Karma's whippin' girl

" I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird. "

- Paul McCartney


" Huh?"

- Lisa Guidarini


In case you aren't getting the drift, I'm a person to whom things just tend to happen. There's something about me that attracts weird and wild things and people, totally against my will. That's always been the case. People on the fringes of society, for example, are attracted to me like it's a magnetic force beyond their power to resist. If you observed it from above, as an apparently sado-masochistic supreme being very possibly does (and I am his/her favorite form of entertainment, obviously), you'd see that when I pass through a crowd, any crowd, all the yahoos gravitate toward me. I can't be angry with them. They can't help it. But it's getting annoying as all hell.

It's not just that, either. Gravity is stronger around me. Compare my frequency of dropping things to the average and you'll see what I mean. Embarrassment happens to me more often, and Murphy's Law? Written for me. Totally for me.

I'm really a fairly unassuming person. I don't go out of my way to attract notice, and in fact I pretty well shun it. Yeah, okay, not online. Online I'm a big publicity hoor. I jump up and down and wave my arms, I fearlessly approach big name authors, I leave no chance untaken. But in real life? Wallflower, baby. Wallflower. You'd so not approach me to ask to sign my dance card at a party. I'd open my mouth and shoot out fire at you, or hypnotize you with eyes that pop out of my head and swirl around and around, transfixing you until you forget what you were going to ask in the first place. Needless to say, I'm a big hit at parties.

So, why exactly it is that action of the most dramatic nature seeks me out I don't know. And I may be just a really big crybaby here. Wah, wah, poor ME. But I could get some sworn affadavits from several people attesting to the fact stuff does happen to me, and it's vastly out of proportion to stuff that happens to other people. It's been verified, people! Verified! And it's making me really tired. Really tired.

I need a vacation. Or maybe even a short retreat. It's been a long, long year, one I wrote masses of pages about, trying to figure at least some of it out. I sat down with my primary journal for a while last night, paging through it looking for insight. Frankly, it reads like something a crack whore would have written while on a roller coaster, while also having a really bad trip. And then the roller coaster car flies off the track and through the air, skimming over the carnival, skipping across the tops of the tents. Meanwhile the crack whore is alternately laughing and gripping the safety bar, white-knuckled. That pretty well describes it.

From entry to entry nothing stays consistent. Well, nothing but my whining. Much like the constant tinnitus I suffer from, the tinnitus that would drive me mad in a totally quiet room, the background refrain of my journal sounds like the noise a mosquito makes when it buzzes your ear in the middle of the night. ANNOYING.

That's not to say none of my points are valid. They are, but it's so obvious I couldn't make up my mind on a goddamn thing. One day it's one thing, the next it's the total opposite. That's what you call a confusing time. And in the midst of it, THE OTHER, the controlling friend who maybe wasn't such a great friend. The great chimera, the force that nearly destroyed me. And I totally bought into it, like I was born yesterday. Idiot.

So now I'm left thinking am I the one attracting all this chaos without realizing I'm doing it? Or are there outside forces fucking with me, just for the sheer entertainment of it all. If so, that's so not nice, and it's one of the very biggest reasons I have such a problem with all of this higher power stuff. Bad things happening to good people (and I don't just mean me here), horrible things and not just annoyances, while nasty people glide along through life. Why?

Just one of the many things I grapple with on a daily basis. Or, well, sometimes just weekly. I keep pretty well occupied. But this one's a biggie. A veritable hugie. It's one I can't find an answer for, at least not one that satisfies or even satisfices. Some things I can content myself with just not knowing. I don't have a problem with open-ended questions. Things like the Universe, that I can deal with (though it freaks the hell out of my kids). But this one? This one I just don't get. I don't know why it all has to be such a challenge. Why it's all so hard, more so for some than others. Why do so many bad things happen to people who've already been loaded down with crap?

Why?

If anyone can "riddle me this" I'd be so appreciative.