my senior year I spent partially attending classes and partially driving aimlessly around with my Nana and Papa in a giant Lincoln in North East America, to relax me. I was allowed my music, and all the batteries I needed to keep the music playing. Any food I wanted. My Papa even kept a pack of smokes hidden for me and would cover for me when I went to go smoke.
When I got back from the last of the tours, even before I could go back to school to finish out the year and go to prom, I broke completely and tried to kill myself. Apparently I called a friend, and she called 911. My dad tried to turn the EMTs away, so they called the police, who threatened to arrest him if he didn't let them check on me. I was taken to the hospital. Somehow my dad talked them out of keeping me for a psych eval. But I knew I needed one, so my boyfriend and I found a place I could go and he took me there and I told them what had happened and they took me right in.
I was not welcome at home once my "hold" was over at the hospital. I went to another friends house and made a complete ass of myself, stayed there a couple of days, and then went camping and fishing with my boyfriend and his dad at their cabin.
Then it was time to go home and graduate high school. Which, for some strange reason, I was still doing. I had dyed my hair black while at my friend's place. My parent's tried to have it taken out. It turned blue. So for my graduation, my hair matched my jumper under my gown, blue.
A month later I would be alone in Rexburg, ID, at a Mormon Junior College. But that is a whole other set of stories for a whole other time. It was the first time I convinced a sizable number of people that Cydniey/Kristin are two entirely separate people. But they were church folk, easily blinded, and prone to overactive imaginations. Their God is really hyper. It's harder to do with critical thinkers, but not impossible.
And that is a brief tour of high schools. Sans Freshman year because time and space, that's a whole entry in itself.
I think my typing is keeping Doc awake.