Oh my gosh, this writing from the below blog is just so amazing and beautiful and achingly familiar:

As a child she felt alone. She was alone. She turned her longing for connection into mock group therapy sessions for her stuffed animals, lined at the foot of her bed. “So, elephant”, she inquired, “what do you think about this story? How do you think the characters felt at the end of the book?” This type of playfulness exhibited her imaginative inner life and gave birth to an intimacy and connectedness she yearned for in actuality. Otherwise, in the context of the real people in her home, she felt stranded. Her house was missing key elements that she desperately needed to thrive: attunement, curiosity, reflection, unfettered fun.

 http://themanifeststation.net/2015/08/14/on-wishing-things-were-different/

Lately, I just cannot listen to Karen Carpenter sing. Thinking about her life and hearing the sadness in her voice, even after all these years, is just too overwhelming and when I think about what happened to her, no matter how long ago, it just makes me so sad and mad. I saw the letter below recently in a book about Sonic Youth and then I also saw this:

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/kim_gordons_open_letter_to_karen_carpenter

           Dear Karen,

Thru the years of The Carpenters TV specials I saw you change from the Innocent Oreo-cookie-and-milk-eyed girl next door to hollowed eyes and a lank body adrift on a candy-colored stage set. You and Richard, by the end, looked drugged—there’s so little energy. The words come out of yr mouth but yr eyes say other things, “Help me, please, I’m lost in my own passive resistance, something went wrong. I wanted to make myself disappear from their control. My parents, Richard, the writers who call me ‘hippie, fat.’ Since I was, like most girls, brought up to be polite and considerate, I figured no one would notice anything wrong—as long as, outwardly, I continued to do what was expected of me. Maybe they could control all the outward aspects of my life, but my body is all in my control. I can make myself smaller. I can disappear. I can starve myself to death and they won’t know it. My voice will never give me away. They’re not my words. No one will guess my pain. But I will make the words my own because I have to express myself somehow. Pain is not perfect so there is no place in Richard’s life for it. I have to be perfect too. I must be thin so I’m perfect. Was I a teenager once?... I forget. Now I look middle-aged, with a bad perm and country-western clothes.”

I must ask you, Karen, who were your role models? Was it yr mother? What kind of books did you like to read? Did anyone ever ask you that question—what’s it like being a girl in music? What were yr dreams? Did you have any female friends or was it just you and Richard, mom and dad, A&M? Did you ever go running along the sand, feeling the ocean rush up between yr legs? Who is Karen Carpenter, really, besides the sad girl with the extraordinarily beautiful, soulful voice?

your fan – love,
kim

Sometimes the sting of embarrassment with yourself is as sharp and cutting as any physical pain can ever be. Finding out something you believed to be true for a long time, discovering that it is not only not true, but was born completely out of your own wishing thinking and that the reality of it all is actually the complete opposite...well, that can hurt enough to make you want to crawl into a hole and never come back out again. 

You can take comfort in thinking (at least, pretty much so) that no one else knew how gullible your heart was, but still you wonder and you hide for a while and maybe even internally retreat a bit once you do make an appearance again. You know deep down inside that your silly little heart is to blame (and hoping for a friendship that you never deserved in the first place) but you also wish people knew that false kindness is far crueler than an obvious, honest dislike could ever be. There is a saying that goes something like "it is better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie" and I cannot help but agree one hundred percent.

And when you have been believing this falseness and this silly little hope was even one of the things keeping you going, you really, really have to re-think your coping skills and come up with a better way to survive. I think the secret to not being unhappy is simply just making peace with knowing the things you hope for the most are probably the things that are never going to happen. Some people, no matter how much you like them, just are not meant to be part of your life.

And, more than you might ever, think: books. When I was reading the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal earlier, I could not help but be drawn to this quote by writer Faith Sullivan: "Life could toss your sanity about like a glass ball; books were a cushion." Her longest-latesting relationships, the article goes on to say, have always been with books.


The link below is more for general embarrassment, not specific to any kind in particular, but I still find it helpful.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201412/the-best-way-deal-embarrassment

A few months back I first heard the term "skin hunger" and it blew my mind. The older I get, the more I feel like there are very few things more wonderful than a good hug from someone you care about. I think genuine and loving physical affection (hand holding, kisses on the cheek, hugs) is so underrated and even misunderstood and somehow considered less "sexy" and vital than sex and that simple, basic platonic but deeply affectionate touch is far more important and special than we are sometimes willing to admit.

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/affectionado/201308/what-lack-affection-can-do-you
 for more on skin hunger read here

 

Despite knowing there is no point to it, I cannot stop thinking about a homophobic comment I heard someone say earlier today. I moved on because there really is no point in saying anything nor is a confrontation a good idea, at least under the circumstances at the time. Even so, I think of all the things I wish I could say to this person, wondering if the words would even make a difference. I am emphasizing lesbians as I go on because my co-worker specifically mentioned gay women and because I am a lesbian and that is probably partly why I am so upset, though I would like to think I would be just as offended as a straight person.

If I thought they would, though, my first question would be: do you know there are many lesbians, even in this day and age, who seriously think about killing themselves and only do not do so because suicide (in many people's eyes) is a bigger sin than being gay is?

Or: do you understand, I mean really understand, that all most lesbians want is to be able to safely and legally marry the person they want to grow old with? Maybe not with U-Haul speed, but definitely with the most sincere and heartfelt of longing.

Do you know, can you actually even grasp, that there are lesbians, both teen and adult, who have never been intimate with someone 'that way' and who truly just long for love and simple human contact? That hugging and simple hand holding is just as romantic and much more hungered for than sex? Sex without love, after all, is absolutely meaningless. And you do not have to have ever had sex to know this. You could say you can't miss what you've never had, but I do not think that is necessarily so. Everyone, straight or gay, wonders at some point what sex is like. That does not mean they give in to their curiosities or have a fling with the first available person. Most romantics, especially die-hard ones, could not even imagine getting into bed with someone they did not love nor with someone who did not love them back.

Thinking about what I heard today (I cannot even comfortably repeat it here, though this person also once said "I wonder which one is the man in the relationship?") makes me wonder where their hatred (and there is no way their views  are not hateful) comes from and why they continue to let it fester. Yes, there are lesbians who unfortunately support the stereotypes. I have met them and wondered just as homophobes might, what is wrong with someone who only wants to have sex and nothing else?  But I have read and known of loving, deeply committed lesbian couples, together for decades, whose only crime ever was mutually falling in love. For those of us who are single lesbians our only crime is wanting to fall in love with someone who could possibly love us back. That "that someone" just happens to be another woman should not be the big issue it still is for so many people :(