Family
Posted: Tue 27 March, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Introspective, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Attending my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary over the weeked was a very odd experience. It all went well, don’t get me wrong, but it was still strange.
Most of it, really, is down to just the way my family is. We’re not really a close family in many ways, and while I do stay in (fairly) regular contact with my parents (a phone call every couple of weeks, usually) and my brother (a text message every couple of weeks, and we see each other about once a year, usually) I don’t see the rest of them from one year to the next. And usually less than that.
So seeing pretty much all of them at once was deeply weird. And trying to remember names in order to introduce them to Herself was, frankly, a process that was always pretty well doomed. I got so many wrong, mainly by giving them the names of their siblings, which isn’t as bad as it could be (calling one great-uncle by the name of the other great-uncle, now deceased for three years was about as bad as it got – but still pretty bad!) but still fairly galling and embarassing.
The very strange ones, though, were my cousins, who (we worked out) I hadn’t seen in about ten years, if not more. Time flies, and all that crap. Having at least one complete stranger come up to me, know my name, know the basics of what I’d been up to, and having NO clue who they were at all – only for my brother to later confirm that he was one of my cousins – was pretty much the high/low point of the day. Mind you, at least I was honest, and said to him that I hadn’t a clue who he was – although I dont think he believed me.
But it made me think a lot about family, and about my role within it. I can’t deny, I’ve always been pretty much the black sheep of the lot, the one who’s not in touch, and has no intention of changing that. But at the same time, it now feels kind of weird to be so out of touch with my relatives. All the cousins now have partners, and in a couple of cases children – but I couldn’t tell you their names if my life depended on it. Only one comes to memory, and that’s because it’s a bloody horrible name, for which the kid will most likely be soundly beaten throughout his school days. As for the various partners, nope, not a clue.
I couldn’t tell you what the various birthdays are, or ages – hell, I have to make an effort to figure out my brother’s age (30 next year – heh) – nor could I tell you even where most of them live. Yeah, OK, I know the towns where they live, but addresses? Forget it.
And yet they all seem to know what I’m up to, where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, and the like. I assume my mother must do some information dispersal about that, but it’s still weird, where they know what I’m doing, and I don’t know (and, to be honest, don’t really care) what they’re doing from one year to the next. Or indeed in some cases from one decade to the next.
Still, it all went OK, and it meant I got to take a fair number of photos as well ( willing / unknowing audiences are great) which I’ll also get prints of, and send them to the parents. Well, once I’ve edited them, and got rid of the crap ones. (I know there’s a couple of those, for sure)
Identity
Posted: Fri 23 March, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Introspective, Own Business, Thoughts 10 Comments »One of the things I thought about back when I first started D4D™ was the identity I used in it. I specifically didn’t want it linked with my given name, and I didn’t want people to be able to find D4D™ just by Googling for my name. I knew I could be pretty acerbic (hey, who’d have thought?) and that if D4D™ took off, I didn’t want it to be able to rise up and bite me on the arse in the future. Yeah, sure, if someone does a bit of delving, it’s not all that difficult to find my ‘real’ name, but at the same time it’s not all that easy, either.
In that aim, I’ve been pretty successful. I used an identity that had been around for a fair while already – which is a whole other story – and went with it. And in some ways it’s almost been too successful. It’s now not uncommon, depending on who I’m with, to be called ‘Lyle’ to my face – slightly bizarre, to say the least. I’m used to it – and believe me, it’s a strange thing to get used to, but it happens.
But I am used to it. I’ll answer to both. And in fact even my ‘real’ name isn’t the one I was born with. That one is one I hate- primarily because it’s a name with multiple spellings, and n-one ever got it right. When I first applied for a passport, and had to get a copy of my birth certificate, even when the people creating the copy birth certificate with a form in front of them with it correctly spelled managed to fuck it up. And that really was the final straw. I was already being known by the name I’d adopted, and it was on my bank account, mail addresses and the like, so I was able to include a letter with the passport application that said
“Look, this is my true given name, but even the register-office people can’t spell it correctly. This is what I’m known as, and I include proof of that. If you absolutely have to do the passport in my given name, fine, I’ll live with it – but please, save me ten years of hassle where booked flight tickets don’t match with passport name, and if possible do the passport in the name I’ve adopted”
And they did. No-one was more amazed than me, admittedly, but they did it. And that’s the name I’ve used ever since.
Yes, sure, it causes some weirdness – particularly when I meet someone I went to school with, or extended family. But – again – I’m used to it now, and those occasions are both (thankfully) now quite rare. (Although I do have one of those family things tomorrow – but more about that on the day, I think)
Recently, though, the entire Lyle thing has risen up and bitten me on the arse a little bit.
You see, for obvious reasons, the company I run for web design and the like is in my real name, and so is the stuff I do for photography and the like. And because of the seperation I keep, it means I can’t link from, say, D4D™ to the photography site while saying “Hey, this is my stuff, and my site – good, innit?”, and the like.
It’s a weird situation – and I can’t complain too much, because it’s entirely self-created, even if for sane, sensible reasons. Some people do know me in both identities (for want of a better phrase) – and a couple know me in all three, which is really confusing – and I’m wholly and continually thankful to them for indulging my little identity foibles, and keeping it all seperate. It must be almost as weird for them as it is on occasion for me.
The situation will stay like this, though – as the business I run does better, and that side of my life grows and grows, it’s something that becomes more and more essential. I’m pretty certain, though, that this is it – I don’t plan to start off any other identities, the current level is enough for me.
The Year So Far – and The Story of The Boy
Posted: Tue 20 July, 2004 Filed under: Domestic, Introspective, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »Well, I promised a piece when I got to the 200,000 mark, and I’ve been thinking about it since. There’s so much that has changed, that has clicked together in the last six months – it’s not just in the timescale since the 100,000 mark, although in some ways that adds a neat delineator to it all too. This post has the potential to be very deep and personal – something I try to avoid to a degree with d4d™, but what the hell, this seems as good a time as any. I may move it later, both to the Thoughts section, and also so it stays at the top of the page come Wednesday night when I’m travelling for a while. Anyway, if you don’t want to read that kind of thing, there’s plenty of silliness and bumnuggets elsewhere.
Back in January, when we welcomed in 2004, things were really quite different. Regular readers will know I was deep in the throes of depression, both seasonal and related to other sources. In many ways I really didn’t see a way out of where I was at the time, and it’s only time that’s got me through that. The kindness of the regulars here helped too, in ways too diverse to mention now – but the thanks and debts are still there for that. I was pretty much resigned to being single throughout the year, that it would pretty much mimic 2003 on that score – and even 2002. As it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong, but at the time, well, the light wasn’t even shining in the tunnel.
Since then, so much has changed – not all of it made public on here, but at the same time a lot of it has been implied. New avenues have opened, the potential for whole new vistas. And of course as soon as I’d come to terms with being single, with dedicating this year (and probably next) to sorting out the other things, the creative side that needs its venting points, and working towards those goals, well, everything changed. No, that’s not true – not everything has altered, but the landscape is earth-shatteringly different around those foundations.
I’ve still got a long way to go – self-doubt plagues me, and lack of confidence. Am I doing the right thing? Will it work? No-one knows, and I can’t answer yet. All I can do is work towards these goals, and do my utmost to make things work.
One person has changed whole vistas already, simply by being there. Options that weren’t even considered in January are now possible, feasible, perhaps even probable. Time will tell, but already the plans are grossly deviated from where they were – and I can’t see it as anything but good. Do we run the potential for heart-destroying hurt? Yeah, without a doubt. Is there also the potential for everything to be life-changingly good? Yeah, without a doubt.
However, doubts are something I still have. I’ve known this person for half my life, and always thought that she was beyond me – reasons I won’t go into for now, but yeah, definitely far out of my league. I still find myself thinking “Wow” on occasion. And no, not just on that kind of occasion, but on others too.
Obviously we both carry damage from previous history – and in some cases there’s a lot of it. So much to deal with – and in optimistic times I do feel we’ll get through all of it, overcome the pain, and be able to work well together.
But at other times, well, the boy whose soul and body got rented out reasserts itself, the core that still loathes itself and the things its done in the past. Self-destruction is in abeyance for now, but self-disgust still has its time. The doubts, wondering what she sees in me; the cynicism, that anyone who comes this close really has the keys to the castle, the potential to destroy the remnants inside the walls.
And yet there’s a frozen core still too – a place that hasn’t been visited, hasn’t been thawed in the best part of twenty years. That frozen core has kept me alive, given me the ability to simply cut off any further pain, add it to the icebox, and keep it there. When I’ve split up with people, the pain’s not felt, it’s just cut off, sliced away, and I carry on. I used to think it was hate and revenge – kept ice-cold so it didn’t explode. Now, well, I don’t know what it is. But I know it should be covered in biohazard signs for all to see.
That core scares me – I’ve always had the will, the desire, the need to keep it cold and inaccessible. It’s been a survival kit, the ultimate defence mechanism, enabling me to walk away, to deal with whatever comes next. And now, it’s melting – and the boy at the heart of it is wondering what will happen when the light and heat hits him. He might thaw out too, and perhaps find that the world’s not as bad as he thinks. But he might simply shatter, break into irrecoverable pieces. No-one knows, least of all that boy.
Is all this worth the potential results? Yes, I think so. But the doubts are there – when that core fails, when it’s finally thawed out, what will she think of the person there? The one who carries a shield all the time, who hasn’t let anyone in in a lifetime. The one who knows all the things that have happened, whose pain has possibly never healed?
And that’s it at the end of the day – because I don’t know that that boy is worth it, I don’t see the value that he has in so many other peoples eyes. That boy has seen all the pain and betrayal it’s possible to take and still keep on breathing, that boy has experienced it all. And he’s shit scared of seeing it again.