chicating | Entries tagged with online

Dear Seamus,
You are hardly the only fictional being that feels real to me from time to time. Though I never thought I was posting with Chandler Bing’s father in between sets at the drag show. You are sort of a mental “cookie” that is my souvenir from my encounter with a fabulist—maybe it was all a prank to him—I’ve never felt clear about that part of it and might only consider it again if another reporter gets caught cheating, if not for your occasional appearance in my thoughts. It’s been years that I occasionally wonder if you’ve been dispatched to Uganda or wonder what might have happened if you and ita had gone out. It takes me a moment to realize again that you, at least that particular conglomeration of traits that might have gotten you busted much faster on a less polyglot message board, weren’t there, ever, although somebody might be out there legitimately rocking some of those things. I haven’t met them, but sometimes putting a face on one cheers me up a little so I don’t give myself too hard a time about it. Even though I know how it might sound, a crip of a certain age, not too clear of her own place in the world, being not-quite-paid to make shit up all day, got suckered and now it’s another thing she can’t let go. I know what abled people, especially shrinks of a rather old-school persuasion, might think about that. Especially if there are days when I picture you as hot—there might be some glistening, even, but when I fake-met you, you were just out of college so I can’t surmount the fake age difference…it’s “If I were ten years younger and also a figment” harmless. (Unless I’m sad enough to consider that I might have the “figment” part at least partially covered, but you wouldn’t want to hear about that. Even if there were an actual you to read this.)

Sometimes you are plain-but-charming(such nice manners! Such pretty teeth. And that African accent that’s part British but kind of on a different speed and inflected with something I’ll just say is black while feeling racist because I don’t really know if it’s Twi, Yoruba, or Swahili. If I really met you, I’d have learned, I promise. Enjoy the mental island that you share with all the Buffista sprogs who are off to college while I pretend I could…idk, knit you sweaters—In Africa? Whatever…clueless Mrs. Robinson! Well, I’d send you ramen and Hershey bars.
Your corporeal friend,
Erika

Current Mood: surprised

(from a joke from my stepdad when I wrote college applications and wrote many of them.)
Hope this one was more worth writing than all of that stuff... this is just a sample, though.
One thing I remembered from those first months is not feeling good enough for them, acutely conscious that I went to a state college with a big reputation as a “party school”—not that I, rushing home on paratransit, ever got to party much. But that same rush home also kept me from all the chatter about art, films and the big questions that people had told me I might love about college
. I also still debated hiding a few things: the severity of my disability, and, in a very related topic, how little I knew from my own experience about dating and sex. It was easier, back then, to hide my physical being, to take what I had learned in junior high and high school about being the dry little voice in the front row and apply it to the wilds of pixels.

Living as an idea was gratifying until we all started to become real friends. But maybe I might have dithered about the reveal longer if someone in Illinois hadn’t had a daughter with a diagnosis somewhat like mine. Also, people were wanting to meet me in my actual life which was certainly possible, but more logistically complicated than with my abled counterparts, on grounds that I couldn’t just hop in a car and meet someone, at the very least. Being more honest only felt like giving up some freedom for about a week, even though there was a part of me that had tried to conform that halfway expected, even though our guiding spirit was a televised cheerleader with a mystical calling, to have my thoughts and impressions valued less, or to become a curiosity for all the wrong reasons after people understood about the wheelchair and some of its discontents.

I guess having people at college say “But you’re so smart! “after revealing my mobility deficits and brain damage(different part of the brain) left a mark. I’d found a community that was intrigued by my differences.
Which is not to say that over the years, there’s never been a divide....

If you like "Respect Yourself" "You sexy thing" and "Me and Mrs. Jones(Best one-hit wonder ever!)
You'll like this, too. even if you forgot about it.
https://youtu.be/5OOcnPVdKrs?si=iLzRpnmesF-qyIeC

This is still the cartoon I'm most like(Maybe a touch of Tina Belcher for fanfiction and perviness)
https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/lisa-simpson-gifs-43471047

Current Mood: cheerful

but that's not the only thing that made last night's trivia night such a fizzle. I think it is soft ableism that everything was timed...I'm sure they didn't mean to leave me out, but they did all the same. Providing at least one answer to the "Why don't I seek out more local things?" question. Because it's like that, more than it isn't.
Wish I hadn't been looking forward to it for a week.
Oh, well, now I won't have to feel bad that I didn't finish the fundraising part.

He quit talking to me. But if he was flirting, it should sound less like a job interview.
Bonus: At least the chair never came into it.

in mixed company now. Maybe it is a little acceptance, but after all the hype about what that feels like, maybe I did think the relief would feel bigger, or that I might be thinking "Wow, all that misery helped make me the awesome boss Bitch that wrote this," and while, for today, I'm well, I'm not *there* yet, for sure. (Honestly, that might never happen. Which is sad. Sometimes I've been waiting--not all my fault--some of what I learned at the CIL kind of primed me to do that. Some people's Disability Experience is so much better than mine, next time my soul should switch travel agents!) But it's still nice to feel like a whole instead of two messed-up halves that don't communicate.

Current Mood: contemplative

make me feel a bit less than discriminating, because I don't pick-and choose through a lot of these shifts.
But it's good if you really feel like you trust your supervisor's judgement right?
(Not, in, like a cult-leader way.)

But with all the other stuff I tried to do, I admit I waited by my e-mail box today.

if my e-mail missed a day in hitting me up for cash.(Of course, there was a time when just getting e-mail itself was novel...don't really expect to get back there, although I miss the personal touch sometimes.)
But it's not even campaigns anymore! Now they want a war chest in case Tucker The Fucker takes their name in vain in the last year...I *really* can't afford to be doing that, and when I give in I feel ever so slightly "had" and I don't even mean porn.

It just sort of pales compared with what i was(and still am, rather) wishing for. ETA: I have finally cleared out my e-mail from thousands of unread to 23...I've filed a bunch, but it's not out of control anymore...maybe there will be room for me to be a new woman(Well, I can hope that, for a few moments, eh?) Haven't finished something I started for a bit.
I could almost read myself turning left in real time, too

Current Mood: relieved

I told one of the "funny" Fetterman bashers with both ableism and CAPS-LOCK as crosses to bear that making his dad scream was so much more fun than our conversation.(Or maybe that's who I'd have been in high school too if I'd known how little the permanent record counted for anything!)
Would almost rate the quest for "middle-class" respectabiliy as another condition to overcome, more than a goal to ponder

(Almost feels like I need a Chris In The Morning voice for this one...I loved that show SO much.)
Unlike him, though, my old habits aren't, iirc, stealing cars.
my online life seems due for a bit of a reckoning, even if it's one I don't really desire(Die, Elon, you greedy, self-involved son of a bitch. But I digress.)
Anyway, I did sign up for mastodon and last week sometime spent many borderline happy moments pretending to party like it was 2012. Just like every 8 months or so, I pretend there's some magic internet-dating portal primed to let me put the love of my life in my cart. Or something.
Honestly, not sure how much I want to do any of those things. Sort of? But it totally doesn't feel like living in a bright future anymore.
I miss that...there have been times where it felt like all I had.

Current Mood: ffrustrated

The better for them to come true. I always lose something when I clean the in-box.
(Not that I look at them much after my birthday, but still didn't mean to toss them. Sometimes things like that make me feel better when I am insecure.)
Always why I don't clean enough but elections make my box...well, maybe not *my* box unmanageable. Gotta start being more honest about what I can do on maybe a weekly basis.