Velvet voices, haunting slow Darkended notes with bright decor

From very long ago....

Over on my Patreon, I dropped a bonus playlist for the month of November, in which I talked about a very specific toxic era of my life that was circa around 2006. It was a mostly pre-social media age, and what got me thinking about it was a piece about teens who have chosen to reject social media and smart phones. It's so wild to me that teens loudly proclaiming that they were rejecting smart phones and social media is making national news.  The pre-smart phone, pre-inundation of social media and constantly being online era was certainly a time to be alive. 

It's strange to think that there are people who have never known a world without the internet. 

But also, thinking back on it, we HAD social media. It wasn't the social media of today on smart phones the way that it is NOW, where you are constantly plugged in to everything all of the time. We had MySpace and various blogging outlets. We had DeviantArt. You had to upload photos one at a time. I have had a LiveJournal for 20 years this year.

I actually miss when more people had blogs, because I enjoy reading blogs and more longer-form content.

But, back to the playlist I made.

The playlist is just for Patreon (sorry), but I have been thinking about this era a lot. Compiling the playlist made me think about a version of myself that no longer exists, friendships that no longer exist (and I question  if they ever did), and a world that certainly no longer exists.

This era almost wrecked me.

At the time, I literally thought my entire life was over.

I have almost no photos of me surviving from this era. Most of the photos that I have are circa 2007, because that's when I got my first digital camera. I think my old MySpace I had for my art had some old photos of me, but I don't think that account exists anymore when the site had its change over. For that reason, this era exists largely as a giant black hole. It's like my brain is protecting itself from itself.

I will be the first person to tell you I wasn't the best in this era. I was surrounded by toxic people, and responded equally toxically accordingly. I acted the way the people around me did, and I hated it. I was being bullied to my face by people I thought were my friends. The way that I tell it, I am a monster, one with great power who shattered friendships. But the reality is is that I was not and have never been so powerful. I acted the way that the people around me acted back at their faces, and I became the villain.

It did not feel good.

I acted exactly the way everyone else did, and I hated it. It wasn't something I hated in retrospect. It was something I hated at the time. It was something that I hated whilst I was doing it. I contemporarily hated the way that I behaved.

I am not and have never been a blameless angel. That's not what I am saying. The way that I behaved and the things I said in retaliation aren't things that I am proud of. In many ways, I was cruel, because everyone around me was cruel.

At the same time, people were laughing behind my back--and to my face. I was promised to someone as a prize, and a betrothal, with little regard for what I wanted. I stood up for myself because I knew that. You can love me or hate me, but I will always say exactly what I think if asked. I was asked, I answered, and the answer wasn't what other people wanted to hear.

Some very bad songs were written about me during this time period. You know, I don't know what that's so funny to me. If you're going to dedicate something to me like that, let it be GOOD at least, you know?! LMAO.

These people are still obsessed with hating me over a slight they imagined, and I barely care that they exist.

I went back into my LJ this morning on my way into work, and I went through my archives, trying to pinpoint the exact collapse of what I thought was my whole world. I realized that the account that I currently have was started immediately after the songs were written,  so that whole section of my life now only exists in my memories.

Memories that all came back when the playlist was compiled. 

The soundtrack of what was possibly the most toxic era of my entire life (and that's really saying something). A.F.I, Alkaline Trio, MUSE, Hot Hot Heat. I listened to all of those quite a bit. Most of these are on my iPod to this day. I revisit them from time to time, but not all at once like that.  Listening to them back like that all at once hit me like a wall. I listened to the music that was on the mixed tapes and mixed cds my friends gave me--that someone who had tried to woo me had given me. I listened to the music my friends listened to. Looking back at this playlist, I couldn't help but think that so much of this was my trying to just fit in with my friends. I question how much of this was really me. 

If nothing else, looking back on 2006 and looking at how really makes me realize how small my world was. There will always be new friends. There will always be ways to broaden horizons, to zoom out, to see bigger pictures. I thought the collapse of my childhood friend groups was the end of the world, or, at the very least, my world. Everything about that era is completely insignificant now, and so are those people.

This photo is me circa 2008. It's from an era that I well-documented. There was some distance between myself and that 2006 meltdown. It was also an era that I thought I needed glasses. Turned out, I was just malnourished and needed sleep, and that my vision was, in fact, just fine.

Funny how that works.

Pluto entered Capricorn for the last time in my lifetime, ending karmic cycles in place since 2008. On November 19th, it leaves Capricorn forever. As a Cap moon and rising, this will effect me considerably. Maybe that's why I have been so nostalgic.

Thinking a lot about Southern Bells of London Sing by The Faint, and wondering what else had been on that mixed tape. It's the only song I know for sure that was on there. Thinking a lot about the perceptions of me that someone else had, that this would have been on a mixed tape (or cd, actually, but I am still going to call it a tape) of things that made this person think of me, in order to try to win me over.

You know, wouldn't it be hilarious if I wrote a song about all of them now?  I should leave little Easter eggs in it using nods to their "songs."

I still cannot believe that this era elicited multiple, very bad songs about me. 

I just have that effect on people, I guess!