Wendy Blackheart

I was assaulted two years ago, by the host of a sex party I was at.  It fucking sucked. The aftermath sucked harder. Spending the following two years trying to piece things back together sucked slightly less, but still sucked.

Afterward, I couldn’t leave my apartment for nearly a week.

Afterward, I wound up dropping out of school because I couldn’t deal with going.

Afterward, I became skittish and fearful around men I didn’t know, and some that I did.

Afterward, I had to piece my personality, my perceptions, and my sexuality back together.

Every time I think I’m past it, something comes up. Last summer, I had a flashback while being worked on in class. I freaked out, and scared the shit out of my partner. I was able to calm down and go back and finish – he needed to go home.

I’m extremely jumpy when people come up behind me and touch me, especially when I’m not expecting it, like at school.  I’ve walloped a couple of people before I got that under control.

Something triggered me Wednesday night, and it lasted well into Thursday. My sister and I got into a ridiculous fight that ended in screaming on her part and standing against the wall crying and twitching on mine. Yeah. Not fun. Then I spent the next two hours in bed, I think. Things got a little fuzzy, which is…new.

But afterward, things changed in my life. There was a wonderful outpouring of support from my lovely blogger friends, my new (at the time) cv friends, and others. It was unexpected on my part. I was young and relatively new to the city, blogging, etc. I was happy, because most of my support network is scattered. My oldest, closest friends live far away, and after all that happened, I mostly wanted to be pet and told everything was ok. That’s a little hard from 2000 miles away.

Then there were people whom I wanted, needed, to be my friend at the time, who I desperately needed, and for whatever reason, they were unable or unwilling to help. There were other people who I was friends with at the time where the friendship was damaged because of the situation – Marcus was well known, and well liked, and there were many people who seemed to think that my perceptions and feelings about the assault were invalid and wrong – that I was not assaulted.

After things died down, even until recently, I wanted these friendships back. I wanted my friends.

But I realized, if they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, or for whatever reason chose not to either believe me, or be my friend, I shouldn’t *want* their friendship back so bad. And finally, I don’t.

I just don’t. Why would I want that back, when it seems as if it was nothing to begin with?

My old friend Teddy would say ‘Fuck ‘em and feed ‘em beans’. I never got the ‘feed ‘em beans’ part, since beans are tasty. But I get the general idea, of course. And he’s right. (Actually, if Teddy knew about any of this, legs would have been broken. He was my funeral home buddy, and very old school about this sort of thing.)

So then. Yes. Beans.

So, I”m trying to quit smoking again.  I threw away my pack the other night, and went to the clinic at my school and got some acupuncture treatments to help me, along with helping a few other issues I had.

I’m going to go next week and see if they have another cancellation, since its too late in the semester to get my own series of sessions.  It was quite yummy – I could feel the qi moving through my body, and it was soooo calming and relaxing.  Partway through, my hands started ‘jumping’ on their own.

I think I will be much more successful this time with quitting.  Thoughout my life, I have know about, and used, the Law of Attraction, to a degree. I was ok, but it didn’t always work for me.  Then, Anon turned me on to The Secret. Admittedly, I thought it was kind of stupid at first, until I realized it was basically a repackaging of the Law of Attraction in a way that made sense to me, and in a way that taught me how to use it much better than I had in the past.

For example, now. Rather than focusing all my energy on Not Smoking, and Quitting Smoking, I will be focusing on being healthy, breathing deeply, and perhaps even jogging again. At least getting through long, long walks happier and healthier than I am now.

Its quite awesome.

When I was seven, I created an experiment for the school science fair. I decided to study whether or not fish could hear and respond the music.

I bought three goldfish, and placed each one in an separate, but identical tank (made out of milk jugs). I named them Fish A, Fish B, and Fish C. They were all fed the same food, at the same time. I changed their water the same way, did my best to keep it at the same temperature. They had the same amounts.

Every day, for ten minutes, I would observe each fish by itself, while playing different music.

Fish A was the control fish – I watched him swim and react to nothing.

Fish B was the classical fish – I watched him swim and react to Beethoven’s piano sonnatas.

Fish C was the ‘rock’ fish – I watched him swim and react to the Beach Boys. (Dude. I was seven. I thought that was rock.)
Fish A acted as one would expect. I felt that Fish B was more graceful and dance like.

Fish C died.

I replaced all the fish.

Fish A acted the same. Fish B acted the same as before.

Fish C died.
I checked the water. I kept changing their containers (each fish got a new milk jug when I had to buy new fish.) I changed the songs.

Fish C always died.

The only conclusion I could reach was that the Beach Boys killed fish.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t do very well in the science fair, despite my rigorous attempts to maintain the scientific process.

As an adult, I learned about the Beach Boys and their connection to Charles Manson.

I must assume then, that association with the Beach Boys is bad. It led to Charlie Manson killing a bunch of people, and three fish, I assume, killing themselves to get away.

I used to work at a public library. You meet all types at the library – see, the good part, is that anyone can go there….that’s also the bad part. However, I formed quite a rapport with many of the patrons. I stood out – for a good chunk of time I had hair ‘vampire’ red, thanks to Manic Panic, and shades of blue. Rather than making me unapproachable, people seemed to feel more comfortable talking to me. (Take THAT, library establishment!)

Anyway, I got to know lots of the people who came in lots of different ways. Nothing personal, of course, because I wanted to keep my distance, but friendly.

There was one oldish man who often came in, who appeared to be at least partly Native American, which on Long Island isn’t terribly common or uncommon. There were a few tribes that lived here before the white people came and killed ‘em all or made ‘em move, and I do believe there is a reservation or two. Anyway, this man may have been part Native American, or at leastfascinated with the colour. He often wore bird feathers in a braid in his hair, a medicine pouch, and other such things. He was sweet, andmischievous.

One year, for Halloween (for which I always dressed up), I went as a tree sprite. I had bought a green shirt and brown skirt from the second hand store, and fabric paint which I used to paint leaves and stuff on the shirt, and trunk like stuff on the skirt. I also wrote ‘Tree Sprite’ on the shirt, so people could figure it out. I pinned two of thoseMcDonald’s teenie beenie babies on me – a bird on my shoulder, and a squirrel on my chest.  I wore a garland of (fake) leaves and berries  in my hair, trailing down my back, and did my make up in some earth tones. It was fucking adorable!

While at work, that nice man came by, and he knew right away I was a tree sprite, and he complimented me on my outfit and choice of costume. Then we had this conversation.

“So, you know what happens when a tree sprite’s tree is cut down, right?” He asked, very solemnly.

“It dies.”

“Right.”

“But we protect the trees we live in, so that won’t happen!” I said.

“Of course!” he said, still very serious “And you do a good job at it. So all you really have to worry about are dendrophiliacs!”

For a moment, we were both dead serious, and then we both burst out laughing, confusing the crap out of everyone around us.

The bushes and neighbours yard/driveway

A pretty tree in front of my house

The backyard and bushes

The clothes line

The untouched trashcan – we got at least 9 inches of snow! That’s a nice sized cock of snow!

This is my fav – taken from my bedroom window

The neigbours tree from my window

Lots and lots of snow!

Its still snowing pretty fierce. Perhaps I’ll take a few more shots later, before it gets too dark.

This first shot is from my second floor bedroom window this morning

This is from the front door

The backyard

The back steps and the recycling bin

This is a recipie I love to make – its simple, easy, cheap and soooo tasty. They’re called ‘Magic Cookie Bars’ but I changed the name because a kid a school who had one said it tasted like the flesh of a unicorn that I had hunted down and prepared for the class!

Magic Unicorn Bars!

1/2 c. (1 stick) butter or margarine (melted)

1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs

1 cup chocolate or butterscotch chips (I always use chocolate)

1 1/3 c. flaked coconut

1 1/3 c. sweetened condensed milk (15 oz can)

1 c. coarsely chopped walnuts

Pour melted butter or margarine onto the bottom of a 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan.

Sprinkle crumbs evenly over melted butter or margarine.  S

prinkle chopped walnuts evenly over crumbs.

Scatter chocolate morsels over nuts.

Sprinkle coconut evenly over chocolate pieces.

Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over coconut.

Bake in a moderate (350°) over, 25 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Cool in pan 15 minutes.  Cut into bars.  (Try cooling overnight then cutting with a pizza cutter!)

14ct Aida bookmarks, 2 strands of embroidery thread. Pattern from the wonderful Sprite Stitch.com

I just fit Luigi and Mario on the bookmark, but I had to cut off Peach’s crown, so I used a sequin that I cut, and sewed it on.

Yet another completed cross stitch – this one is a bookmark I made. I got the pattern from the forum at SpriteStitch.com, and I modified it slightly (I had made the border two x’s too big, so I just added a row of tetroids)

Tetris Bookmark Pattern, By Nyssa

This one had lots of fiddly work – each box of four stitches was individual outlined, and this was on either 14 or 18ct aida, I need to double check. Lots of fiddly stuff. And looking at the pics, I just realized I forgot to outline the inside of the ‘O’ in Over! I’ll fix that now.