No Face Preta

Tonight my uncle and I had a fight.

I was sitting in the basement as per usual and it's like 10PM and I'm watching Naruto with my headphones on. He calls me and proceeds to come down the stairs. So I take my headphones out and he asks if I'm doing okay. I tell him I'm fine while my aunt is trying to stop him from coming down to bother me in the first place.

He then proceeds to tell me I'm intruding upon his space and that all my space is his space so that I need to leave. It's apparent that his logic is incalculably flawed so I opt not to dance around the reality since it's clearly about disrespect in the most primal troglodyte form. But this makes me a monster, which he's quick to tell me how ugly I am and how I'll never get a man because of my attitude and  that a woman should know her place with the wavering shakiness of a leaf.

He's being totally aggressive, so I stand, from my seated position because he's getting in my face now and pointing in my face and I just put my hand up to MY face so as to create a barrier and tell him not to touch me or my stuff because none of it is his.

This is how brazen an idiot can really be. He bucks at me, like he's going to hit me. I make a joke saying I'll take one for the team and call the cops if he doesn't want to call them himself. Then proceed to do so, because he still won't leave me alone. After a very calm, and collected call to the 911 where I explain exactly this and he's n the background shouting how ugly I am and still trying to advance on my person while I'm explaining on the phone, the lady says she'll send out a unit.

Then he grabs my hands and proceeds to grapple them behind me, I assume in an attempted rape, because he didn't punch me like a man, but I didn't scream, I just  kinda overpowered him in the struggle.... silently, until i was throwing metal folding chairs at him and then  my aunt came back and I shouted to her he just started a fight with me, that quick, in that time and it was over just as quick.

I went out and sat in my car for a long time thinking about who to call, where to go and what to do, because it's been over an hour and the cops never showed up and when I call them to follow up and tell them that I called them to prevent a fight in the first place, that they never. NEVER showed up to even check on the call for, I had to consider my life position for a moment.

I called my cousin, but I'm still at unrest. So for that reason I think everyone should know about this no-face preta.

Fuck Today

The sea and me, salty as can fucking be.

I'm in a bad place emotionally, today. I'm 31 years old, living with my aunt and uncle, trying desperately to find my place in this world. To most people it's as simple as "getting a job". I have had many jobs, and I don't mind hard work, however, there is always something that comes in between.

Most recently I was working for Lowe's as a Home Decor Customer Service Associate. While I was content to just show up to work and do  my job every day and go home, there were evil people afoot whose only motivation was to be the architect of my downfall. I'm now coming to realize this is the way of the world. There will always be somebody hating from a distance, up close, or trying to throw rocks into my path. I don't understand the motive, but I do understand that I don't like rocks being thrown at me.

In the end, I confronted the bully directly. But instead of any support or righteous retribution, I ended up getting fired. It's a bit inconvenient. I obviously didn't see myself working at Lowe's forever, but those paychecks were my only source of income.

I have a penchant for being sassy, but I mainly keep to myself. Since I have this lone wolf self-validating-independence, insecure people take it as cockiness if their negative opinions about me are considered irrelevant. Nobody likes a know-it-all, but I take pride in my knowledge of facts, because every day I'm alive is a useful learning opportunity. That is what life means to me. I'm not hard-up to prove people wrong at every opportunity- but I have been cursed with some very toxic family members in my life, that I have, in all genuine honesty, tried to play therapist to. In no explicit detail, I can say after 31 years of being taught the golden rules, like: "Treat people the way you want to be treated, if you do good, good will come back to you, if you have nothing kind to say, it is better to say nothing at all, What goes around comes around, etc..."

My mother is a vehement hypocrite. I'm almost sure she was the one who taught me ethics and morality in the first place, yet her regressive behavior, contrary to, not only those few worldly truths, is markedly reprehensible. Our relationship is extremely strained, and without going into petty singular anecdotes about how she's always trying to find a way to subjugate me, insult my intelligence, or slander my name with complete fabrications to strangers and family alike, WHILE being as disgusting and abusive as emotionally and psychologically possible and deliberately rationalizing it all; I'm fed up.

For a long time, I just thought she wasn't being mean on purpose, but it takes a certain level of pre-meditated, conniving filth to come up with the shit she does, just to try and make me cry (it makes her feel powerful).

With all that being said, I can't tell her anything. Good or bad. Whenever I am sad, on days like today, it's like a field day for her ego. Her favorite hobby is to blame me for being born. She doesn't know empathy.

As heart-breaking as it is to be alienated from her just as a way to protect my heart, I can't rely on her, or any of my family members whatsoever to be supportive financially. But a little emotional support would be nice...

My artistic/creative talent is  pretty much the only thing I have going for me as far as marketable skills are concerned and at this juncture in time, while baby boomers are still in charge of the economy, that isn't going to change anytime soon; but art is necessary.

Not all art is good. Propaganda for example, can do a lot of damage. But to cut creativity out of the academic curriculum of the general population or to cut funding and budgets for anything that a sense of "class" or "taste" can be measured by, is nothing short of uncivilized.

I am not lazy and I'm not a person who doesn't finish what I start. But so far, all my goals that have been met, go largely unrecognized and no real monetary profit have come of them. It's not as simple as me going and being a cog in someone else's corporate machine. I've tried and failed at that more times than anything else, and the reason that keeps happening is because that's not my place. But I'm not sure where my place is...

My aunt and uncle (mainly my uncle) is finding it hard to live with me. Mainly because I keep to myself. I think he wants to be closer to me, but I find him to be boring and irrelevant to talk to. I don't mind chit-chat if there's a point to it, but what I do mind is conversations about absolutely nothing. For example:

"Hey Rhon, can you come here for a second?"

I go up the stairs to the kitchen.

"Have you eaten today?"

"Yes, I ate earlier."

"Well you should eat something."

*internal screaming*
________________________

"Hey Rhon!" he calls me while petting the cat, "What did she say?"
I'm confused.... I think the question is rhetorical... Don't know how to answer...say nothing.

"What she say, Rhon?"

He's asking like he expects an answer.

"Uhm...she's a cat."
________________________

"Hey Rhon,  once you get to be my age, you can leave work early." he laughs goofily as if this is funny "because of Seniority."

"Oh."

"Seniority." he repeats "Sen-yor-i-ty" over and over, like I'm fucking retarded, so I play dumb for once.

"Oh you mean like a senior citizen?"

"No, not like that, uh.."

"You mean like a senior in high school?"

"No... uhm...like..." but this has already taken too long, I just wanted a choco-pop from the freezer, and was not expecting to have a 30 minute conversation about the new word he learned today. Better wrap it up so I can go back to doing anything but this bullshit.

"Oh you mean like, you've been there for a long time?" HUUURRRDUUUUUURRRRRRRRR

"Yeah..." he says it almost disappointedly.

I don't care that he's boring. I just want to keep our conversations short and cordial since he's literally 1-dimensional. I've tried having a conversation with him ONCE. All he talked about was how much he missed living in California, I actually tried too. I told him about my time living there and where I worked, and my friends. But his entire side of the conversation was just

"Yeah. I sure do miss it out there."

I'm not exaggerating. So I assumed he's run out of shit to talk about and to my understanding of social interaction, That's when you end a conversation, right? But I'm really trying to be social so I ask an open-ended question to try and bring the convo back around.

"Well have you ever thought about going back?"

"No...but I sure do miss it..."

"Okay good talk." I proceed to force myself to walk away, so as not to look to eager to get the FUCK away from this moron, lest his idiocy is contagious.

It doesn't help that the way he forms words GRATES on the nerves. He almost has kind of a lisp over this mouth-breathing, country ass drawl that he tries to pass off as proper. It is LITERALLY just  a trial to have to listen to him at all. It hurts my soul, especially if my time is wasted, not even gaining any insight into how to get him to leave me the fuck alone since he has no personality.

There was one instance in my childhood that he considers really heartfelt and touching; He brings it up all the time:

"Remember when you were kids, outside playing  and one day you came running in here and said 'uncle I'm hungry' and I made you guys those hot dogs?"

No. Not really. Actually I think that might've been my younger sister but he seems so content with that nostalgic memory, I don't dare disappoint him.

"Yeah."

"Yeah. I'll never forget that"

That you made us hotdogs? That's the best you can do? That's the most uncle/niece heartfelt memory of me that you have? That shit don't even sit right. Hot dogs, huh? Yeah, okay.

So all that being said. I stay in the basement. They almost never come down here, I even think it creeps them out a little bit. It's old and unfinished. My grandma and uncle died in this house and they tend to just not ever come down here, YET, me staying here is a constant reason for discontent. He said I made him uncomfortable...

Now I get sometimes people wanna walk around butt ass naked and having a guest doesn't grant you the same freedom. But I'm not a guest. I have nowhere else to go. I certainly wouldn't be here if I did, and it's just really fucking annoying that he keeps picking at me like a scab because he has no hobbies or skills that occupy his mind or time rather than picking the same 3 notes on the guitar from time to time, rather than actually learning how to play.

I have projects... None of them are any guarantee of money. When I wrote and self published my book, that was a milestone for me...but I made like 8 dollars from it. When I took all that time building my Legendaery website and getting it EXACTLY how I wanted it. No money came from that either. And now it's gone, for weird, inexplicable, twilight zone reasons, it was taken down after 8 months of non-payment. It's really mysteriously strange how all of a sudden, after damn near a YEAR of not paying on my domain or hosting, without any notification it SUDDENLY went down and cost 200 bucks to get back up. Wouldn't that have happened after one month of not paying?

I'm being throttled and silenced. I know that. I can't prove it, because my enemies are invisible to the naked eye, but they work through people. People who probably work at the NSA or some shit. My site was *STARTING* to get serious. underneath the cutesy Avatar fashion photoshoots, my articles were about  sustainability and revolutionary self-realization, then, one day, all of a sudden it just wasn't there anymore.

It's hard not to get exhausted, playing the same fucking game over and over again. I feel the weight of the chains on me. My debt, my family, my government, all weighing me down. Freedom ain't free, and you can't get something for nothing. But the something anyone is willing to barter is always my dignity. Not my intellect, writing or design skills. Just my self-respect. And THAT is because even the people with the most material wealth are fucking insecure... but since they can buy everything else, they tend to think if they can buy a person's self-esteem. That temporary high in feeling superior (just because that money can make people compete and clamor over one another to do anything for it) it's like a narcotic to them. My skills as an artist are definitely for sale, My innovative ideas are too. But my pussy is a trap. Nobody should want to pay to be enslaved and if they do, they certainly are not qualified to be anyone's boss or leader. So just save me the irritation and just pay me to be YOUR boss if you are so inclined to be my subordinate anyway. Cut out the lust and make some real fucking money.

Fuck Yesterday

As if I don't have enough to be depressed about. Do you guys remember this? His name in Secondlife was Tristen Starsider, but his real name was Ben Thompson and he was Australian.

When we first met, I was a little taken with his accent and maybe I had some mild feelings for him at first. Outside of SL we were friends on Skype,  and Ben was a cutie pie. He kinda reminded me of this guy:

 

I love SecondLife when I'm feeling the most financially unstable and depressed in my Real life. Something about being able to buy couture fashion and do things you naturally cannot afford, for cheap, really assuages my senses when I'm dirt poor. It's nice to go on and dress like a million bucks when I sometimes feel worthless... but SL can be a dark place too.

Ben and I used hang out at this welcome hub called Violet, with a bunch of social rejects. This particular spot was really overrun with spammers, anti-social idiots and basically the kind of people that are generally just a waste of oxygen. The ignorance was rampant to the point where if you had a knee-jerk reaction to the word "Nigger" whether you were white or black, the trolls would eat you alive. In short, of all the places to congregate on SL, this was by far the worst and usually where he could be found.

Why? I really couldn't tell you. For me, sometimes I'd dress to the nines and want to be seen. Since Secondlife is sparsely populated these days, Violet was just one place I knew there'd always be people there to see me being fleeky, plus I knew Ben. So whenever I'd go there after a long stint of not coming online (usually months, sometimes years in between) I'd basically go to find him and catch up.

We never got too close though. I learned from one of the douchebags in Violet, putting him on blast over the mic and telling everyone that he was xenophobic to the point where he rarely left the house,  had a host of emotional, and psychological anxiety issues and depression for which he was seeking therapy. THESE people were just morally derelict to the point they would even say some shit like that, in all seriousness.

I wanted to get closer to him. I wanted him to trust me. I wanted to be a real friend to Ben and help him tackle his issues, but he wouldn't let me in. I didn't push too hard, fearing I'd push him away, because hanging out with those rejects lent him a very NASTY and aggressive attitude from time to time. But I already knew he was fucked up, so I was always nice to him.  Even though they all knew him well, none of the many people who would congregate there regularly, called him a friend. They usually just talked shit about him, and I never understood why, because even when I heard him being kinda douchey, I thought everybody In Violet acted like that...so their little inner-circle of misery was like an inside joke to them.

I knew that Violet was a great place to go to ruin your day, so I tended to stay away from it. But over the years, whenever I'd visit from time to time, his avatar would still be there, even if he was AFK and I really considered him my oldest friend in Secondlife.

My most recent revival stint on SL can be dated back about 2-3 months, and as per usual, I went to Violet to check on Ben. It was eerily empty and silent. The zen garden  suddenly seemed zen, without those ugly souls there to taint the atmosphere... He had changed his name/started over with a new account a few times before, so I knew it would be damn near impossible to find him if nobody was going to Violet anymore.

the secondary spot was called Korea...but that was different now, too.

Yesterday after a particularly well put-together outfit, I went to visit another welcome hub called Arapaima. Much like Violet, this is where  the socially retarded flock to, to grief noobs and troll in abundance, and I recognized one familiar name: Alvina Belgar. I messaged her, teling her I remembered her and asking about what happened to Violet and if she still talked to any of the people who used to hang out there. She basically said "same shit, different location." in so many words, which was obviously true since some idiot was screaming "Nigger" over his mic in the open welcome area as we PM'd

I asked about Tristen- If she knew at this point what his name was, or where he was hanging out... and she told me:

"He's dead."

Initially, I thought it was a joke. I knew he had some problems and I knew a lot of people didn't like him, but dead? Really?

"He killed himself about a year and a half ago."

Still, in shock and denial, I asked how she knew. She went on to tell me one of the regulars from Violet had a relationship with him outside of SL and used to send him packages and whatnot... After not seeing or hearing from him for a while, she followed up and heard it from his mom, whom he was living with. He'd hung himself.

Talk about devastated... Ben was a year older than me, and other than his mental and emotional issues, in perfect physical health. Hell, he was even a cutie to boot, so I had a hard time yesterday, wrapping my head around his suicide. Though I can certainly understand why a person could be driven to it. I've had thoughts.

A person can be suffering despite being attractive and in the prime of their life if they get no respect and all the people they rely on treat them like trash. I can confirm, after being repeatedly told that, you kind of start to believe you hold no value, despite the fucking space you take up and the world, your family, your friends and everyone else would just be better off without you. I get it. I really do. But my struggle with that mentality is still in its early stages...how long will I have to suffer the outside forces of suppression before I'm overtaken in the same way?

I digress. This isn't even about me... I certainly wouldn't be one to subject myself to the tyranny of cyber bullies day in and day out on top of these problems, but if he already thought he was a piece of shit, perhaps he didn't even think he deserved better friends... It haunts me...

For all the reasons suicide leaves a hole in your heart...With those lingering questions echoing inside like: "What if I could've done something to prevent it." "Where was I when he needed me?"

In truth, there was nothing I could have done... It was up to him to want to change, and maybe it was just too much... the societal pressures on a 30 something blonde white male in Australia may have been too much for him... but I know his mom loved him more than mine loves me... they were doing what they could to try and get him help, and it's a fucking stab to the heart that she had to walk in and find him like that.

Do I blame him? Sure. But I didn't know the extent of his psychological damage, nor where it originated. Maybe I could have helped him, maybe not. But I do know, in the end, self-loathing and the promise of release from the pressures of society seemed welcoming enough to go through with it. Suicide is always hard, scary and never easy. But farbeit for anyone to tell somebody else they should cling to this life. Everyone always says suicide is selfish, but what's selfish is holding on to someone who is detached from reality while they continue to suffer.

So even if I don't agree with it and his parents are mourning the loss of a son who had the potential to be more than just a draining financial and emotional burden that he saw himself to be.  He was brave to follow through, in his eyes, in his heart, and in his mind. I know he genuinely thought doing it was the most selfless thing he could do, because I understand it all got to be too much...

I can't claim to know why Ben, with all these kinds of problems would constantly subject himself to the psychological terror of Violet, but I'm happy I got to know him for the time he was in my life. To a person dying of cancer or struggling with some terminal and constant illness, he might seem selfish. But to me, you seem brave. I hope you finally find happiness, peace and contentment, even if you end up being reborn. If you're lucky maybe your afterlife is in the Metaverse and you're finally free flying around in Secondlife bliss. RIP Ben.

I'm in love

:3

He's so sweet evil!
Reminds me of someone...