bitterfig

I just realized that as of today it’s been five years since I moved to Chicago. 

 

I had very high hopes when I came out here.  I really thought I could make something of myself as a writer and an artist and find people I could relate and to punk rock shows, cool restaurants and galleries. 

 

Five years later I’m barely holding on to a menial job that doesn’t quite cover my living expenses, I’m more or less friendless, and most of the opportunities of the city seem to pass me by.  I try not to surrender to self-pity but I really do feel like a failure.  It really seems like during my time in Chicago has been a slow decline. 

 

When I arrived here I felt fairly close to both my sister and Biff, who I worked for from my arrival till about two years ago.  I’ve pretty much pushed my sister way with my relentless negativity and constant depression and while Biff did bring over his new baby last month, which was really sweet of him, we’re more or less out of each others lives. 

 

Maybe I just feel this way about things because I’m really not in the best place right now.  This has been a hard year with bouts of severe depression, disordered eating and now hypoglycemia (or maybe that’s been in the background all along).   Unfortunately I can’t say it’s been limited to the past year.  Since I arrived in Chicago I’ve had on and off periods of depression and eating problems.  Well, not just since I arrived in Chicago.  Since I was about 11 years old if you want to go all the way back. 

 

During this time I’ve had brief periods where I felt content and comfortable with myself, like I was being the person I was meant to be and but for the most part I feel like I’ve squandered my life.  It’s not that I’ve lacked opportunities; I’ve had tremendous advantages that ought to have outweighed the obstacles I’ve faced.  It just seems like the only possible explanation is that I’ve done something wrong, that I’ve made the wrong choices and not put enough effort into things, that I haven’t been brave enough or strong enough. 

After a week of eating in the 1700 to 1800 calories per day range I’m feeling better.  Not good mind you but better.  I’m totally dragging my ass at work but at least I’ve been able to drag said ass to work which is an improvement over last weekend, physically at least.  Despite eating more or maybe because of it I’ve been very sad for the past few days and I feel revoltingly, hideously ugly.

 

I met with my new therapist for the first time on Thursday.  It wasn’t too bad, it may actually prove helpful but I’m finding it really exhausting to present myself again and again to all these different people- the intake worker, the psychiatrist, and now the therapist.  The whole experience of going to a community mental health clinic is really making me aware of my middle-class prejudices. 

 

I don’t like the fact that they have a “cash only” policy.  It seems like such an insult, like I can’t be trusted to write a good check or pay with a valid credit card.  It just seems icky to me that there’s a selection of condoms available in the ladies room.  When my therapist suggested that since I’m not happy with my job that when my depression is under control she could refer me to their “ready to work” program all I could think of was myself in a room of semi-illiterate people who have been on disability their entire lives being told things like “Don’t use excessive profanity during a job interview.” 

 

I hate myself for being sure a snob.  I know part of it is that I equate low-rent, half-assed recovery with my ex-boyfriend and his whole marginal lifestyle.  He didn’t have a bank account and he had to take jobs that paid in cash because he had all these creditors who would have garnished his wages if he’d gotten a check.  Most of our dates seemed to involve AA meetings and most of his friends were on welfare and/or disability.  I think I was finally convinced to leave the relationships when he started talking about how someday we would have a place together and when his friend June’s boyfriend got out of jail we could have them over for dinner. 

 

Basically when I go to a place like the mental health clinic I feel like I’m stepping back into a kind of life I’ve made every effort to distance myself from. 

I’m really not doing well today. 

 

.  was really tired all through my shift at work yesterday but when I dot home I couldn’t sleep because I was obsessing over money, finding another job and what I’d written in my post yesterday about how it didn’t seem like a good idea to shop at Whole Foods if you were on public assistance and wondering if I was a hateful, judgmental jerk. 

 

I went over to my sister’s this morning to see my niece who turned three on the 20^th.  Her party is this afternoon but I can’t go because I’ve got to be at work.  At some point during the conversation, my sister said “Working at Whole Foods is going nowhere,” which is absolutely true and because I’ve been so frustrated about money and worried about starting a job hunt I almost started crying. 

 

I did start looking for another job today.  I answered an ad in the Chicago Reader for a secretary/research assistant.  The man I spoke to asked me to look at the web site for his group and then call back.  I spent the better part of half an hour trying to decipher the web site (which is either very technical or pretty damn wacky) then when I called back I was told that the job had been filled.  The whole thing was just weird and pretty discouraging (not that it takes a lot to discourage me).

 

So overall I’m feeling like a totally worthless, whiny fuck-up right now. 

 

Well, off to work.

I don’t usually write about issues related to my fan fiction and participation in the world of fandom on this journal.  It’s always dealt more with my personal life but there’s been a certain overlap lately.  Basically, the recent controversy about Livejournals suspension of users for posting sexually explicit fan art is making me take a look at the role fandom has come to play in my life and what my shadow career as a fan fiction writer means to me.

 

I’ve been closely following several communities related to the controversy and a few days ago I came across an article called “The Terrible Secret of Livejournal” by Matthew Skala.   Written in a tone of authority, this essay basically said that fandom material is against the law to start with and that writers and artists should be glad that Livejournal and their parent company Six Apart allow it and therefore should not give them grief.  That any kind of sexually explicit material involving minor characters is illegal to create or possess and that that’s the law and anyone who thinks otherwise is “confusing one’s wishes with the law.”  And also all the normal people out there think people who write fan fiction and draw fan art are creepy perverts anyways.   

 

For all the unwavering certainty with which it is written, many of Skala’s points can be refuted.  I know I’ve seen documentation that fan fiction and fan art are not against the law so long as their source is acknowledged and they aren’t used for commercial purposes.  Further, the statement that any sexually explicit work concerning underage characters (let me stress, not actors or actual people but characters) can be considered child pornography can’t be true either.  .  I’m no expert of pornography, but in my small collection there’s a graphic novel called The Young Witches, by Solana Lopez.  It involves schoolgirls who are definitely under 18 yet as far as I know The Young Witches, published by the Seattle passed Eros Comix has been in print and avalaible to the public since 1993.  You can get it on amazon.com.   

 

But enough on the legalities.  My brother’s the lawyer in our family.  I’m the basketcase.  This isn’t about the law, it’s about me feeling crummy about myself as usual. 

 

In “The Terrible Secret of Livejournal” Skala uses words like “delusional”, “whining” and “irrational” and “unreasonable” to describe any sort of questioning of or speaking out against the suspensions and censorship.  Skala apparently isn’t the only one who feels this way.  I’ve seen his opinion mirrored, to a lesser degree, in several personal journals.  Increasingly over the past few days, I’ve felt stupid and hysterical for being so upset by Livejournals actions and for allowing myself to get so bogged down in the controversy.  I can’t help wondering why I’m taking all this so personally.  I really wonder if I’ve become too invested in my on-line persona and my fan fiction writing. 

 

Intellectually, fan fiction is exactly the thing that fascinates me.  I’ve always been interested in the idea twisted retellings, Snow White or the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the witch.  Jayne Eyre as seen by the madwoman in the attic, Gone With the Wind through the eyes of the slave (here I refer to Alice Randall’s controversial novel The Wind Done Gone).  Further I’m also interested in the way people interact with text, incorporating the stories they consume into their own story.  In my dreams, there are frequent appearances by characters from the television series Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It’s almost as if characters take root in each person’s subconscious, enter into their dreams.  When I was growing up, my sister and I made paper dolls based on every superhero we knew of, hundreds of them each only and inch tall.  With these characters we created elaborate on-going stories of our own.  In a way, I see fan fiction as a grown up version of our childhood games.  A form of what Diane Ackerman would call “deep play”. 

 

And that’s just the pseudo-intellectual side of my brain.  Emotionally, fan fiction has provided me with something I never had before as a writer-- an audience.  Making the decision to put my work forward before this audience hasn’t been easy and I’ve gotten a couple devastating smack downs since I posted my first story back in April of 2006 but mainly it’s been a really positive experience for me to know people are reading and enjoying the stuff I write.  When I went to my parents in New York last week I was looking through my old papers.  There was so much there-- whole novels, an 18 year olds attempt at metaphysical fantasy ala Sandman, dozens and dozens of stores written between the ages of 14 and 32.  Most of it’s never been read.  Most of it’s withered on the vine. 

 

Maybe it’s no wonder I take this whole thing too personally.  I haven’t gotten a whole lot of positive reinforcement in my life.

 

Fan Fiction posted on the internet isn’t supposed to have any value.  It’s supposed to be a hobby at best, a sick obsession at worst.  It’s amateur, illegitimate, throw away.  But didn’t a lot of things with value start out that way?  Things like comic strips and later comic books, the first musical recordings?  Maybe someday the value of the kind of writing I’ve been doing on-line will be evident to the people Matthew Skala calls “John and Mary Whitebread”.  Until then I have to go by my own, unvalidated belief that it has value which for me is the hardest thing in the world.  Other people’s opinions have always meant a great deal to me.  I don’t want anyone to think I’m annoying or out of line.  It makes me sick to think that somewhere someone thinks I’m pathetic or stupid.  How do you believe yourself and not all the people out there who really know what they’re talking about?

P.S. My icon for this post is Luna Lovegood because I think I need to start modeling myself on her.