The experience of emotional deprivation is harder to define than some of the other lifetraps. Often it is not crystallized into thoughts. This is because the original deprivation began so early, before you had the words to describe it. Your experience of emotional deprivation is much more the sense that you are going to be lonely forever, that certain things are never going to be fulfilled for you, that you will never be heard, never be understood.

Emotional deprivation feels like something is missing. It is a feeling of emptiness. Perhaps the image that most captures its meaning is that of a neglected child. Emotional deprivation is what a neglected child feels. It is a feeling of aloneness, of nobody there. It is a sad and heavy sense of knowledge that you are destined to be alone.

I’m so fucking angryfuriouslivid at John right now. We were supposed to talk and play tonight, but yet again, I get brushed aside for his friends or girlfriend. I have no other communication with him, save for the phonecalls.

It’s not just this time, it’s a whole bunch of times added up. And I’m left alone, again. This is the first time ever that he’s made me cry. And I’m not even sad. I’m just angry. I’m sweating. I can barely see through these tears.

At least I found out that I could show my feelings to him. He’s the only person with whom I don’t have to worry about being polite. I can raise my voice at him, and I don’t clam up like I do with most people.

Right now, I have no one. John’s the one person I can count on to talk to me when something goes wrong. No one else truly understands me. It’s completely devastating when it’s this person who pulls the rug out from under you.

Maybe I am sad. Maybe this makes me think of how I’m always a second priority to everyone I know. That I’ll be alone for the rest of my life. That it’ll always be like this because I’m fucking flawed and fucking defective and fucking unlovable in some way.

I wasn’t going to drive to nowhere tonight, but I think I will now. I just have to remember not to rest my foot on the pedal.

People don’t understand how fragile I am. That sometimes I have to fight to feel significant, that I have to convince myself that people would be sad if steered into a concrete pole and died.

Just because I try to be easy-going and understanding doesn’t mean I’m not important.

I’m a person too.

Let me make this perfectly clear.

I am not like you. I do not think the same way that you do. Never. Ever. EVER. Ever believe that you understand, or assume that you know, how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking just because you are, or have ever been, in the same situation.

To believe that you understand, is arrogant. To assume that you know, is an insult.

You’re usually wrong anyway.

No, I didn’t learn this meaning of the word from grade school, or even from the ebonics primer at Dolemite Dot Com.

(Actually, I learned it from 2Pac’s Life Goes On)

Yeah.

I only recently had a modern day poseur pointed out to me. This isn’t the same as an intellectual poseur, this is the poseur of personality. The one’s who want to be quirky, eccentric, different.

At first, I didn’t notice; I was just annoyed. Then Loo’s perspicacity put a name to it. I can’t stop catching others now. I find that the one distinguishing behavior is the over-statement of character traits they wish to have, such as, “I did this funny thing because I want you to see me in a certain way, and by telling you this, I will make you believe that I am who I want you to believe”. Or “I like this song too₀ I listen to anything because I have widely varying tastes!”. Over-statement such as this may or may not be based on some kind of insecurity; some do it to hide because they’re uncomfortable with themselves, others just want to be memorable and only end up being remembered for the wrong reasons.

Sometimes it’s even worse on blogs, where people write one line posts that don’t say anything because they think they’re cool and cryptic and that people are interested in what they have to say. Or others who post conversations, and expect everyone else to understand or appreciate the humour behind them. Or even people who actually write about how they’re fucking INTELLIGENT, or GRAMMAR FREAKS, or ATTRACTIVE. Why the fuck do you need to state it? LET THE WORDS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. The key to writing is to SAY not TELL. Telling an audience how someone is feeling is nowhere near as effective as describing direct actions/thoughts/reactions related to those emotions without actually stating the emotions themselves.

In the end, it all makes me even more zealous about being humble, unassertive. I’ve always been one to “speak softly and carry a big stick”, as Teddy once put it. There are tons of great surprises when one doesn’t present all of oneself from the start. And after all, when one is revealed as a true self that doesn’t match the false image that’s projected on others, one ends up being a phony.

And I fucking hate phoneys.

Know what I hate? No, fucking hate.

I fucking hate it when a girl reduces me, or any guy, for that matter, to a sex. When some PETTY-MINDED FUCK generalizes someone as belonging to the group of “males” because of a few characteristics shared with the stereotype. Or brushes off any traits she sees as unpleasant as simply being the fault of having both an X and a Y chromosome.

What the fuck. I don’t place the blame on ‘being female’ when a girl happens to be late getting ready to go out. Or when a girl ends up in the middle of a geek talk, I don’t condescend to her and say, “You wouldn’t be interested cause you’re a girl”. I understand that girls can be geeky, or prurient, or cerebral, the same way that guys can be interested in ballroom dancing, or chaste, or emotional.

I don’t do guys nights or any shit like that cause I choose not to judge. I don’t automatically assume that a girl wouldn’t understand what happens when the guys are together. I’ve had girls at my LAN parties, I know girls who go to strip clubs. And I choose not to act or do anything differently if my girlfriend isn’t around, cause I have nothing to hide. I don’t want to be fake with either her or my friends.

Not every male is a slave to someone with breasts. Beer commercials are not an accurate representation of the entire male population.

FUCK. God.

On the way to work I walk adjacent to a lane of traffic, and cars on the highway can exit onto that street using a lengthy offramp. I have to cross the offramp every day, and there’s a yield sign there for cars coming from the highway, but they never slow down or yield to pedestrians (unless it’s someone old driving). Since it’s a busy area, the cars can just keep coming, and I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time just waiting for the line of vehicles to end.

Right now I just get out my frustrations by pretending that I don’t notice any cars coming, and taking one step onto the ramp. Most drivers don’t care if someone is walking across; as long as they know that one sees them, they assume that one will jump out of the way. Drivers who believe that someone doesn’t see them will almost always yield.

This morning, for example, I pretended to be completely oblivious to two cars speeding down the offramp. I made one confident step across the path and then quickly looked up, while continuing to cross. The first car sped past me, but the second car slowed down suddenly enough to make the tires squeak. The car actually pulled to the side of the road and came to a complete stop. I could tell that the driver, a bookish man with light hair and glasses, was both angry and shaken, and had to stop driving to compose himself. I swear he was about to get out of his car to tell me off, had he not brought himself under control, and realized that it’s not a fucking MERGE sign, it’s a FUCKING YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS SIGN.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always assume that I have the right of way (although I do believe that pedestrians are supposed to under the Highway Traffic Act R.S.O. 1990, c. H.8, s. 144 (28), unless the car can’t stop in time) and just walk across the crosswalk regardless of oncoming vehicles. It’s in everyones best interest to be safe, but I do my part by keeping an eye on vehicles, and not jaywalking or crossing unpredictably. This guy, as well as many others, have plenty of time to see pedestrians approaching the crosswalk but decide to never slow down.