h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh dear...what 's happened!
Now i don't know how to post,as this isn't anything to do with me!!
I'll just Hope that you both sort things out,i don't like people falling out!!!

Some peoples agorophobia is all about going outside, mine is all about going outside where people are. Some peoples agorophobia is very different, just like peoples colds have very different symptoms.

How nice for you to mention the other things though, I was waiting for it though. I know how you lash out. I fancy most people I meet, its the kind of person I am, it doesn't last long and it certainly doesn't mean I want to have sex with them.

I shall explain in intimate detail, as its obviously time to try to embarrass me with bringing all this into a public arena. I don't meet many people (cue for you to triumphantly crow - well I can see why), so when I do and it goes well I feel happy and I feel good about the other person. I end up fancying them, I have done it to almost everyone I have met. Its never bothered me and I have pretty much always admitted it, because I am an honest person.

It has only bothered 2 people that I know of, you and a guy at one of the places I worked at. I just mentioned it in passing and he couldn't deal with it. He told other people where I worked and they quizzed me over it too. I said in front of all of them, yes I fancy him, just like you can fancy anyone you fleetingly see during your day, but I do not want anything to come of it. I asked him to a gig as a friend and unfortunately he could never get past the fact I found him good looking and so said no.

I enjoy people like I enjoy the rest of nature. To me trees and plants and animals are all beautiful. Generally there are too many humans to notice, but when I make a link with one, then I start to feel the same way about them, humans are beautiful too and that is what I felt for you that day.

As for not sleeping in your Sons bed, I know as a child I would not want anyone sleeping in my bed, so I felt that it would be wrong for me to do so. Also I was deeply uncomfortable about it, I believe this was because of me being abused in my childhood bed for 5 years. Of course I didn't believe anything like that would happen at yours, before you accuse me of that. But if someone feels so uncomfortable about it, shouldn't they be honest and explain that?

As for my desires for you, which you are obviously trying to embarrass me with. We both talked about sleeping with the same sex, you had had far more experience with it than I had. I asked you if you would be interested and you said maybe. I said I was intrigued but scared to go more than waist down. To me sharing a bed naked or partially naked and talking, would have been enough. That would have been all the 'activity' I would have needed.

You seem to be implying here publicly that I would have forced myself on you, well that isn't the case. At the time I had vv very severely, if you remember I had not been able to touch that area for some months. So any touching of genitals was absolutely out of the question, even being turned on hurt that area.

You talk now as though you were scared of me and my perceived desire. I think you will find if you remember that day and what was said, it was nothing like you now remember. We talked a lot of s&m, for me that was sexual, I had never met anyone who practised s&m without it being sexual. So obviously I perceived things a little differently from you.

I felt you push me away, and thats why I never made it again. I can sometimes surprise myself with the distances I can go, but once I perceive a problem, it often never happens again.

It is very sad that you let our friendship go all because you remember me as a potential rapist - yes that is the correct word for someone who tries to force themselves on others.

Smurfles

don't worry about posting here. Only you and Mina now are, I hope Mina stops soon and we can chat via email. I sent you a reply to your last one, did you get it?

Once I can stop defending myself to Mina, I shall be leaving here anyway. Its quite worrying to see someone you trusted bringing up personal details like that purely to embarrass me. Its not something I shall do, as I still have standards and trust me, I know quite a lot about Mina. Thats not a threat either Mina, just stating a fact and no matter how much you rant and try to embarrass me, I shall not betray your confidence.

I do not wish conversations do descend like this again. Partly for my own sanity. It will be difficult for me, not to have this place to retreat to on my bad days. I shall now have to go through those alone. But its too dangerous for me to come here on those very bad days when I may meet someone who wishes to embarrass me in this way. If today had been a day I had felt suicidal then to see Mina's message may have been enough to push me over.

So thank you Mina, for taking my lifeline away from me. I hope it makes you feel good, and if you ever see me here again, if I am really desperate enough to need it, then I hope you can keep away from me. Your desire to hurt me is quite astonishing to me. I have never deliberately tried to hurt people who are depressed and trying to cope with recent events whether illness, disability, grief or anything like that. Some things are surely more important than having a dig at someone.

Mina, please take me off your friends list. If I need to come back, I want to know I can make journals without them popping up on your page.

So it's ok for you to criticise me, but when I respond, that's not ok? You've already left lots of times, blaming various different Researchers each time, so I don't suppose I'm surprised that you're now laying the blame at my door.

Thanks for your explanation of those long ago events, slightly ruined by the constant threats about how much you feel you know about me - not forgetting of course that if you know, then probably so do dozens of other Researchers, many who have been closer friends for much longer so I'm likely to have shared more, plus I have this policy of not sharing anything I don't want spread around. A lesson I learnt a long time ago. There are no such things as secrets.

Then you accuse me of considering you a rapist. Not at all. You explained how our conversations made you feel, but I'm not allowed to explain how they made me feel? They made me feel pressured. They made me feel you would only come and see me if I slept with you, and regardless of my past, future or present experiences, it made me feel you only saw me as a sex object to experiment with and frankly not really as a person at all. I never thought you would force yourself on me. I thought that you had no interest in me if I wouldn't agree to have sex with you and that's why I then backed off. I prefer freinds who don't make me feel that way. Now you explain yourself it's clearer, but you never told me all this about fancying everyone you meet at the time, and still, that wouldn't have changed how I interpreted what you said to me.

And again, never before now have you explained *why* you felt uncomfortable with staying in J's room and in his bed. *Now* of course I understand it. So please don't throw things at me when all the time you never explain things!

So once again, you expect me to accept your feelings about a situation that quickly got out of control, but you won't accept how I felt about it. Even if I did get your intentions wrong, that's still how I felt at the time. And that's just as valid as how you felt.

I wasn't trying to embarrass you, any more than you were trying to embarrass me by what you said about me - you virtually accused me of laughing at disabilities. Well, I may not have any of my own, but I've still lived with disabilities for 12 years. Disabilities I wouldn't have wished on my worst enemy. I'd rather J had been born with no legs than what he's suffering mentally and emotionally. You are not the only one with problems.

If you want me to stop responding to you, then don't give me anything to respond to.

I realised that I had to finish this more positively.

Mina the person I saw that day whom I fancied/loved a little, is still there. It was always more a love of admiration than a sexual love. Take care dear.

I do believe you have the same problems with paranoia that I do. I also believe that when you feel righteously angry, you let all rip and then sometimes wish you hadn't. I have spent a long time looking deep into myself and recognising my faults, that certainly doesn't mean I have solved them, but recognition is a begining.

If you ever start to make that journey and need to talk to someone who knows how difficult it is to admit their faults, then you know where I am. Believe me, to start to understand yourself, is to start to understand the world.

Just remember that I come here when I feel utter desperation and frustration, I don't need advice, I need to know that someone is listening, that someone cares. Bear in mind that to be disabled because of abuse that happened when you were a child, is very difficult to deal with. There is nothing anyone can say to make it better, there are no solutions. Sometimes I just need to know that someone will listen to my rant without judging me, or pulling me up on bad spelling or something like that. Thats all I ever needed.

I know I have pushed everyone away except Smurfles, because I think people are scared of my rants. They don't understand that its just the desperate/damaged child within, having to cry out at the unfairness of it all.

I wish I had more friends than Smurfles, just so that she doesn't have to put up with too many rants, but I thank the Goddess that one person stayed with me. Bless you Smurfles.

All those that left, I understand why you left. But you never needed to solve anything, just be there, that was all I needed.

Just read your reply Mina, I have nothing to say to you. I just wish you very well, take care.

Except sorry for not being more open about fears about sleeping in your sons bed, I didn't want to tell you as I felt you would perceive it as an insult on you. I am very aware that people can be offended by my fears, if they take it personally and don't realise it is triggering events years past, and is nothing to do with them personally.

The stupid thing is, that no matter how much we argue and disagree you are still important to me, which is why I don't take you off my friend's list after every spat. We just don't actually get on most of the time.

I don't usually wish I'd not done something, even when I 'let rip', but I know what my faults are, and that anger is one of the big ones. Desperately craving the approval or even the notice of authority figures while at the same time refusing to acknowledge or bow down to their authority when it goes against something I want is another big one (they call it 'oppositional defiance disorder' these days).

I don't know what to do about either.

I know that emails are bad for you and sometimes the phone is quite bad for me. We need to have a convo just for us to get to know each other again maybe. You need to stay out of my desperate rants maybe, we need a happy, positive convo.

For instance I never knew you did cross-stitch. There is a lot we don't know about each other. We only met once!

I delete people and put them back on again in silly fits of pique all the time!

So how about a separate convo just for us. We must promise that if we don't like something the other has said, then we must say so and allow an explanation. It seems so many things can be explained and understood with us, eventually.

I am very chuffed that you say I am important to you and would like to try and make this work. I have lost so many friends.

I may not be up to much today though, I have a fluey cold and am quite achy and fevery. I would go back to bed, but everything hurts and of course I have to move around every 2 hours to sort my leg out.

I'll go and stick you back on my friends list then!

And sorry that I picked up just on the driving lessons thing. It seemed as if someone should say something because I thought that if you were just posting and no-one was answering that might be making things worse for you. Of course my choice of things to comment on was appalling, so perhaps you're right and I'll just stay out of your journals when you are really this down because I don't know how to deal with them. As long as then you aren't thinking I don't give a crap.

Phew!!!
,

Hi Mina, I think we need to begin again as friends, before we can cope with others crap. To jump straight in would be a bit risky! I would like to explain some stuff to you so that I know you have no doubts about things such as agorophobia etc. That way you would understand me better and thats got to help.

But I feel if we can survive this, we can survive anything, so long as we promise to be kind to each other.

Hi Smurfles, I am happy too!!

Looks like there is hope for yet!

You both had me holding my breath there for a while

I know, I find friendships so difficult and so scary. I am alone in thinking that?

No kaz..i think it's sometimes a case of self confidence,or should i say a lack of it.
Because of events in the past we tend to try too hard ,and it makes people back off.I have one friend who i got to know when i was 11,and were still friends some 45+ years later.We see each other every couple of years,and speak maybe once a year on the phone,but we both know that we're there for each other .She understands that it's hard for me to get to see her,she lives a fair way from me now,but if she's over here she drops in.
Because she's known me for so long she understands about my agrophobia,and that i can say i'm going to see her,and get half way,then have to come home!!!
I'm just glad that you've both talked,and sorted things out.....

I wasn't allowed friends as a kid, unless they fitted with my parents strange rules. So I think I didn't get the chance to learn how to make and keep friends, when most other people do. So I definately agree about trying too hard, because I am so aware that I do not have a good track record.

I was never encouraged to have friends either. My mum even stopped me playing with my next door neighbour when I was a kid as she was about 5 years older than me and my mum thought she'd get boyfriends and stop being friends with me and I'd be hurt. We were 7 and 12. Plenty of time to be friends I think.

Right. Phew.

Friendships are interesting things. I have a few friends I see every week, because we schedule it (for helping each other with our poetry). But most of my friends I'm not in contact with very often.

Englander just sent me an e-mail update and after I responded to it, I immediately thought of logging on to hootoo to see how you are doing, Kaz.

So very sorry, always, about the physical difficulties. I recently had some terrible back pain (from working on a computer nearly 40 hours/week) and have more empathy for the challenges you face with pain and mobility.

Perhaps poetry therapy will help you out? I've worked with a nonprofit in Denver that does poetry therapy and they sell poetry therapy kits that are really quite cool. Words are power!

One technique in poetry therapy is to write down an affirmation like "I give and receive divine love easily." or "Great things come my way." and then quickly leaf through a magazine and tear out pages that have images on them that convey that affirmation to you (don't take the time to cut them out; that'll slow you down and you will do that later). Only spend three minutes searching.

Then cut the images, words, whatever you like, however you like and make a collage (I love that part). Then, let the collage and the affirmation lead you to free write (non-stop, just move the pen even if it seems like nonsense and don't worry about spelling or grammar or being brilliant!) for three minutes.

I think it's enjoyable and it will likely help you out ...

Also, please keep me updated on your crafts. They sound great and I'm very glad you are being creative!

I am also glad that someone's helping you with your health and has listened to you. I hope you get some excellent treatment, love.

Here's a link, for fun, to my latest milestone (I competed in a slam haiku competition --- performance haiku, really!): http://denver.yourhub.com/Denver/Blogs/Arts-Entertainment/Literature/Poetry/Blog~303980.aspx

Things are pretty darn great for me right now. I may be checking in on hootoo more frequently over the next five weeks ... We'll have to see.

Bless.