From: anon-1534@twwells.com (Suzanna)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: birthdays
Date: 8 Jan 93 08:01:09 GMT
Organization: Anonymous Posting Service at twwells.com
X-Email-Accepted: yes


   When I was little my mom would arrange for a birthday party and she would
   invite my relatives & kids from school -- I don't remember much about
   most of them except that I was often really miserable & didn't like the
   party and felt like I *supposed* to behave a certain way and *supposed* to
   be happy but I wasn't & so there must be something wrong with me.  I felt
   like that about other holidays too, like Christmas.

I can't remember ever having parties for my birthday; I don't think I
ever had one, and I certainly didn't go out to other peoples's. My
parents did give me presents. I don't like that idea any more, since
my "present" for my eleventh birthday wasn't at all pleasant. We had
Christmas too, again just my father, my mother, and myself. I don't
remember anything special about them.

   I've been slowly learning to get away from the *supposed to*s.  Like my 
   friends and I say to each other -- if we say 'I should do...." then we 
   need to think about it -- should's aren't useful.  Instead think about
   what I *want* to do.

I'm sorry, I don't know what I want to do, because I don't know what I
should be doing. The two are synonymous, for me at least. This must be
wrong then.

   I like sort of celebrating my birthdays -- I have a friend whose birthday
   is the day before mine and we used to get together, but now we call each
   other around midnight -- betwenn her birthday and mince -- and open the
   presents that we had previously mailed to each other.  

That must be nice; I don't think anyone outside my parents even knows
when my birthday is.

   Last year one or two good friends gave me presents & I gave myself
   a treat -- I love dressing up, so I put on my 'fairy princess
   dress' -- it is long, pink, lacy & very frivolous & I wore that all
   day -- I wore it to work & all day peoples asked me why I was so
   dressed up & I said 'It's my birthday' and so lots and lots of
   people wished me a happy birthday.  Then I took myself out to a
   movie, still in the long fancy dress.  It was fun.

I don't think I could ever do that; I don't know if the people at work
would notice, and I don't go to movies often.

   I wanted to speak to Suzanne a little -- the thing about trying to
   find out what is "right" and doing that.  It is something I have
   tried to do a lot in my life, I have usually felt as though I was
   involved in some sort of game and I didn't know the rules but felt
   embarrased to ask -- I feel like I don't know how to be social (I
   learned for a while in high school, but it was all based around
   flirting & seductive behavoir & that isn't safe for me anymore).

I'm sorry, I feel the opposite with respect to being in a game; my
mind is that game, but outside is real and hard. Everything is strange
and I don't understand it. I don't know how to be social, and I have
never flirted or "gone out".

   I try not to get angry at myself for not reading the "Right" books,
   but read what I like (which happens to be good/bad/and mediocre
   science fiction/fantasy about women, trashy lesbian romance novels
   & general novels about women -- I don't try to read the stuff that
   I always thought people "should" read anymore.

Oh. But I will never be able to think and write properly if I don't
study. I need to read the right books and learn them and understand.

Suzanna



--
To use this service, send EMAIL to:
anon-ping@twwells.com  -- test path/get anonymous id
anon-help@twwells.com  -- for an automatically returned help message
anon-admin@twwells.com -- ANON administrator
anon-0@twwells.com     -- anonymous e-mail to ANON administrator
anon-asar@twwells.com  -- post anonymously to alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery