What, exactly, in layman's terms, is trust? What precisely is it?
An implicit understanding? But two minds can't ever have the same thoughts. Can they?
How do you know if you trust someone? How are you sure that you don't?
How are you sure that you could? And what about if you should?
Is there a time when mistakes don't matter? How are you sure that you're justified?

But really... When do mistakes matter, and when do they not? I can't tell. I can't separate it. Is there some kind of lesson I was supposed to learn about that? Is there some definitive guideline that I can apply to a situation to discern whether I am right or wrong? I know that I feel dejected, but am I correct in feeling this?
When someone you love tells you what they've done isn't a big deal at all and to just get over it, how can you be sure that they're not right? I would like to think it's a silly non-issue. But it's not. It's not life-or-death, but it's not something I can ignore. I can't ignore it because it's making me ask questions.
When someone tells you
'I am sorry for what I have done, I understand it hurts you when I do this, you are the reason I don't do it, I won't do it again'
And then you find out they are doing it again... What happens? I wouldn't care so much if it were "just a friend." If the action itself is shitty, but the act of breaking the word is worse, what do you do? What do you say?
What do you do if you're doing a massive, huge thing that was based all on this trust that now you're wondering if you can believe in anymore?

What if they don't take you seriously?

That's all I'm doing. Asking questions. What more can I do? I can't be certain of anything. It seems I've gone through this with anyone I've cared for. It makes me wonder if it's me. It just makes me confused, is all. All the initial anger is gone, and I'm left contemplating what's gone on. I've never done this before. I don't even know. I'm going to stop pretending like I do.

Ugh, fuck. So this one is going to be a rant. Probably devoid of any eloquence whatsoever.

So I'm trying to get to England, right? Trying to get a visa and that whole thing is just one more hurdle after another. I feel like some kind of trained animal, leaping through flaming hoops and they're getting closer and closer together, and smaller and smaller around. It's driving me fucknuts.

I've been working myself to the fucking bone, working off my pent-up sex drive or something, I don't know where the hell the energy was coming from but it's wearing out now. Maybe it was years of my life I was yet to live, I don't know. I'm not sure. All I know is the steam is surely running out, and I'm beginning to falter.
I want to work harder but I just fucking can't manage it.

I'm out there every day looking for a job. Every day. Every day in the hot sun, traipsing around streets I barely know, making myself look like an idiot asking everywhere if they're hiring and oh won't they please take my paper and oh won't they please forward this to the manager, thank you very much, have a great day. Walking both sides of the street up and down.
NOT ONE SINGLE FUCKING CALL BACK. NOT GODDAMN FUCKING ONE. NOT A SINGLE ONE. NONE.

Meanwhile my deadline is getting closer. And when that deadline hits, it's a fucking brick wall. Selling my artwork is not cutting it. As wonderful as people have been in paying me full price, and even donating in some cases...! And I'm so grateful -- But it's not enough. I feel like such a fucking ASSHOLE for not having a job. I am such a fucking dick for not having a job it's fucking unbelievable. Seriously. The longer I do not have a job, the closer to the line it's getting cut, and soon there's just going to be nothing. I feel so fucking inadequate. It's so frustrating.

It's just fucking so stupid. There's a deadline I have no choice but to meet, and I've been working so hard. I understand when I'm bitched at about money, but what more can I do? Fucking what more? I'm out every day submitting until I have nothing left, and spend the rest of the time drawing for money. I just can't make a thousand a month. I do not have the capability. I want to bash my head into a wall a hundred times. Even with all the generosity I've received I still can't make this work. It drives me mad. This deadline is coming up and here I am with almost nothing -- No, WITH NOTHING whenever the fuck it is I manage to get this stupid visa. Because there are more documents I have to order -- From England -- Which will take a month at least. AT. LEAST. And they're expensive. And then there's the visa cost, and processing times. $431 for a fucking application.
OH ALSO, IT'S NON-REFUNDABLE, SO IF THEY DECIDE I'M NOT FIT TO BE IN THEIR MAGICAL COUNTRY I'M OUT OF $431 YAAAAAAAAAY

If I was a fucking giraffe I'd still have work over my head. I've taken on so much, and I mean like, I know I can do it... But whether or not I can do it and handle all this other shit is another question entirely. Also there's the maintenance of quality. I have to keep my quality up otherwise I can't sell as much or for much money.

Then there's another issue. Part of the reason I'm going to England is to be in the general vicinity/same part of the country at least of someone I've known for a very long time, so I can hang out with him some and junk.
He's supposed to be helping me on this, and fuck, as much as I completely understand his situation, and as much as I am aware that he's quite honestly doing what he can with what he has, it still drives me completely fucking crazy damn off the fucking wall that nothing is coming of it. Jesus christ I feel like such a fucking asshole, because I mean, I understand, I really fucking do but it's just...
I'm doing all the begging, I'm doing all the cajoling, I'm doing all the working, I'm the one staying up for as much as 30 hours sometimes to get all this shit done, I'm the one looking for a job, I'm the one dealing with the unpleasantry of getting bitched at for deadlines, I'm the one busting my fucking self apart trying to make this happen, and you know what, that's okay... It's just the fact that I'm doing it alone. If I brought this up with him half as much as I'm chewed out for it it'd drive him nuts. And I don't want to drive him nuts. I'm already nuts.

I dunno if I'm selfish for being like, "Well it's your dream too, why aren't you dying for it all the same?" in the back of my mind, but it's rude to assume something like that. It's really rude. It makes me seem like I don't get the fact that he is doing shit, just having no luck. It makes me seem self-righteous and resentful and shit. And I'm not. I'm just frustrated. I'm just really really frustrated.

All my life I've been jerked around by people I've trusted -- I really really hate not being able to trust a single soul. I'm so tired of having to depend just on me when I feel like I fail so much. I'm a fucking drifter unemployed minimum wage loser who makes their living on scribbling stuff. Fuck I'm not saying I'm being jerked around, I just... I don't even know what I'm saying. In some ways, I was stronger when I was on the street. At least I wasn't bitching about this shit.

so i think i fixed it.
most of it.

In the drunken paranoia of the morning and the blaring tunes of a ridiculously happy Katamari Damacy track, I am pleased to inform you that not only am I going to crash on the bed behind me in a foaming mess of masturbatory glee, but that I have been working hard and creating all sorts of works of art that have been improving almost non-stop.

I have funds in my bank for getting the fuck to England, and getting fucked for the better good.
I have food in my stomach, and cans of iced tea at my side.
I have work to do, and... Well, sleep to commence.

But first I'm going to groove to this song because, well.
I can make a song for you and me, I can make a song for all that we love.

Goddammit I'm a faggot.
Also, going to OTTAWA for a week. Foowoowoowoo

Great. My fucking roommate got the whole house banned from going to 4chan.
Now where am I going to get my yaoi from?
Dumbass.

Now Freya, my rat, is ill.
She's heaving and breathing hard, and grinding her teeth. She's losing weight at a disturbing rate, despite eating as normal and drinking as normal.
This makes me scared because Cid died the same way, save for the trouble breathing. Cid always sat bunched up in a rabbit-ball and it was difficult to tell when he started losing weight. I only really realised the extent when I picked up his body and his bones were jabbing my hands.
He had food in his dish and water in his dispenser. I had been letting him out to play in the room. Nothing seemed awry, and then BAM. Cid was dead.

Now Freya is breathing horribly hard, grinding her teeth, and losing weight, and fast.
As far as I know there are no vets in my area that deal with rats. I'm going to keep looking.
I'm so worried about her. George, Freya's daughter, keeps entwining herself around Freya and making little chirp-chirp sounds. She's obviously just as worried as I am.

Fuck.

I sometimes dream more than once a night, and I usually remember my dreams. I've had some exceedingly fucked up ones these past few days. I ought to mention that when I dream it is entirely indistinguishable from reality; Everything has a taste, touch, smell, light sources are correct and there is a sun. There are seasons, though most of my dreams take place in spring or summer. The only differences are the decidedly odd shit that happens there.
This first one was from the night before last.
You should know that sometimes in my dream I take on the roles of people I have never met before and are new to me. Such was this dream.

It was set in the midway between spring and summer, in a comfortable urban area of somewhere that could be anywhere in Western Canada or the middle United States. A family consisting of a single mother, a baby girl, a four year old boy, a seven year old girl, and the eldest which was "myself," a fourteen/fifteen year old boy (In life I am nineteen and an only child.) and a golden retriever named 'Rocky' lived in this town. The house was beige on the outside with dark brown trimmings, and its number was '561' though I can't recall the name of the street.
It was a somewhat modern setting, taking place anywhere from the late seventies to the very early nineties, judging by the cars I saw and the technology we had.

"Mum" was an abusive alcoholic. Her boyfriend, who was also abusive and alcoholic and was rumoured to have been touching my little sister, had left her the day before. Our dad wasn't in the picture, I can't remember why. Mum had been acting really oddly that day and her temper was decreasing at an alarming rate. She hit the four year old brother for asking for a snack in the morning. Most of the time she would sit at the kitchen table, staring off into the distance smoking cigarette after cigarette.

As the day wore on, something stirred in my gut, warning me. It grew bigger and bigger, until my mind was about to explode. I just knew something was horribly, horribly wrong, and it was wrong with Mum. I knew I couldn't say anything to my siblings except to be careful, because I didn't want them blabbing the wrong thing and giving it away.
Finally my anxiety came to a peak when Mum called us all in for the kitchen. This was it. Blinding fear took hold of me but I just calmly called back that I'd be in in a minute, I was just letting Rocky out.
I did indeed let the dog out, and then I hopped out the living room window and fucking ran. I bolted. I ran up the street faster than my gangly legs could seem to take, and in the distance, as I rounded a corner, I heard coming from my house three gunshots. I instinctively knew it was the shotgun she kept in her closet.

Tears blinded my eyes as I ran. I hadn't warned them. I hadn't saved them from Mum. Couldn't I have done something? Why was I the only one I saved? Though I knew that I couldn't have saved them, I still felt guilty.

The dream faded and went black after that but I was still in the consciousness of the fourteen year old boy. There were the following facts that I 'just knew' after it went black.
My mother had shot the baby and my little sister, and they were dead. She shot at my little brother, but he ran and she couldn't find him. He had hidden in the washing machine. She looked in the dryer.
Rocky got out from our backyard. He was found an hour or so later by a neighbour returning home from work. When he took the dog back to our house, that was when the scene was discovered.
I was picked up by police and given to a foster home. I never saw my siblings again though I did have Rocky.

The next dream was fairly short. I was in the passenger seat of a car, opening the door in a parking lot. A corpulent man approached, silver hair and grey-brown sweatpants with a huge red shirt. He was smiling at me in a creepy way. I asked him politely if he might move as he was sort of in my way. He just got more in the way, and then ducked into the car. I looked back at the driver, who was now a quivering mass of goo. On their side was a horrifically old woman clacking her toothless jaws together, just outside the door. The fat man grabbed my left hand and bit the palm just below where the pinky connects. I felt his teeth scrape my skin but he didn't break it.
I woke up and my hand was stinging. What the hell.

News happened. My rabbit, Cid, died yesterday.
The lot of you can say I'm fucked up. It doesn't bother me. I preserved a patch of his fur and his tail.
I got a Betta fish. He's red, and likes to sleep.
My roommate just charged in the door a little while ago, pissed fucking drunk as is per typical of when he goes out as of late. I wonder how much money he wasted on alcohol. I will deny him if he asks for money for food. Traipsing around downtown with our rent money in his wallet. He should fucking know better, he's 21. Every fucking time he goes out with his friends it's the same bullshit. 3am, on the floor. What a fucking moron. It makes me so angry and embarrassed. He's a good guy, but horribly, disgustingly irresponsible and it drives me mad.

Yeah, go out and have a good time, go out and have a drink or two, but what reason is there to get that drunk? What reason? It sucks obviously, you're sick and vulnerable and can't do anything. Yet it never teaches him a lesson. I wonder what will? Would getting mugged and all our rent money -- which he insists on carrying around as cash in his wallet -- stolen, teach him a lesson?
Probably not. He'd just whine to the gods at the injustice of it all and cry about it and then do the same fucking thing the next week. He's like a dog that doesn't learn to stop pissing in the house. Use common sense and stop being such a mouthbreather, you dillweed. I don't want to deal with your drunk ass.

I finally have XP. Thank fuck for this.
Now I can get my tablet and my bullshit running correctly.

Headaching and sleep bound. Motrin addled. I think I feed upon opinions. I think everyone feeds on them, our minds extrapolating and internalizing them into some melting globule of opinion made somehow more formidable by the fact that it's been internalized and reinforced. Justified, perhaps, by another's mind. I think we are all machines for simply verifying the information that passes through us, coding it and trying blindly to find something that we dumbly call the truth. We never quite know what it is, as it is and always was an abstract concept. Though just because we have a word for it we seem to think that it makes sense somehow. As if adding a surface value to a meaning by attributing something so faulty as a word adds anything to it. So it's an object or an emotion or something that others have experienced. How does it make that any more real? How does it take something as abstract as the concept of truth away from abstractness? I think that in our own small existances we might just have access to a great ether, upon which all our ideas and emotions float. This makes sense why some people, even over something as baseless and trivial as IM, can understand each other through text.
I know you are reading this.

There's got to be something more valid that we can base ourselves on, rather than the vague and sloppy, often half-baked verification that others can give us. I am fairly certain I am speaking in general about the human race, as I am also fairly certain that I judge myself on my own terms. But then again, even I'm a hypocrite in that sense because I am very vulnerable, naked and weak to the opinions of at least one. He's always so present in my mind. I like that. It's comfortable. There's a niche here right for thoughts of him. It works. Jesus Christo I think my brains are melting on the insides, turning into a Quaker Oats porridge festival with hot apple cores for my eyes.
I wonder if there's added sugar on me, or if I come just as I am? I wonder if I'm bitter or sour to other minds. I wonder if that makes sense. I wonder if that cup in front of me makes sense. I wonder if I'm making an ass of myself. Does that make sense?
Does he makes sense? Does she? Do any of us? What is sense? What is truth?
I am so tired of being blindly trapped in this body, I wish I had faster connections. I wish I could be joined with the present so that I knew what was really going on. But, unfortunately, my feeble brain needs time to process things, and if I didn't have that I suppose I would suffer from immediate and prolonged overload and just die.

I think it sort of bothers me that all of this was typed out in less than seven minutes. The harddrive just started spinning again and it startled me.
You're right, dream version of you, what I need is sleep, and I think I will be more than happy to come and join you in it. Or perhaps you're awake, but that small piece of you that stays with me always. Your ether self.
... Yes. Melting brain.

Well, I was part of the Salmon meme as described best by this post on another user's journal.
My special random friend was called NumerousSalmon, and it said "I do believe you misspelled 'nigger faggot' in your most recent post."

Great. I was part of a meme.

So it's one of those times of nights where I waste myself and my brain by filling it with crap and feeling ashamed at the "fandoms" that have sprung up surrounding a lot of the films I used to like as a child and adolescent.
Balto, for example, is an excellent film with beautiful animation and, for a children's film, an engaging story.
Why do people find the need to sexualise everything? There's Rule 34 everywhere. Looking for a few pictures for reference smashed me across some Balto porn. Great.
The Secret of NIMH, done by one of my favourite animators. Same story, uber-nerds blasting their loads all over badly done MSPaint redos of official screenshots slightly edited to make them sexual. AND DON'T YOU KNOW MRS BRISBY WAS TOTALLY NAKED IN THAT ONE SCENE HURR.
... She was a fucking mouse, you idiot.

I for one, can completely understand the anthropomorphic appeal. I really can. I've been involved with the community in the past and it's really alienated and burned me for a number of reasons. I won't get into them here, but seriously guys, grow the fuck up and get laid, please. Anthropomorphic animals I can even understand, but seriously, guys, the characters in Balto are quadrupedal. Don't even get me into the discussion on fucking animals because I do not want to go there and open up that can of bullshit with you lot again. I've even drawn sexual material for these people for money in the past, and it's just led to crazy one way or another. I don't "fursuit" and I don't want to see your fat ass in a layer of cheap fleece fur and ears, parading around making an ass of yourself and fucking someone else dressed in a similar fashion, okay? If you're both into it and consenting adults, please, go do that in your bedrooms behind closed doors where I can't see or hear it. It's no business of mine, so please don't make it business of mine by shoving it in my face.

It's really kind of sad to be pointed to a seeimingly innocuous upon first glance website devoted to the film or whatever of your choice, only to be be affronted by a bunch of fourteen year olds who insist on writing odd slashfics and terrible "art" depicting and describing talking dogs having sex. I only go on the titles and one liner descriptions here people, so if I'm wrong on this, please, please correct me.

Masturbate, it's healthy. Develop interests, it's healthy. But for fuck's sake, have a shower and go meet people, don't spend your life fanatically obsessing over and sexualising a children's cartoon. Having an interest in anthropomorphic animals is great, and if it floats your particular boat, go ahead and indulge in a fetish. But for fuck's sake guys, do it the fuck away from me. Also, children's cartoons? At the very least, can't you make up original characters? And no, your screenshot of Balto recoloured to be green with purple markings mounting another recolour of Steele Photoshopped to be in a bending position are not original characters. Even though you spend gods know how long in Photoshop, and all of ten minutes on babynames.com to find "Darryen" and "Raelin" and then add something faggotty onto the front like 'Starchaser' or 'Moonborn.'

I used to think there were some pretty cool people in the "fandom" as it were. I had met some people who honestly were just into anthropomorphic art and thought it was cool, and sometimes liked to roleplay online or whatever. But those are unfortunately few and far between. I have to really, really, really stretch my mind to the point of breaking to try and see the groups in a positive light anymore. There are a lot of sad and depraved people, a lot of whom really need to get some serious help and learn some social skills. I have nothing against people who are shy and awkward, I am too, and everyone needs to learn, but for fuck's sake don't let yourself go to such a point.

Ugh.

I was fired today.
It was my own fault, I didn't Lock an entry that was about work. They confronted me with a printed out form of it, as if I was going to deny it. I think it surprised them when I told them that I was not going to lie about it, and that I had in fact written the post.
I wish being honest had rewards.

I wasn't even allowed to finish my shift, and I was escorted out of the building like some kind of criminal or something. As if they expected that if I were let alone for a second, I would flip out and break stuff. Do I look that unstable? Really I just wanted to be left alone so I could be upset and ashamed in peace. It was my own fault, and I won't do something like that again, but that's just not good enough. The HR rep told me something lame about how life sometimes has hard knocks. Yeah, I sure remembered that when I was scrapping with hobos for the dryest doorsill to sleep under in Victoria. I am pretty familiar with hard knocks. I am pretty familiar with not getting cut a break on pretty much anything. There's the odd time or so, I'm sure, but I can't think of any at the moment. I guess it was some kind of attempt at comforting me.

I hate having to worry about survival. I hate having to worry about where my next meal is coming from, like some kind of beaten hyaena. I hate having to see myself as "low," and I hate even more that I recognise when others deem me as such. I am the riff-raff, and I know I'm better than that, but I can see it in their eyes when they pass over me. I hate having to ask others for money. I hate living off of stale bread and cheap noodles that go too soft too quickly. I try to live better, but I just can't afford it. I hate fretting about the rent. I was so fucking stupid when I was a kid and didn't appreciate it. I was so fucking dumb. Now I am paranoid about throwing even lame, stale, sometimes bad food away. Can't it last for just one more day? If I throw this out, will I regret not eating it? Will I be hungry later?

I just want to climb into a warm, lightless box lined with pillows that I don't have to pay for and sleep for a very, very long time. But that won't help me get to England any faster. What I want to do doesn't matter. It's what I have to do to get to England that matters, and nothing else. I can survive off scraps, I can survive without buying myself new things, I can exist alright without frills. I just wish sometimes that I had the opportunity to have those frills. I promised him I wouldn't starve, so I won't. Sometimes it's so difficult not to.

I spent a little bit of the money I didn't really have to pay for some more groceries. And they were all gone and eaten within a day, none of which was had by me. I then see them later in the same day, sitting down to chow on some Wendy's burgers or some Chicken Chef. It just makes me so fucking frustrated. At the time, I figured, "It's all right, I just got moved up to full time! I'll have a bit more money, I can afford these sandwich meats/extra bread/cutlets now, because when next pay comes I can recompensate."
No. No you can't.

So it's back to the hunting for me. It'll be okay though, I can get another job. Maybe one that will pay more. I can still save money and go.
Jesus today sucked. I'm still sick as fuck, I had to get up early, I spent my last change to get on the bus to work, I got canned after three hours, I couldn't even finish my shift, and I had to walk home. In the cold. Alone. To an empty house full of silence.
Ugh. Tomorrow has got to be better.

Last night as pain, a T3 and Motrin were coursing slowly through my veins, I remember I had some very deep and intellectual thoughts that I had hoped to remember to write on here, once I was able to make my joints function well enough to carry myself to the computer.

I remember very distinctly that what I had to say was important and profound. It was some secret to enlightenment, some key to untold mental riches. Something that would make people think and be able to change themselves for the better.
It was probably a load of bollocks. Oh, painkillers. You are so hilarious.

The sensation of my head being made of splitting wood is still with me. I managed to drag my diseased and battered carcass to work, because I felt a smidgeon better than yesterday after downing a bowl of Lipton Chicken Noodle Soup. Thank the gods for that stuff. It's amazing.
I'm here because I need the goddamned money to get to England. That is the only reason why. If I didn't have such a steadfast goal I'd be at home on my back groaning at the ceiling aimlessly, swallowed up by the misty, thought-clouding splendours of as many painkillers as I can find.

There is a plus side to today, though. I'll have more money on my paycheque, and my supervisor was nice enough to give me a decongestant pill and $1 so I could go and get a can of apple juice. Sweet, sweet apple juice. And I can actually breathe for a change as well.

Now, I'm not one for drug use. I'll have a social drink every now and then, but I don't smoke cigarettes or marijuana and have never done any chemical for a recreational means.
But I will tell you right now, Sudafed, Tylenol 3, and Motrin seem to get me a little bit fucked up. (Not taken all together, either.) Especially Sudafed. I don't know why but that shit sends me sky high. I avoid taking it except for when I'm in dire need of it.

T3 hammers my thought processes down to a crawl, so I'm dopey and slow and fuzzy in the brain. Sudafed can make me hallucinate to a small degree, and make me forget where I am and what's going on. Apparently I can also be easily convinced. (Once I was quite well into the loop of Sudafed and I was told that we had just climbed over Mt Fuji, and I believed it.) Loads of fun. Motrin makes me introspective and sleepy, so it feels like my head is melting. Well, melting is better than thudding and splitting, I guess.

Ugh. I am at work. It has been roughly an hour and it feels like three.

So last night was my first foray into taxidermy. The subject was a male white mouse, and he had been dead for quite some time and kept in a freezer, so this made some of his skin and tissues difficult to separate from the skin in some places, but it went fairly well. I managed to get the pelt almost intact - I did lose the tail and some skin of one of the legs due to my own fault in cutting too far down the spine. The face went well, I did manage to get the lips and lower jaw skin well, as well as the eyelids. Poor bugger's ears were all tattered to pieces and he looked as if he had died by suffocation - When I took off his skin, the inside of his chest cavity was filled with blood. So, either that, or his heart exploded, I don't know. The pelt was done well, I think, especially since I have never dissected or skinned an animal ever in my life. It was a fascinating experience.

I was very surprised by the lack of fluids or smell. I did very well in not puncturing the abdominal wall or anything, and it really only started to smell a little when I was very near the end, and the smell was very distinctly bile and stomach acid. The only fluids I had to deal with was a small amount of faeces still left in the digestive tract.
Seeing testicles without skin on them was kind of creepy.

My next subject is a female black and white mouse. She's really cute and is considerably fresher than the previous. (Her eyes are still black and roughly their right size, whereas his eyes were white and shrunken greatly.)
I've learned a lot from the previous mouse and I'd really prefer to do a rat as they're much bigger and easier to work with. I do have pictures of what I did, but since the end product really kind of sucks I'd rather not bother.

And now onto a different subject. Pictures!
My Room! Because you are all so interested.
Behold my geekery and get my references!
My setup. Bleff.
I am hats.

This is me.

For those of you who would like to get to know me better, I am posting my IM information.
I actually use the LJTalk feature, as well, by the way, so if you do too, awesome.

aim: blanqraven
msn: blanqraven [[at]] hotmail [[dot]] com
ljt: blankraven [[at]] livejournal [[dot]] com

Is there an active LJ IRC? If so, let me know, please.

Gender roles in society are very confusing things. We are taught, from birth, that they are biological, linear, and two sided only. If you are one, you cannot be the other. It is an important path in life that is imposed and ruled upon you from the second you take your first breath and a stranger looks between your legs.

So what happens to the ones who slip through the cracks?
The ones for whom this feels wrong? The ones, for whom, "outer" gender, and by that I mean physical genitalia, is a superficial and irrelevant thing; Who mentally ascribe to both, nothing, or something opposite to what society deems them to be?

And why are they considered to be evil?

I don't ascribe to any specific gender. I like to be both, or none, actually. When given the choice, I choose to represent myself as male. It's just more comfortable to me that way.

I've felt this dysphoric about my body and gender since I was a small child. I remember having an argument with my mother, very clearly, in which she shouted at me that I was not a little boy, I was a little girl, because little boys have penes and little girls have vaginas. I told her that she was wrong and I was a boy. I was then sent to my room without dinner, and I remember clearly that that was the day I learned to lie to my mother.

It's a shame that this society dissuades itself against ideas and bending social norms. It's a shame that difference is prosecuted, and that those who are different, especially in the areas of sexuality and identification are seen as crazy freaks. Why are people so afraid of the unknown and unfamiliar? What happened to our sense of adventure? To acceptance? To natural adaptation and change? What purpose do these kinds of phobias serve?

People like this are the reasons why Brandon Teena was raped and murdered. People whose sole goals in life are to fester in and propagate hate, misunderstanding, and misinformation. There's no excuse for behaviour like this. Ignorance is not a privelege or something to be proud of; It is vile and only serves to remind those of us in this world with a brain just how despicable we have become.

The majority of our species feels the inherent need to be inextricably involved in everyone else's processes and ways of life, to make them identical to one's own. The fact is, someone's sexuality really only matters to that person, and the person that they are taking to bed. If they are not sleeping with you, it does not matter to you. Why bother to hate them for it? Why waste your energy? That's energy that could be spent on improving your own life and situation to a level where you don't feel the need to spew such vitreous and bile on something that doesn't even involve you to make yourself feel better!
This really says a lot about the human condition.

Buddha once said that every emotion is a gift. No-one is required to accept and take a gift.
If someone gives you a gift, and you do not want it, to whom does it belong?
The simple fact is that these people's anger and hatred are their own, for whatever reason. I wish them the best of luck in phasing out whatever negativity brought them to the level where they feel they need to hate and disparage an entire group of people.

Until then, I think I am going to pleasantly float between whatever gender I want to be. Someone once told me, "Jamie, you need to pick a gender. One or the other. You're either a boy, or you're a girl. You can't sit around having one foot in the water forever."
Why ever not?

He couldn't give me an answer.

We change, constantly.
From the moment that we are conceived, our cells begin to divide and warp, our form changing rapidly and seemingly without notice. As we mature from infants in to children, millions of chemical conversions and pathways are made, and our personalities are shaped and begin to develop. As we mature from children into adolescents, our growth is accelerated as well as our mental faculties, whilst our abilities to perceive anything other than ourselves, and the world around us can sometimes be diminished. As hormones flare and eventually settle as we pass into adulthood, we have gone through so many changes that it's impossible to calculate.

Even when all this biological changing has gone, we still change. Our mental and emotional states undulate and fluctuate like water. Our situations adapt themselves, and we, in turn, are forced to meet them head on.

As of the past several weeks I have had to change more rapidly than at the time I was capable of comprehending. I have experienced an emotion that I thought I was unable to feel again. It sounds ridiculous when I say this, but, I have.
My emotional state has expanded exponentially, and retracted into single-minded simplicity in other facets.

I fell in love again. I fell in love again with someone whom I was already in love with.
It grew and became thousands of times more tangible, colourful, painted. For the past several years, sadly, it had sat carefully tucked and nestled, but not nurtured, in the back of my mind. It lay, largely unmolested, within the caverns and countries and worlds of me. It was thought of every day, and fantasies were always entertained by it; But it sat, flat, and hollow, and stained with frustration and sadness.
And then, it happened.

For two weeks, my world was not the simple tri-shaded monochrome of dirty snow and the battered metal and concrete of Winnipeg; It was exploding with brilliant colour and beauty I had never encountered before. I never felt more entire, more right, than during that time.
And then, as seems to be habit for things in my life, it had to leave.
Things are different this time. When I was younger, I would be upset and lament and do nothing. Now, I am older, more intelligent, more cunning, and with more resources. I have made a decision, and my decision is to leave my country of birth and go take a chance.

I can't tell you how terrified I am.
And yet, entirely calm and filled with joy. Simultaneous conflictions abound at this amorphous time in my life. I am frightened for the obvious reasons of leaving one's own country, and fretting still further about problems that can come up in relationships, especially new (to reality) ones.
But, I have faith in myself. I might shake and falter a little bit, but, this is life. I'm on my way to getting where I want to go.
I wish me luck.

So I have this friend who lent me the laptop I'm using at home right now, which was nice of him. It runs OpenSUSE. I want to use XP on it, but he's all bitchy about it and won't let me. Well, I guess I can't do my art, then, which is sort of what I need the computer for. I can't get it running because I don't understand the first thing about all this coding nonsense and installing stuff is very confusing in Linux. I've given it my best go but I simply just don't know enough. He's been to University so I guess he just sort of assumes that you can just KNOWLEDGE GET everything. Yes, Google helps. Yes, I can research some stuff, but, seriously it doesn't compare to having someone who knows what the christ they're on about actually talking to you and walking you through it once.

He's just being really short with me as of late and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I was gone for 2 weeks? I don't know what it is. I just wish he wouldn't be so terse. He's such a chick that way. If he's mad, he'll say nothing and just stew over it and be a dick. I guess it's because he wants to bone me or something. I don't know, and I don't care about what his reasons for being a dick are, there's no excuse for being a shithead to someone who's just trying to make conversation.

He's from a really well off family and has all this stuff and all these opportunities that I never had, and it drives me fucking nuts sometimes.

He has this neat laptop, this other one which is admittedly not as good but still decent enough despite a broken screen... he's got a powerful desktop, and he's getting a new one. All for free. Yeah it comes out of his trust fund but, fact is, HE HAS A TRUST FUND. It was given to him by his parents. For free. Yeah. He gets cheques from the government for $90 every two weeks or something.
His parents and siblings cook gourmet food every night. Meanwhile, I make do with stale bagels and buckwheat noodles most of the time. He gets to go to University and has a credit card. I can't pay for an education and I get rejected for every card I apply for. I don't have someone who can be my guarantor or just fork over $300 for a security deposit.

I have to work. Hard. And a lot, for comparably little amounts of pay. I know I'm not alone in this, it's just it's so hard sometimes when I watch other people who have the ability and access to enough food to actually have fat on their body. It makes me grumpy and irritable, but I try to be kind and nice and just accept that there are other walks of life that I just wasn't born into.

He's not even going to do anything with the old computer. I'd buy it if I could but I don't have $400 I can just sink into a hole like that, and he's mentioned that if he were to sell it it'd be for something like that. It just pisses me off. I never have quite enough for anything I need. It's a stretch to save any money at all, but hell, I'll do it and I'll do it well.

Christ almighty on a hippo, I am so fucking sick of being poor.

... To mourn the passing of something in my life that has done far more good for me than any other inanimate object, and in many cases, animate objects.

My little, ratty, tattered blanket was left behind by accident during the stay in room 210, and the hotel staff have not yet returned the call as to whether or not they could find it.
So, it is to be assumed that my lifelong friend, comforter, and one-sided conversationalist, my yellow blanket, has been KIA.

She was my first possession, having received it from my grandmother at 8 days of age and been at my side ever since. There have been four days in that period of time that I have not had her. This is the fifth.
She survived countless trips across the country, to Norway and England, and back. She lived through thirteen changes of address, fourteen if you count the time where I had no address. She was there for me when no-one else would be or could be; Take your pick. She was the one and true constant in my life. Many times relatives tried to bribe me to get rid of her and treated her with disdain and disgust. All she ever got was revulsion and dislike, despite her long and sometimes rough lifetime of service. Misunderstood and mistreated, she was loved and cherished, and eventually betrayed by one person...
Me.

I forgot her there in that room. I packed my things and didn't double-check. Worst of all, when I left for the trip I had second-guessed taking her along.
"Do I need her? ... No, but, it's good to have her along anyways."
Never, ever, ever do against what that small voice says in your mind. Never.
After all of the things she did for me, I forgot her. And now, I pay.
She's been thrown out, probably, into the garbage to be torn apart and rot and go back into the earth. And I'm without her.

These last two days have been ridiculously hard on me. Call it what spawned the journal, if you will.
It seems to be a running trend in my life that the tangible things and people that I care for all seem to disappear. He's had to go home, and now she's gone. I should be able to function normally without a blanket, of course, but for some reason, everything just hurts a little more because she's gone.

to blankie
for what it's worth
thank-you, and
i'm sorry.