Wish I was, it’s Baltic here.

This is a backgammon board, since we never did get around to playing I still have no idea if you even play.  I can tell you the Turkish are a lot better than the Lebanese, but not a patch on the Israelis so if you are any good, I might consider ignoring you for a game.

I was number 9 in Turkey at one point.  Pooh to you.

One of the things I write about when I am not Ina Disguise is dealing with people with personality disorders.  I also talk about aging and weight issues.  I spent quite a bit of time over the last year or two under another name writing about those things, and people found it quite helpful.

So which is the worst personality disorder?  Having been fortunate enough to spend quality time with my friend, who was a psychologist, I have now had the luxury of experiencing most of them.

Despite people being very shocked and dismayed at the actions of narcissists, usually because they have not encountered them before adulthood and have no means of defending themselves when they do, and despite my own shady experiences with them, I think for me the worst is the Histrionic, because they are very, very boring, brittle and somewhat aggressive characters that you cannot really communicate with unless you are stupidly sympathetic.

They often accompany the central disorder with forcing their views on you about fashion, weight, age, how you should live your life (just like theirs) etc.  They do not learn much due to their issues, and really there isn’t much use for them unless you have a sales job you want them to do and which benefits from psychotic tunnel vision and usually greed.

If you are dull witted or simply young and lazy and don’t bother to find out what the issue is with them, it is usually easier just to agree with them, especially if they have money and stuff to offer you.  This makes it particularly pointless to develop any kind of relationship with them.

At least with a narcissist you can do the emotional pavane, and with a borderline you can leave before disaster strikes, with a histrionic this is not even possible as they will simply gawk at you and ask you and everyone else what you are doing. They seem to enjoy aggressive stupidity.  They will then project whatever they have done onto you as if it is your fault, hilariously not noticing that other humans are functional and will notice the obvious flaws in what they’re saying.

The aging histrionic is particularly sad, they invest a lot in facecream and envy, and they can be persistent pests.

Having been in freeze mode for the equivalent of several years due to quite extensive abuse, I can tell you that such people are not safe to be around, and should you realise that you are being targetted by one, you should not be at all shy about going no contact.  It will not serve you well or develop your character one bit to be forbearing.

One religious nut tried to tell me that God wants you to maintain contact with your blood relatives.  I am afraid that I had a zero tolerance response to this, and listed the things that God certainly does not want or need you to tolerate.

If you are on the receiving end of crap behaviour from family, don’t look back.  They won’t change.

You may be able to see it without logging in, however there are so many free titles on Smashwords that you might as well register.

It is just a book distributor, the story will be out free in all stores in a couple of days

Love’s a funny Thang.

New, free as ever, flash fiction, click above

I keep being asked about the new stuff coming out, and I usually only have time to give a very short answer, so here is what happened with the film.

I bought the equipment, know how to edit, probably need new software which I haven’t really costed yet as I have nothing to edit at the moment.  Had made some costumes and some props, had notified the neighbourhood and was setting up for the first day of filming, which was a funeral scene.

I had thought out the plans for the film based upon my normal habits, so all I would have had to do is load up the car every time I was passing through the area, jump out of the car and do it.

I was still very upset over my friend’s untimely death at the time and did not really have anything nice to think about.  Bawbag had been sufficiently ‘friendly’ to get his latest skank to come over and sound me out about returning to his dubious ‘fold’ and I had said no, on the basis that Bawbag is a pretty shitty person that isn’t very nice to his friends, especially when they are female.  He had his chance at establishing trust, he blew it, probably delibarately but he is quite self aware and was sort of protecting me by doing this.

I say this as someone who has a lot of experience with disordered people.  A disordered person who means you actual harm such as my eldest sister will verbally stab you in the face whilst telling you how much she likes you and gaslighting you, even when it is blisteringly obvious to any non-disordered or traumatised person present what she is doing.  Basically all you have to do with that is let her speak and then ask the audience whether they would like a sister.  I haven’t encountered anyone who wants to agree to this lovely offer yet. (my mother thought her behaviour was hilarious right up until she was very old and experienced being helpless next to it for herself- I was expected to cope with a lot from a very very early age)

Bawbag on the other hand, warned me very early on that he was not a nice person, that if he kept his hands off me it was a compliment and then preceeded to spend a year or three screaming abuse both to my face and behind my back because I did not return for round 2 after I insisted on making his cafe legal.

Friendly abuse, if you will.  It did not do my physical health any good and I could have done with having an actual person to speak to, but the fact it was not far worse was gratifying, because it meant he did not actually mean me any harm despite the apparently constant self-torture.  I used to send him presents from time to time as a sort of thank you for leaving me free to do my own thing. You do have to remember that disordered people are traumatised too, whether that is justified, as in Bawbag’s case, or not at all justified, as in my sister’s case.

Anyway, whilst I have a great number of contacts in the media industry, I do not particularly want to make use of them and some of them are just assholes that I do not want to see again, so I wasn’t going to be involving them.  Besides which if any of them got wind of the Bawbag problem, a whole new set of problems would have emerged.

So I was left with only one option, and that was to do the thing myself and await some of the locals to show some interest.

So the day of the funeral shooting, I had selected a really great spot was about to do the shots, and Bawbag decided that he had no sense of humour and that he would show off to his wee friends what a tough guy he was, came out and smashed my stuff.

I am aware that this was as much about not involving him in the shoot as using me as a puppet to feign grandiosity, had I asked him to help there would have been no issue, but I did not want his help and did not see the need for it. I just expected him to suck it up and show a bit of understanding.  Had he done so things could have been very different.

What it did demonstrate was that I was not safe or sufficiently well thought of in the area for anyone to show the slightest bit of enthusiasm or interest or deal with the Bawbag problem without police involvement.

I knew what he was going to do in terms of trying to damage me as a local character before he did it, because he was just my sister all over again, without quite as much actual poison.  Bawbag has some warmth to his abuse, whereas with the sister it is directly toxic and the only thing you can do with it is make sure she cannot get anywhere near you. Let her poison her own family, now she cannot get involved with anything I am doing. She even found a way of using the Christmas presents I bought her kids against me, so I stopped bothering with that years ago.

Anyway, I responded to it by raising my profile rather than doing anything else, because getting involved in a disordered person’s pish is entirely pointless.  They just keep going, year after year.  Hence the small amount of promotion I have done,  because the entire point of me sitting sewing in public for a year and a half was to make the film eventually and use it for something positive for everybody.

Anyway, despite a couple of attempts to get people to at least discuss it without spending too much time there in case Bawbag tried anything, nobody offered any support and one of the few conversations I had about it was someone saying their staff might not like the idea, which was particularly crap as a response.  Therefore I just prioritised elsewhere and did not see the point in rushing to finish the collection after that.  I was also pretty ill, but I seem to be in recovery at present.

You can spend a lot of time wasting your emotions on disordered people.  They really aren’t worth it.  They are sometimes likeable, sometimes not, either way you shouldn’t stop to listen as they are a waste of your time and energy.

Anyway, now I have a giant pile of work to finish, I await the inspiration to do something with them, but I suspect that what I am working on just now is not actually what I will end up with.  Still trying to think what to do about the film as I have no intention of doing something in character thanks to the attack on my film set making it impossible for me to work alone and the lack of enthusiasm by a public suckered into sitting staring at other people having a life instead of having one themselves.  That isn’t my problem, it’s theirs.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while but was unsure what I wanted to say exactly, since the nature of my work is ambiguous I update the same post every now and again to establish what I am all about.

How did I end up ridiculously close friends with a person described as a ‘very bad man’ by the Glasgow police despite not talking to him for three out of the three and a half years I knew him and who was a very right wing Muslim from a different continent that hated women?

OK so for the benefit of his recent ex girlfriends, both of whom are probably by now aware they have had a lucky escape, the secret of surviving Bawbag without hating him was not sleeping with him in the first place and providing genuine affection without anything that could be interpreted as a string.

• Bawbag had this thing, common with disordered people, where he wanted you to want him, but was not going to give away anything that suggested he was interested in you.  Since I have been used to such people from birth, I am very good at shorting this particular circuit and completely ignoring any indication of sexual tension.  So this is the first principle of getting to know difficult men.  You don’t sleep with them and you let them talk.  Being a good listener is priceless.
• Similar to the case of Little Shiva, the relationship could be summed up in one flash of connection.  In the case of Little Shiva, we only ever had one conversation, and it was sufficient to have me making an epic throne for him and him checking the website frequently for the last five years or so, so my flashes of connection appear to be fairly intense.
• Also, having been on the receiving end of behaviour of the worst siblings you can imagine, I am pretty thick skinned but have very clear boundaries, so when he started kicking at them it was very easy to say no to him.  Your closest friends  can be people you have no intention of speaking to as a result.  Particularly the last girlfriend was very confused by this. She had a very similar outlook to the problem ex in that she was constantly looking for an edge she could gain over you to get the required sexual attention, which is a dangerous mistake a certain type of woman always makes.  Bawbag likes to use this against you, and he was well aware that I am the opposite of this.  If you want to be with me, you will be with me, if you don’t, that is fine too.  I have no issues at all about incompatibility. My primary interest is quality of emotional connection, which makes life a lot simpler. Sex is messy and disturbing, so it takes a major second place to the quality of your relationship.
• Bawbag was very controlling, and I responded to this by being just as controlling in response.  Every point raised was played back to him, so he was aware he was not going to easily stomp all over me.  He didn’t want to either, which from observation was new to him.  I have never witnessed such an epic internal fight as I saw with Bawbag in relation to me.  He knew perfectly well I was very fond of him, but absolutely not interested in taking any shit.
• Bawbag is dumb about some things because of his disorder, but very smart about others.  If anything, he should consider a career as a pick up artist, because he is exceptionally good at intertwining with you emotionally.  I remarked upon this when chatting to the police at one point.  I do realise this is part of an elaborate con trick, but in order to pull it off, you have to have some emotions in the first place.  In terms of ability to connect with you, I have never met anyone who can touch him for sheer speed.
• Bawbag was savvy enough not to tell me very much at all about his ‘other’ career.  I deduced what I do know about him from what I saw rather than what he said.
• I was the dominant force in the relationship.  This is because of previous abuse.  I am the way I am because of the way I have been treated.  I know I am kind and laid back, but I don’t know about you, so I will always be like this. The person I am interested in at the moment, who probably isn’t interested in me but is always very pleasant, is also very kind and laid back and I do not know how that would work, so he is unlikely to be glorified in artwork any time soon.

To keep this brief, I will conclude that nobody is your inferior when it comes to matters of the heart, and out of the three women I am talking about in this post I ended up on top because I am genuine, not interested in who is superior, financially or otherwise and not at all scared of being alone.  If I have a deep love affair, it is often not sexual, probably the most intense I have ever been about anyone was Wolfe, and as soon as I knew how I felt I stopped watching or communicating with him directly because for one thing he was famous and I felt a bit stupid, and for another as it turned out he was married to at least two people and I have never been at all interested in getting involved with that.  A third issue would obviously be living on a different continent, but that makes absolutely no difference to how you feel.

Love is described by Plato as a lack, so if you are in love and don’t want to be, it is often a case of analysing it to death.  You decide what it is about the person that you feel you don’t have and want from them, and you seek to develop it, which is why Ina exists for Wolfe rather than anyone else, particularly.  I am very guilty of the principle that an artist never feels they are good enough, so I have not been particularly assertive about advertising.  Wolfe would spit on this, so it is something I have to work on, really.

Anyway, since Bawbag is out and about gathering things from various places and will probably have someone read this to him, yes I remain deeply fond of him and I remain completely disinterested in his pish.  Sadly, I doubt he is going to grow out of it but I hope he is OK and not hurting people.  It doesn’t help.