Birthday Girl

Happy Birthday to me!
Happy Birthday to me!

... and ... to ... well: not me.

I'm a new Aunt.

Miai was born today. I have a new niece and God-daughter. Neat, huh? BB and I were born on the same day that little Miai was. My niece, little Iz, was born in the same week that her aunt and her grandfather was, and bb and Mike's bdays are in the same week. How weird is that! We're a family connected by birthdays.

And funerals. My Uncle Randall's cancer, which I didn't know he had, has come out of remission and now has metastasized (a Greek word) to major organs. It's just a matter of time now.

I wonder if Miai is me.

I read a story when I was a girl in school, about a boy born at midnight on New Year's Day, and he aged rapidly, so much so that he was dying in the same hospital, a year later, of old age.

He died at midnight, the same time a baby boy was born, and ...

I'm in my twenty-fifth year now ... I wonder if I still pass for fifteen, or if this year has aged me one hundred years: I see my sisters aging, I see my nieces growing up...

How come I'm still the baby of the family? How come I feel so old, old, old and tired?

I got emails from some of my readers. One from Anne, who has been reading me from the beginning, and ... one from Saga ... who didn't know whether to write or not to write. She wondered if I would be sad if she wrote me, or if I would be sad if she didn't write me.

Isn't that sad? *snicker*

No, really: think about it, for yourself. When you think that all you can do is hurt somebody or be an imposition or burden, when, for them, your very presence give them lightness, peace, joy, happiness?

Isn't it sad that you stop yourself of giving the gift of yourself, because you don't see what a gift you are to the world?

I think that's sad.

And from Cécile, of course.

So, a gift, what did I get for my birthday?

Doesn't matter.

I think, in light of the above, I think, what can you give for your birthday to others is the question. And not only on your birthday (my birthday) but on everyday. What can you give to your classmates, what can you give to your coworkers, your boss, your customers? ... Your friends, ... your sisters and brothers ... your mother?

So easy to ask of them to give you something, right: like 'gimme a break!' like you deserve the space you're taking up the planet and why, again, do you deserve that next breath or a break?

But what can you give? Even when you're tired or PMSing or your gf's being a real bitch again or have been giving so much already, but still there's that little matchstick girl, but you don't have time to ask her is she okay as you hurry home to your toasty warm fire and sherry and roast lamb.

No, you're entitled to your break, which translates into slighting or trampling on other people, or worse, withdrawing from them, withholding yourself from them.

So what can you give to this person right in front of you, right now, who is bothering you with their annoyingly endless prattle or unreasonable request or there-she-goes-again-doing-that-again behavior.

Why do people keep annoying you? And worse, on your birthday, too!

Yeah, why? Do you ask yourself that as you brush past them?

Hm.

Ever really inquire where the problem really is? Check out the mirror. (that's a hint)

Ever really inquire where the solution really is? Here's another hint: get the fuck away from the mirror, and go to another person and ask them. Your self-talk is very reliable: it lies and belittles you every single time, because when you lie (to yourself) and are belittled, you survive, you can survive through anything if you make yourself small enough, and your little voice is your strongest defender and preserver.

Even as she tells you to kill yourself because nobody loves you.

As she did to Tammy, a neighbor with two, now orphaned, teenaged daughters ... who both look older than me.

(My self talk digging at me and oh, so well, too).

On my birthday, on Christmas, Ms. Muse is very strident, very insistent, very convincing, too, and she gets even more appealing after a few drinks.

But this birthday, with other people wishing me well, giving me the gift that I could give them the gift of gratitude and hope, I heard their voices, sometimes, more than I heard Ms. Muse. And when other people tell you something so radically different than what Ms. Muse tells you, it ...

It gives you perspective. It lets you see yourself from outside yourself. It lets you see yourself from another person's viewpoint, and see, oh, my God, that you actually are a person, borne from a person, loved by persons, because you are lovable.

But that comes when you open up, and listen to a person, instead of push past a person on your way to ... what? Your empty apartment? To do what? Beat yourself up more and kill yourself? And you're in a hurry to do that or to work more and harder so that you can get cancer and die ... successfully?

Vanity of vanities. A man toils, and another man reaps what he toiled over. It's like chasing the wind.

And that's all we do these days on the metro, run from station to station, pushing past people who are pushing past you, and it's all vanity.

I spent the last, oh: 18 hours today chasing the wind. 18 hours at work, chasing wind, to be scolded by two bosses who said I needed to get more a sense of urgency. Two bosses who waltzed in after I did and waltzed out the door exactly at 5 pm. And here I am doing what? loving them? Or hissing behind their back, crying in my (fucking shared) cube because I don't have the guts to stand up to them, hating them because the hateful creature is me, the one without a spine but who makes a very nice carpet or doormat to trample.

18 hours working, slaving away, for what? for chasing the wind, because tomorrow I do it all over again, only now with a more refined sense of urgency.

But also, then, here and there, second by second, there were moments when I was taken out of myself and my very comfy cesspool, when I received an email from a well-wisher who got their wish granted.

Because why?

Because, in wishing me well, and then daring to press send, so now I knew they wished well for me, I became well, just for that one second, two seconds, three seconds, and I turned right around, and generated joy in myself, and gave it to them, gratefully.

22 minutes left to today, and then I'll actually be in my 15th year, being 14 years old now, even if my driver's license is a really good fake that tries to pass me off for 24. I have 22 minutes left.

What am I going to do with 22 more minutes of my birthday?

Nothing.

That's what I'm going to do with them. I'm going to do nothing with them.

And I'm going to be grateful for those 22 more minutes I've been given in my life, that I can be grateful for them.

22 minutes. Every second a gift to me.

In the end, God gets to ask the questions. Don't believe me: ask Job. God did. Every second is a gift to me.

What can I do to deserve them? Nothing. I've seen that. I can do nothing to deserve these gifts.

But what can I do or be with these gifts? The thing about these gifts? They can be given, by you, by me, or not. And it's entirely your choice, every second, and entirely my choice.

So I'm going to do nothing with them, except take some, and sleep, maybe.

But tomorrow ... tomorrow will I be aware of these gifts I've been given? Or will I be swamped, a little bookkeeper, cooking the books for other people to rush through their paychecks, just like I do, and for what except to chase more wind.

Or, will I ... when I'm given the gift of somebody presenting themselves in front of me ... that is: by being in my way ... will I go out of my way to be a gift to them, in a smile, or a 'hi' or a ... idk ... sympathy fuck in the bathroom?

(I'm not that desperate: I'm WAY MORE than that desperate)

Or actually finding out what their name is and what problem is nagging away at them, nagging them away from the here and now so they worry themselves right to their grave? And then actually doing something about that with them, for them?

We shall see, shan't we? Tomorrow. In and among people.

And you? How about you? With your roomies? Or your coworkers? Or employees? Or boss? Or schoolmates? Or lover? Or children? Or parent?

We shall see, shan't we?

And the thing is? God is Good. You screw up today, and, magically, God gives you tomorrow to ... well: screw up again. God is infinitely patient with you. I know from first-hand experience. And God gives you that exact same tomorrow to screw up again, ... again ... or try again, and actually make somebody's face light up in a surprised smile of relief that somebody heard them and cared and helped.

Even if that somebody is a shrewish clerk at a bank and she's supposed to be helping you! But what about her? She had a terrible time with her back pain getting out of bed and all day all she's had is whining, clueless customers and along comes you demanding service.

I made a woman at the bank smile and actually look up from her computer at me last week. How? I listened to her and laughed at her actually funny joke that she delivered with such tired, defeated cynicism, but she was smart, and funny, and old, and wise, and probably nobody ever listens to her at home or at work. And I listened.

And for one ... two... three seconds a warm grin lit up her face and she dared to sneak a peek at me.

You are a receiver of gifts every second. Can you be a giver, back, sometimes? When you give a gift, it is appreciated beyond one hundred times the measure of effort you gave to give that gift.

But, you know: that takes time and effort, and who, these days, has any of either to spare. I mean: really! Gimme a break people! I've been standing in these flats all day and it's almost quitting time and the commute was hell and ...

And, and, and ... our lives are piled up with 'ands'. Piled up with 'ands' so we can shut out people reaching out to us, brushing past us. Do you know what 'life' is? 'Life' is the people you come in contact with and how you treat them.

Useless ... and bleah!

Happy Easter, everyone!

So, Fr. P. on Black Thursday (I'm Catholic, just go with my terms, okay?) heard my confession: you know, where I admitted I hadn't been going to confession in two months and I had been receiving Holy Communion all that time to show everybody that everything was fine with me, ...

... when really it wasn't.

I mean, sure, I kept to my Lenten observance, giving up what I could handle to give up: drinking, ...

... But wasn't I supposed to be closer to God, doing this Lenten stuff?

I wasn't.

I was simply annoyed that I couldn't drink, so I cussed more and masturbated, ... well, more of the same, 'cause I don't think it's humanly possible to masturbate more than me ('more than me'? or 'more than I do'? I think 'more than I do' is ... 'more' correct ... geddit? 'more correct'? *sigh* you don't get it)

At this point Fr. P. interrupted me and asked me how many times I masturbated? 'Was it once a day?'

I had to stop myself from screaming with laughter at that.

And after I had (politely) corrected him, he told me that my will had been corrupted by this bad habit (that feels so good) and that I needed to get on a regular confession schedule, so that when I fell, my confessor could restore me to grace and I could again worthily receive the sacraments.

See? Nothing judgmental there, just mercy and forgiveness and a plan to get things right.

Why can't I be like that?

Anyway, Easter Sunday rolls around, and my pretty nieces in their pretty pink and peach dresses (killer!) sang in the choir, and Fr. P. steps up to the lecturn and welcomes everybody and says this Mass is ...

... 'useless.'

He said all you teenage girls coming to Mass to prove to your parents that, yep, you still go to Mass, Mom and Dad, so leave me alone, okay?

(He didn't look directly at me when he said this ... but there were three killer teens in their form-fitted jeans and oh-so-snug turtlenecks with super-model pouty lips that I wanted to savage because of their crossed-arm 'tude they carried with them into the church ...)

(... there's something here about motes and beams[1] that I may be missing here ...)

And Father went on and on about how 'useless' Jesus' sacrifice was and how 'useless' the Mass was, and how 'useless' love is and ...

It was around this point I wanted to punch Father in the face if he were going to say the word 'useless' again without coming round to the point on Easter Sunday with a standing-room-only-filled-to-capacity church.

Anger issues much, `phfina?

No, why do you ask? *blink-blink*

And his point, that he eventually got to after saying 'useless' three more times (no, I didn't punch him in the face three times ... I didn't even punch him in the face once ... barely ... I was so proud of my self-control as I sat fuming in my pew) (with my pretty white dress on ... you should've seen me. 'Killer!' But then, if you saw me, you'd grab me away to the bathroom in the back of the church that smells like camomile lotion and done naughty non-Easter things to me, and I would've missed the homily, see?)

:p

Where was I? Oh, yeah: 'useless.'

And Fr. P.'s point was this: Jesus' sacrifice was useless, and the Mass was useless, and human love is useless, because ...

Because Jesus, in sacrificing himself, wasn't using us. We, in celebrating the Mass, don't use Him. Perfected human love, selfless love, the love where the grandfather gets grandmother's meds and a glass of water for her, without asking nor being asked, just because he loves her and knows (I was almost crying there), is not using.

'Useful', something being 'used,' is to be consumed. You love hamburgers, Fr. P. said, and a cow has to die. But God loves us, we love God and each other, and we don't consume each other, not in perfect love.

How different perfect love is from ... well, anything of this Earth, at any time: in Jesus' time, and now, where the sexual revolution hasn't liberated women, it's only liberated sexual predators, so now they can use woman as a receptacle to rub against and to piss in, justifying their self-gratification because now there's no fruit of their consummation: there's no longer any need for it.

Wanna debate that? Look at the poverty line. Look at where, and who the poverty line has hit hardest, with the 'no-fault' divorce that allows men to walk away from their word, their commitment to their families, leaving the wife, and children, in poverty, so now you take oral contraception, the pill, so you don't get pregnant, so a guy can fuck you then leave you that same night, leaving the emotional turmoil, the wreck, that used to be you, behind, and that's okay now, because you're supposed to 'man' up and not have all those womanly attachments, like love for another person who consummated his 'love' for you, but, no, not really, because you're just a cum-dump now, and that's okay.

Yeah, that's what human love has been corrupted to nowadays.

But Fr. P. concluded, when you discover Jesus, you discover the death and resurrection, and when you discover that, you discover everything good in this life.

It's Easter Monday. Lent is over. Back to being the old `phfina. Scared little me working on a window ledge, because they don't have a desk for me and three other of my coworkers.

'Useless.' It's a theme I've thought about a lot, as a writer, how authoresses write their characters to use each other: Edward rapes Bella and then forces her to have an abortion, but Bella's a cunt for crying about it. Edward and Bella have sex and Edward leaves Bella, and Bella has to pick up the pieces of her life with her daughter that looks just like Rosalie and Edward comes back when Bella's thirty, but everything's okay, because Bella didn't kill herself so Edward can ... well, pick up where he left off, with a daughter with a lot of anger issues about an absent father. But, like I said, it's all good.

Or, Bella is in college and meets the real Vampire Edward, who like killing women because they're weaker and scream so beautifully as he kills them, but he falls for Bella, because she's Mary Sue, see? And, since the sex is top-notch, and Bella is a sensitive, caring soul (like I said, Mary Sue), and they quote Sartre to each other, then it's one of those 10,000+ reviewed stories, see, because it's not about the sex, nor the murders, it's about getting it and getting with it because this is Sartre so it's cool and trendy and in.

Look who's talking, `phfina.

I write some sex scenes that are top-notch, and quote Ayn Rand, and dwell on the meanifullessness of it all, how we are all just consumers, users, ... but ...

But, so I'm just like everybody else, just another user ...

The Mass? Useless?

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

I do know one thing. I do know one thing.

Useless? Me.

Sitting here, on my window ledge, correcting my spreadsheet, again, because somebody else got in there and overwrote a formula with a number they hand-entered and now everything's fucked up, but who cares? Nobody, ... nobody but nobody me.

If I killed myself, today, right now, the only thing that would matter is that some people would have to clean up the mess I made on the floor, because my boss? He came by at exactly 9:30 am to make sure everything was 'okay' (trans: that I had my ass in my chair on the window ledge) and that's all he knows about me and my job. That's how much I matter.

Now I have to go to a 10:00 am meeting, to prove that they are cutting a paycheck to somebody who's occupying space at least 8 hours a day, consuming oxygen.

Maybe I'll drink some liquid oxygen, for all that it matters, for all that they care.

And Jesus died and rose again for this, God's one mistake.

"And on that day it would've been better that he be not born."

I don't even rate that verse, that's what a waste I am. Instead of carrying forward the family name, I was born with a little slit. An unwanted pregnancy, an unwanted child, now just a cog in the wheel on a window ledge.

I might as well jump.

... setting: much later in the day, at home, in bed, under covers, shivering and sweating.

Well, you pray to God for a reason to live, and He gives you one. My niece got the stomach flu on Easter, and now I have it, too. Had some orange juice and got really queasy! *sigh* So now I have to get better before I slump into the black pit of despair, 'cause that's how I roll. Can't have my mom asking the coroner after I've slit my wrists ('down, not across'), did I have clean panties, and if not, why not.

Can't have that.

---

[1] "Wherefore thou correctest thy brother, that he hast a mote in his eye, when thou seest not the beam in thine own, ... blah-blah-blah, and stuff" (Queen `phfina's neuf translation of King James' vieiux one)

The Color of Wheat

Tu n'es encore pour moi qu'un petit garçon tout semblable à cent mille petits garçons. Et je n'ai pas besoin de toi. Et tu n'as pas besoin de moi non plus. Je ne suis pour toi qu'un renard semblable à cent mille renards. Mais, si tu m'apprivoises, nous aurons besoin l'un à l'autre. Tu seras pour moi unique au monde. Je serai pour toi unique au monde...

Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

— `phfina's commentary:

Guess what I had for breakfast this morning?

Freshly squeezed orange juice. Healthy. Check. Yummy. Check. (but TART!)
... and oatmeal.

Hm.

Plain, boring, mournful ... oatmeal. `phfina, like, how many times in a row is that you've had oatmeal for breakfast? Why don't you, you know, get some variety in your life, try something different, something better, you know?

Can I tell you a secret?

Guess what I'm having for lunch?

I have two options. I packed an oatmeal packet from the bulk box of oatmeal ('Quaker's Oats! They're good and good for you!') I bought earlier this ... whoopsie, last month. Or I can have that packet of ramen noodles I've stashed away for occasions such as these.

I'll get back to 'occasions such as these.' But first a word from our organic sponsors.

You know, in group, you get these granola nuts, they go all organic and distilled water or mineral water or vitamin water or whatever kind of water I cannot afford at how many dollars a bottle when I get the coffee or tea dispensed for me for free here at work? You know what they say ramen noodles? They, my dear coworkers and bosses and IT people and everybody staring at me as I take them out of the microwave?

They say it takes 30 days to purge my system of the chemicals impregnated in the noodles and used as flavoring in the flavoring packet.

And they tell me exactly what those chemicals are doing to my body every time I pop a diet coke so I can stay awake at work and not get found out, my head on my keyboard covered in my drool, and get fired for sleeping on the job because I'm up all hours doing activities that generate a lot of revenue for the Ladies on 14th street but making me a big fat zero dollars and zero cents and if it were generating me income, then I'd either be a kept woman, ... or a whore.

So will I have ramen noodles for lunch? No. I think I'd rather starve. I think I'd rather starve to death than have all those people staring at me around the microwave and then telling me how terrible I'm being to my body and why don't I eat more, am I anorexic or something?

So, why don't I eat something else?

Here's where we get back to 'occasions such as these.'

I have no money. I have no money in my credit card, because I have no credit card: I have a debit card. I have no money in my bank account. I have no money ... anywhere, not under my couch cushions not in my pockets, not smuggled across the border in my cunt or stuffed up my anal cavity, no money in my red leather Gucci purse ... HA!

If I had a red leather Gucci purse, I would have grilled it, put some barbeque sauce on it and eaten it by now.

The situation is not dire, thank God! Because I get paid on Friday, just before the rent comes out ... I hope ... Hm, April 11 is when I'm late, so, no, I'm good. I hope to God I get my tax return soon. Why is it taking so long?

So, do you see where I'm at? Do I eat oatmeal for breakfast every single day because I so love oatmeal?

Sure. I can always choose not to eat ... oatmeal, that is. I have that choice.

Be very, very ...

People, please!

Please be very, very careful what judgements you render on others. 'Oh, you're eating oatmeal again? Doesn't that get old for you?' You say that to your coworker so easily, as if they had options.

You know ... no, you don't, so I'll tell you: I don't know what I'm going to do for supper tonight, tomorrow, the next day ... all through Holy Week.

I can go on a fast, I suppose, a week-long fast. Dieting. I can name it `phfina's poverty diet and make a mint of money: 'Don't eat; just drink water. For a week. Repeat that every couple of weeks.'

Or I could ask my charitable sister-in-law. We had chili this weekend that she cooked in the crock pot. She cooked enough to feed an army.

But, then, ... I'd have to ask. I'd have to ask her, you know ... really casually, like: 'Hey, could I have some of that chili you cooked this weekend, ... that is, if you ... you know ... had too much and were going to throw it away, ... or something.'

You know: not looking her in the eye. At her door. Me, standing outside, with no car to take me home.

Yeah, really casually, like that.

And then she'd know, wouldn't she? She'd just know. And you know what she'd do? She'd load me down with chili, and bread, and peanut butter and vegetables, and she'd drive me home, and ask me if I needed anything else and could she help in any other way, and I shouldn't be afraid to ask or wait and did I need help with rent and ...

... and she'd know.

You see this laptop I'm writing this post on? I 'inherited' it from my bb. The XBox I play Halo on? I inherited it from bb's stash. The mic that's broken that everybody keeps asking me on Live all the time? I inherited it from ... guess! my bb. The Live account I play on? I had to ask for it. I asked my brother Mike and he said Best Buy has it for $40, and I had $40 in my pocket to eat or pay for that subscription, so I could be a Halo Goddess. So I could be good, and admired, for at least one thing, at least one fucking thing in the thing that is my utter and complete failure of a life.

"Wow, you're a girl, and you play Halo? Wow! Watch `phfina, she's really good with the banshee!"

And I jump into the banshee and I cut my bonds tying me to the earth, and I fly, free, soaring, like a Hawk, a Falcon, a Raptor, swooping in for the kill, so fast, so deadly, so beautiful.

And then I shut off my XBox, and I go to my bed in my little prison cell they call a 'bedroom' and I pull up the covers around me and try not to be cold, and I try not to let the loneliness eating away at my soul ... hurt ... not too much, anyway.

Chilling fact: I have more money on my farecard than I have ... well, anywhere else. I think I have enough fare to last this week. If I don't, I am well and truly screwed. Work from home? Sure! I'll just do the books and payroll from my creaky old laptop on a non-secure line. I'm sure they'd go for that at work. Or, better: 'Hey, boss, can you come and pick me up at my house, because walking the thirteen miles might make me miss the payroll cutoff, and I think you want your paycheck as much as I need mine.'

It used to be, you know, in biblical times, that if you didn't work, you didn't eat.

Nowadays, the lower classes? You work ... but eating? That's kind of optional.

There's an empty pit in my stomach: the lunch of ramen noodles and a tablespoon of peanut butter don't quite last through 7:30 pm with me sitting here in the busstop, so I can get home so I can turn around and go to work tomorrow.

Can you believe there are still people working at work. At group, it's very much a loyalty thing: they work, not for the pay (at all!) but because they love what they do, and they love serving others, that's what we exist for.

So, but, because of that loyalty, I can't hide under my desk and then wake up really early the next day and pretend I came into work early. Do you know how much money I could save every day if I could pull that off? Clothes and showers could be an issue, yes, but ...

You know what the difference between the classes are?

Dreams.

The lower classes don't have dreams. You know: aspirations.

We, the lower classes, have ... fantasies. 'Oh, yeah, that'd be really nice if that'd happen, but it never will, and if it did then ...'

And that's where we, the lower classes, stop. '... and if it did, then ...'

Then what? We have no idea! Just ask us! The lottery was seven hundred million dollars last week, so we went into an office pool for tickets (yes, there's where I spent my lunch money: lottery — a tax on the poor). I asked around of what we would do when we won. Nobody had an answer. Not one of us.

That's why we didn't win the lottery. That's why the poor ... are poor.

'If I were a rich man,
I'd yada-yada-yada-ya.'

We have no idea what we'd do with the money, so we don't get it, because we don't deserve it. You know what happens when a poor person wins the lottery? Within one year they all declare bankruptcy.

But for rich people, they don't have fantasies, they have dreams. Do you know the distinction? A dream is a possibility, a plan.

You talk to a rich person, I mean filthy rich — `phfina, examine why you just used that adjective — and ask them what they would do with 25 million or 700 million dollars, and they would give you, right then and there, a whole list of things that they would do that would spend every last penny, and it wouldn't be a poor person's fantasy of 'Oh, I'd spend less than 1% of it on a TV and a drunken spree and a vacation somewhere and then have no idea what to do with the rest of it and so lose it all on stupid cockamamie schemes and on relatives I didn't know I had yesterday."

No, it'd be, "I'd form a corporation to research breast cancer cures and hire specialists from around the world," "I'd build a facility to refoster enterpernuerial growth in the organic farming sectors" "I'd form a coalition of small to midsized businesses in the Richmond area and spearhead an urban renewal that emphasizes both the city's historic significance and local knowhow" "I'd create alternative energy sourcing at the household level, such as wind turrets that fit on chimneys so power becomes self-generating there and market it nationwide, solving the energy crisis at the grass-roots level." "I'd ..." "I'd ..."

You couldn't get a rich person to shut up about what they'd do with all that cash. And then when you demand what the hell are they doing now, they open up their portfolio of foundations they've started and vested, and the things they already have on the drawing board. Like water-drilling projects in Ethiopia or reforestation of the Amazon or seed schools for kids in the U.S.A. or ...

Are the rich hungry? Yes! They are starving to more and better for more people so that more people can have a better life. And by helping other people get housing or food or education or gas or clothes, the rich get richer and richer and richer.

Are the poor hungry? Of course! I am. Right now. I've got a knot in my tummy that says 'hungry' and so I'll fill my belly with corn chips and beer (the two biggest sellers at supermarkets, in case you didn't know) and when I've satiated my own hunger, with empty calories, I'll sleep, work, and then eat. All for myself, because why?

Because the poor don't have dreams. They can't afford them. All they can afford is well, nothing, but seeing their way to the end of the day, they can't see beyond themselves, so that's exactly where they stay, right in their own squalor. The rich are always looking over the next vista, completing this project so they can start the next three that they have in the hopper. The rich are so busy they don't have any time for themselves, because they're always chasing their dreams ... in the service of others. And that's why the rich never stay where they are, they leap from height to height.

But ... so I'm poor. Penniless. And hungry.

Help me?

No. That's a mistake. You pity me, and you crush my soul. You 'help' me, and the only thing you do is dig the pit deeper for me. I'm hungry? So, out of charity you give me a sandwich.

Mistake.

What does that do for me? It tells me, oh, I don't have to do anything, because that next meal, somebody will give it to me; no need to extend myself.

You know who knows this the best? Better than the poor themselves, if they were honest with themselves?

Those who feed on us. Those who prey on us.

Proof?

Go to your drug dealer and say you'd like the next hit on credit.

Those lottery tickets I pooled? I was right there at the cash register. We handed over cash, and they gave us the tickets. You know what the cashier would've said if I begged: "Please, sir, I'm hungry, can I have a lottery ticket, and I'll pay you back when I win?"

You know what he would have thought to that.

So, I'm on a diet now, because why, because I'm ...

... okay, here's a crushing reality. Not every one us are Donald Trumps or Bill Gates. Some of us ... are ...

... some of us are meant to be used. We're just serfs, slaves, chattel, or, nowadays, material, resources ... food.

The big techno-industrial-agricultural-energy-defense conglomerate has spoken, and dictated ('Dictatorship') the role of the masses: to be used and then to be discarded.

Don't believe me? Read Atlas Shrugged as fiction. Watch Metropolis and Brazil and say, 'Well, thank God that's just a story; who could ever image a world such as those?'

But it's still all me. It is. I'm going to be hungry until I dig myself out of myself and start being of use to society, small for a small reward, and at large for a large reward. If I stay stuck in this world-view that I'm a waitress, barista, secretary servant, then I'm going to live a servant's live. It's happening across the board now, even: unless you're a Rock Star doctor, you live your career on the beeper and die in debt. The government and the insurance companies are seeing to that, and the doctor who made house calls and lived with his family in a nice house is now dead and buried.

Why? baristas, secretaries, doctors, computer programmers, we're all interchangeable and replaceable. I get hit by a bus tomorrow, they'll get a new secretary.

But people in service to others, providing an irreplaceable service? You think the owners of sbux are going to bed tonight on an empty stomach, wondering if they can pay the rent? They are in service to a mass of people who can't live without their morning latte. You think Tony Stark is every going to worry where his next dollar is going to come from? And with all that wealth what does he do with it? Spend it wining and dining, yes: but for himself? No, for hundreds of people at a time, and then he uses his research to develop a better, more durable, pacemaker.

What's the difference between Tony Stark and me? It's not that he's a fictional character and has billions of dollars (have you seen the numbers from the movies that Marvel is producing?), no: it's that he has an idea and the burn to see it through, and then that idea, and that burn, is the seed which is very fruitful in producing more and more ideas, that he pursues with a fire and passion in his heart.

You ask a poor person what they'd like, and they say 'Oh, I'd love to have a bentley ...' or 'I want a 50' high-def TV' for example.

You ask a rich person what they'd like, and they say, 'What I'm doing is ...'

You see the difference? Rich people are living their dreams, and have everything, and more than they want or could ask for. We poor people? We're barely surviving, but we have a very rich fantasy life, because that's all we have. We don't have hope, nor aspirations, so we have no inspiration.

All we have is respiration. And sometimes that next breath is just so hard to take. Everywhere we turn is disappointment and despair, and it crushes the hope and the very breath right out of us.

And we help kill each other. We keep each other down, by our words and actions. And all rich people do, is when they hear somebody say, "I'm restarting the economy in Pennsylvania by founding a pharmaceutical research park," ... all they do is say, "What resources can I provide to make this happen?" And now one of the richest counties in the world is in New Jersey right outside of Philadelphia because somebody had a crazy idea, and had the burn to make it a reality.

Where does this all leave me? As soylent green. That's exactly where I'm headed, I can't help myself up, and anybody who helps me just indulges my gluttony for self-mutilation. Eventually people will stop helping me up, and then I'll just sink down under my own weight, truly becoming a 'human resource' ... fertilizer for the forest floor when I lay my body down.

I coulda been a contender. I could've been a writer. Saga inspired me, and then ...

See? I depend on others, I'm a burden to society, and people take care of me a while. They have. And they could take care of me to my dying day.

But what's the point of that ... not 'existence' even, but just 'persistence'? I serve the coffee or generate the report (not even 'write up' nor 'type' but now 'generate' because I'm just a generator connected to the computer that does the actual work) or bring you catsup for your fries. And if, 'when,' that is, I can't even manage that, then there's 'health''care' professionals who have their own servitude of emptying the bedpan of the vegetable that was a writer once until she had her mental collapse and we saved her life by doping her up on valium and other depressants so now there's this vegetable named `phfina in bed 13 with her drug regimen administered and verified every hour.

I'm talking from personal experience here. Fun-fun.

That's what I have to look forward to. Because you know and I know, the people who've had 'episode's in the past? It's not a lottery for them; no, it's a shoo-in. They should keep the bed warm and covers turned down for me.

They probably do. They'll probably greet me by name, with a welcoming, understanding, compassionate smile.

And as sick as that sounds, and it does make me very, very sick. At least I have that to dread, and to look forward to. Most people in poverty have nothing to look forward to. Nothing. All they have is nothing but what they did today to wake up to tomorrow, and if not that, it's because they didn't wake up, because the heat went out in the dead of Winter.

The little matchstick girl, written by Saga Christian Andersen starring `phfina as the sweet little object-to-be-pittied main character.

And I know, all is it takes is one of my little matchsticks, to light the world on fire. When you set yourself on fire, everybody gathers around to watch you burn, but what is that spark for me.

I have no idea.

That's maybe ... ouch.

That's maybe why I don't have children. I wouldn't know what to do with them, or what to give them. Hope? For what? A future?

That's why so many women are having children later, I think, right?

Because we're more 'responsible'? Yeah, right! It's because we're scared shitless of our own shadow and we're going to bring people into this world who will look up to us and wait for our perfect answers to everything and we so know we aren't that person, so we try to get our shit together, and then suddenly, we're 30, and 35, and 40 and 42, and we're having our first kid because if we don't now, we never will.

So in desperation we try to prepare for kids, and then in desperation we try to get a kid in any way possible, surrogation, IVF, cloning, and whine that we have to pay all this money when teenagers thirteen-year-olds are paying money to block pregnancies for just looking at boys.

So here I am, paralyzed: a college-educated woman who's not smart enough to pay her monthly bills, nor afford breakfast even, stuck in a rut of her own making, painted into a cage perfectly form-fitted to her. To me.

And to no one else. I've 'tried' to let people in ... by ... what? running as fast and as hard as I can as soon as the conversation strays into dangerous waters like intimacy, hopes, aspirations, dreams and plans for the future? Because why? Because the couple of times I've gotten really intimate, really tender with somebody, they leave me? Instead of my usual pattern of me fucking a poor girl's brains out ... with my superior intellect and insights, so they know and see a good thing in me and can I handle that? Sure, by dumping them on the ground right at my feet and then walking all over them as I make my exit out the door, because if they saw something good in me, obviously there's something wrong with them.

And I know ... I know that all it will take is that one spark to turn my life around, for me to be on fire, filled with zeal, and I'll write that book or I'll, idk, start a rock band, or I'll be this, *shrugs* great investment guru(esse) and make a mint of money showing women how to make a mint of money and not be under the financial gun, but to be the power keg of success.

Ick. Weak analogy.

Or something like that. Or I'll be a super hot weather girl and have thousands of retweets of my every tweet about cirrus cloud formations. Or I'll be the first woman pro Halo player to win an MLG tournament, and start a school for girl gamers showing them how to kick boyz azzes by fighting smart, like girls, not 'yah! charge!' like berserker boys, you know?

But for now.

But for now. My fantasies are all I have. Pipe dreams. The 'yeah, that would be nice, some day' kind of fancies. And to be a Halo Goddess for a bit at night after work.

And then my oatmeal in the morning.

That's all I have right now. All I have is my oatmeal in the morning.

And, yes, it's not good enough. It's plain, and boring ... insipid.

But it's all I have. My fantasies and my oatmeal.

And ... and even though it's all I have, I'm making it work. I can't afford the $3 omelet in the Cafeteria. I can't afford the sushi, so I buy the Indian rice dish and make it last three meals and get teased by the Desi guys about how white girls don't eat, and have to be full, have to make myself be full eating a few bites so I can make it to the next paycheck.

Don't pity me. You pity me, and you belittle the efforts that takes all that I have just to make this work. You pity me, and I give up even that.

Don't help me. You help me, and then I give up trying, because I can get it from you, or from the next person I beg, easier than by me trying.

You know what you should do: you should give up on me. That way, ... like all those dystopian fantasy stories that are so accurate at describing reality, I would fade into the mob, the mass of aimless grey people merging with the rain-soaked crumbling buildings.

That's what you should do. You have your own lives to live, and your charity is pointless for lost souls like me.

The person who is going to save me is me. I have to do this. No, I know: not on my own, but you can't save me by forcing me to save me. I have to save me, by reaching up, and saying, 'Abba, Father' instead of doing what I do, which is, at the first sign of light, running and hiding in the darkness. You look to save me, I run, I run harder and further and faster.

I think, if you really want to save me, well, you can force me into the light, and hold me in a full-nelson until you've beaten the shit, my shit, out of me. That's one way, I guess.

Or, you can stand there, a beacon of hope. Stand there, not bending toward me, but stand there, living your life, unperturbed by the turmoil of this world, that is: me, and let me sneak toward you, and maybe, when I'm ready reach toward you, and tentatively touch this thing, this reality, this possibility that everything is not all darkness and bitterness and melancholy. A fox is not tamed, it tames itself.

Incidentally, walking home today, I saw a dead fox on the side of the road, smashed under the wheels of a truck. It probably saw the truck's bright, bright headlights, and walked toward the light, or was stuck in the road transfixed in the high-beams and ...

I'm going to bed now.