The architect, Frank Lloyd Wright was said to have said words to the effect of: never draw a thing, never even put your pencil to the paper unless you already know exactly what it is you intend to draw.
Architecture and art, however, though they may imitate life at times, are not it.
Sometimes I know exactly what it is I come over here to say or record. Usually, when I do not, I just don't come over. But here I am. There's something, there's definitely something, and I just can't get my anything wrapped around it.
So, perhaps if I re-read, and just begin to write, whatever it is I am needing to write will go ahead and present itself. I don't know. I'll always have the option of just quitting, too, of course. Or, starting over another day, even.
You never know what your going to get when you get one of these. It's like an anonymous lj comment, or a comment from a name you do not recognize, before you open them: you just never know what's gonna be behind the click.
Generally, I leave these sit for a bit, and fantasize about niceties (like the first email from [irl g/f name], or Missy) while simultaneously preparing for anything in the world. This one looked fairly benign from the outside: A pretty name and the subject line, "from a little girl who reads your journal."
I read a few others and then opened it.
Benign was really the wrong word to use, up there, because it's not as if what was to be said in the email, was malicious, or anything close to that. Essentially, it amounted to a statement of facts in regard to the sender, me, and my livejournal.
There are lots of all kinds of everyones I suppose. The email was about her kind of of someone and my kind of someone. She asked some direct questions, made some other statements that I feel I need to address for myself, and, while asking (and trusting me) for anonymity, indicated in a subsequent email that she would much desire to see me answer, or try to answer, some of the questions she'd asked, and that I might do that here, if I felt like it.
I do feel like it, yes.
Her email, its questions and statements of fact, was not the kind of email one feels compelled to respond to from a defensive posture. Nevertheless, because I can so be that way, I've purposely delayed writing my response. Not that this would gain me any perspective into what I might say, but just so that I could try and really examine the things. Besides, since hers was not an attack, I did not want to meet it, even inadvertently, or worse, passive-aggressively, with what might amount to a defense.
Hers was at explanation, and so I shall endeavor to return the same.
That only sounds easy. Then again, it likely wasn't easy for her, either.
I've edited out only the parts of her letter not essential to this entry:
Mark.. little girl lover...
I've been meaning to write to you for a long time..[ ]keep this email private..
I've been simultaneously wounded and pulled in by the things that you write. I feel for you, with my whole being, let me just say that to begin. I don't have any intention of judging you, or arguing with you, but there are things that I need to say, and I should start by explaining that the entire purpose of writing you is really to unburden myself. It's only fair to tell you that so that you can choose to stop reading now, if you'd like.
But if you decide not to stop, I want to tell you a few things. I'm [20's] year old little girl who, as you may have guessed by now, was cruelly molded by a man when I was very small. He made me into the person I am now, which is bittersweet, I guess.
The other thing that is much of who i am is that I work [...] and, I don't know, what happened to me strongly affects my work... sometimes in the car, on the way to work, I'll start to panic, and want to turn back, but I tell myself no, [...] and sometimes I can't look at the little girls without a deep, ugly fear in me.
No one who wasn't hurt sexually like that as a little one can possibly tell you how... truly brutal it is... how really brutal it is to be touched like that, before your undeveloped mind can possibly wrap around what's happening. Or what it's like to get older and still be a vulnerable little girl, under the woman's body, gasping for air and reaching for comfort.
I understand, in some way, I think, your fascination with little girls, and your attraction... not in the sense that I can relate to it, but I've worked so hard to understand the motives of grown human beings with those desires, because I've wanted more than I can say to understand what happened to me, and why it had to happen.
My only question for you, really, is why...why you feel the need to argue for it, to express it.. because what you have probably been told many times (I don't fool myself into thinking I'm the first ruined little girl to contact you, and anyway your journal would suggest otherwise) is that it does wound, so deeply, little girl women like me.
And undoubtedly, were you to respond to me, you would say that if reading what you write wounds me, I shouldn't read it at all. But that would be asking me not to breathe, or feel for lost little girls on the news, or look at accidents I drive past. It's wired into me, and sometimes I'll go a stretch of time without reading your journal, but I can't keep out of it...
I don't know, I don't know, I'm not asking (would never ask, and certainly would never imagine you would or should comply) for you to not write those things... your feelings, or detailed sexualizations of little girls...but I do want you to know the hurt, and I know I'm not the only one. It makes me want to fall on my knees in front of you and ask you to take away everything that's happened to me... which probably makes me crazy, and I don't know why I feel that way. It isn't fair, never is fair, isn't fair to any of the little girls, and there are way too many, who've been preyed upon, even by innocent, sad eyed men like Humbert in Lolita.
and I hope you mean what you say, that you would never touch a real little girl, and that you know your dreams are illogical, in that.. of course, a small child would be hurt by such contact.. or even if that may not be true, that you would be risking hurting her.. and I hope so much you'd never risk that..
And god, please believe... even if we are grown.. even if we can consciously, and carefully, make the decision ourselves, as technically grown and fully developed women... those of us who seek daddies, or men to coddle us, and love with all their hearts and their lust the little girls in us... we do so because we are hurting so much, so much. And it only deepens the hurt, etches it in further and further, burns it into the parts of us it never had to touch. It makes my vagina hurt, it makes me weep, it makes me clutch my stuffed animals.. it makes me scream at night in my sleep and wake up in the middle of the night with my whole body aching. And I feel it in me, very deeply, that you would not want that for anyone.. but you, and other men with similar cravings, do haunt my dreams.. and I don't know what to do about that.. and I know it's not your problem.. and I don't know why I'm trying to burden you with it... I'm sorry. I don't know anymore.
I just had to write to you... please feel free to respond to me, or to not respond... just please don't tell anyone I've written to you.. and please understand, I just had to write.
Since I already knew this wasn't an easy email for this person to send, considering, but certainly not one I could answer in any real way in a hurry, I wrote a quick response
Heya,
Funny, I've been meaning to make a post in recent days, which perhaps I will get to sooner, now, rather than later.
For now, though, I just wanted to write and let you know I have received your letter, and am not offended, nor surprised, either, and completely grasp that which you have said.
Thank you, and if it helped at all, then I am glad. If you would like me to respond directly to you as regards this letter, then let me know, otherwise, without mentioning your letter (not that way), I will respond to them in my journal. Most of these things are directly related to the post "I'd been meaning to make," although there are added elements I am sure I will be unable to subtract from the equation, now that you have said them.
In any case, nothing I end up saying over there will connect you in any way to myself.
(Btw, for the record, in my book, Humbert, being grown and of sound mind, was no "innocent.")
Bestest,
Mark
Alrighty, so that was the easy part. The rest is hard, though. So, I'm thinking I ought to get some sleep and do that on a fresher mind.
[I didn't get started on the rest of this for another day and half, 'till Saturday morning, and though it took me five hours of thinking and writing, I still don't think I did a very good job. Maybe a good job simply can't be done with such questions or issues, but I tried, and it's continued up here, now]"