The birthday, the turning point

Image is a self-portrait re-treated by Dustin Lacina, as a gift.

I just felt like writing a post saying, it’s my fucking birthday. Consider this my LiveJournal entry on TinyNibbles. And thank you for reading me, following me, commenting here, hanging out, and checking back now and then. It’s been a crazy dark year for me, more than anyone knows, and I’m feeling the lightness finally start to come back. And the gloves coming back off (because there’s no time like the present; I’m not waiting around for an afterlife, thanks). And the personal edge this blog has been missing, starting to return. I’ve spent a year just having all this insane shit hurled my way; I’ve been called every name you can think of by people who I thought truly cared about me as a human being, and worse by people I’ve never met — I have a hate blog dedicated to me that’s updated almost daily by some dude with too much time on his hands and a bad copy of Photoshop. I also have all his personal data, so it amuses me. A year ago today, my best friend and ex-husband suffered a near-fatal head injury; the start of a bad year. He’s doing better, and so am I. People lied to keep me from seeing him; so sickening. Some really bad people filtered through my life and I realized I wasn’t choosing friends as carefully as I should. SRL died. I hit financial bottom as a freelancer while becoming more well-known than I’ve ever imagined — I can’t leave the house without being recognized, I get asked for autographs regularly, I get free phones and experimental tech services, and have two high-profile agents, all while I am scrambling for gigs and am coming up short for rent this month — it’s a strange currency, this life.

But what I do makes people happy. Every day someone writes me saying thank you for what you do; at least every week I get an urgent crisis email from someone who desperately needs physical or emotional sexual help. And I’m there for them; I get them to counselors, clinics, I give it freely, I hold a stranger’s hand and we walk it together. I teach and lecture to crisis counselors and front-line clinic workers, all in the background. I show myself naked. I wonder if anyone can see my scars from the times it just hurt too much on the inside. I show myself as human. So many tests. Hacker Boy went in the ER for a couple of after-midnight 5-6 hour screaming-in-agony episodes that made me as close to insane as I’ve ever felt, not to mention his recent surgery. Him and I, we don’t know where we’re going either, but we’re fearless about love, even when it’s scary, and it’s not always been white-hot upload speeds and roses and sips of Absinthe. I’ve had insane lies written and said about me in the internet — the oh my god kind, the ‘but I was there’ kind, the kind that you look at and go, why do people have such hate in them? Why should I do good here in this world when some people just want to watch the world burn and they get joy from hurting others? Journalists wrote about my sex life; I turned into tabloid fodder, and I realized that the blogosphere does indeed have a glass ceiling for women. When weird shit happened in the blogosphere people accused me of all the usual shit; being an attention whore, being this, being that… whatever.

Like I give a shit. Show me something new. I love who I am, I love what I do, I’m happy to make the right people pissed off at me, and the rest of us can laugh and look at fun sexy stuff and take the world back from those who scheme to make us feel bad or unhappy, or try to erase us for who we are. It’s our world, we love sex, getting off is normal, and it’s the now. We’re getting gay married, you motherfuckers. Just try and stop us. Me — I like what I see when I look in the mirror, I like what I see when I look at my blog. I like the reflection of you in me. I think one of the big things I learned is that no matter how intense the attack, how vicious and persistent, how much someone can try to distort reality to do harm, how hurt I feel, or how close I feel to the edge of going back on the streets in all of this — I’m never going to let other people’s issues fuck with my self-esteem.

Bete said it best, “I love that you are self entertaining even in stressful situations.” The now: Tricky, album: Vulnerable.

So we’ll see what happens next. In the meantime, Babeland has everything with my name on it at 15% off all week (damn, Babeland, I love you too!), and the first three commenters to this post who want them can have a free Babeland Pocket Rocket shipped to them, for my birthday. Also, check out my Sabrina Fox interview on Fleshbot today (plus explicit gallery) — I love what she says about the perceptions about her job. Enjoy it.

Margaret just emailed, “happy birthday!! you beautiful girl!! love you!!” Now, I’m off to spend the afternoon with my lover and his beautiful daughter.