valcapone

I shouldn't waste my time on this, but it does always bother me when people criticize my writing. There is a jerk in my d-land guestbook who keeps leaving comments with no associated contact info (or, worse, fake contact info). I'm chalking him up as one of the internet's many idiots who just want to destroy things, but it still gets on my nerves when people say 'you are a bad writer.' Especially when they don't bother to point to anything specific.

Generally, I like to learn from my mistakes. I like to try to understand why people dislike me, my writing, things I've done/said/whatever. I know I'm not perfect, though most of the time I prefer to go on the assumption that I'm a pretty kick-ass person. Wallowing in self-pity, thinking miserable thoughts... these are things I've done plenty in the past, and I'd like to think I'm pretty much over them, with the occasional relapse - as opposed to being the Totally Negative Person my ex claimed I was when we broke up. (For the record, I don't think I was ever a Totally Negative Person, but I will certainly admit to prolonged depression. It didn't help that he was ignoring me at the time, but that's another story for another day.)

I was reading a bit of Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates last night, and I struck a passage that made sense. The main character's grandmother, Maestra, is telling him that we make most of our thought patterns around the age of 17, when we first begin to realize that life is unfair, that the world fundamentally doesn't give a shit about us. And she tells him that whenever he got to feeling sorry for himself, she'd try to distract him from these feelings because once they're ingrained, they're physical and not emotional - thus harder habits to break. I totally buy this theory, because I've lived my life based on grudges built when I was 17 and my parents picked up and moved to Ohio during my senior year of high school. I started viewing friendships, people, as temporary and therefore not worth getting close to. And living your life like that is, I only recently realized, incredibly stupid. But it's something I never thought about because it became physical, habit, subconscious. Even when I realized it, it would've been harder to overcome had I not just been abandoned by the person I considered my reason for living. I had to build a whole new life, a whole new me, anyway. It was a good time to do it. And I think I've done fairly well on my own.

So when people try to tear into what I've built, it makes me angry. I was talking to my best friend on the phone the other day, and I was telling her about the guy who tried to swindle 'sublet' money out of me after the fact. I told her that I felt like saying, 'Listen, buddy: I'm from the Bronx. Don't fuck with me,' and that the people I knew from New York were all insane. It made me insane being there, brought out the worst in me. I told her about a time when I was clearing snow off my car to move it to the other side of the street. I was standing in the road to reach the driver's side window, and a guy in an SUV stopped next to me to scream obscenities about how I was blocking the road. We got into a screaming match, and ultimately I hit his car with my brush. It did no damage, but he looked like he was going to climb out of the car and beat me to a bloody pulp. And I didn't back down, either - I just yelled, 'YOU WANT A PIECE OF THIS, FUCKER! BRING IT!!!'

He drove on, muttering 'Crazy bitch!' the whole way, and I continued to clean the snow off my car, shaking with adrenaline and fear. Why the fuck would I get into a fight with someone over something so trivial, so meaningless? And I would've probably killed the guy if he *had* stepped out of his car, that's how ready and willing to fight I was. That scared me, that I had that capability within myself.

I'm not saying that I would rip someone's head off, today, for any reason. I'm not that angry anymore. I'm willing to let what truly doesn't matter slide. But when people get on my case without giving me a chance, or without bothering to give me constructive criticism - or at least specific points where they think I suck - then I start to feel that old anger boiling in my guts. And you do not want to mess with me when I am in that particular mental rut, because I will fuck you up.

All that to say that I really hate anonymous guestbook posters, and I won't tolerate any more of their crap.

In less psychotic news, my hair is now pink in the back, blue on the top and purple halfway down what I would call my bangs (if they were shorter).

Also: The Photographer is going to be in town sometime after midnight on Thursday. Whoo!

And now I have some more transcription to do.