We interrupt your regularly scheduled entry to bring you: One Hundred Demons

Yes, go read that link. Don't just skip it and come back later. That link is the entry, sort of. That link is a lot of things I've been wanting to say, every time I come across another person who casually claims that the terrible things which happen to children cannot be 'forgotten', that if anyone had a traumatic incident in their life they would of course know all about it. Go read the link. It's even got pictures, what more could you want? You see, it's not that her story is my story, but I might say that the abstraction of her story and the abstraction of mine could be close sisters. And, wisely, I am going to stop the self-disclosure there, before I get sick to my stomach.

Of course, if reading a nice comic strip about the reality of remembering and forgetting and trauma would be, well, traumatic -- you have my permission to skip it. Carry on.

July, the month of too much travelling, has begun. Anime Expo was last weekend; Jim and I went, with Kirby, and much fun was had, although very little of it at the convention. In fact, the goodness of the convention can be summarised in three bullet points, like so:

• Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaia (North American premiere of the Escaflowne movie)
• The Adolescence of Utena (the Utena movie) which reminded me why this is named Rose & Release.
• A few very fine people in the dealers room who were selling non-bootleg CDs. I bought 14.

The list of the convention badness would be much, much longer. Let it suffice to say that Anime Expo really ought to hire a dozen QA people to work out all their organisational and scheduling bugs. Or maybe two dozen.

However! As noted above, much fun was had, because there were not only three good bullet points at the con, but we were across the street from Disneyland! I had never been to Disneyland before, and I expected to find it sort of -- oh -- tacky or cliched or something. Unfun. But instead it was absolutely marvelous wonderful fun for inner children of all ages, and we rode on tons of rides and I got to see baby elephants and sheep in boats (er, not in the same place) and lots of pirates and giant boulders and we ate in the delicious Blue Bayou restaurant that's in the middle of the pirate ride, and that long run on sentence doesn't even start describing all the wonderful things about Disneyland. Plus I had a better time than I could have imagined hanging out with Kirby, whom it has been decided is my onii-san. And there were fireworks! Breathtaking fireworks, and we got to see them three nights in a row, once from Tomorrowland, once from our hotel balcony, and the last time in front of the castle in the center of the park, while eating cotton candy. It was just -- magical. As marketed. I want to go back.

Hmn, can you tell I'm in a good mood? There's a reason for that beyond the wonders of Disney, which is that I finally have a job! Yes, yes, yes. I accepted a very nice offer from SocialNet to do Java for them. I interviewed with them on Wednesday, and heard that they wanted to make me an offer on Thursday morning, right before we left for Anaheim -- and Friday morning Jake (my recruiter) called me at the hotel to tell me how much they were going to offer, and they faxed the offer letter to the hotel that same day. So going to Disney and taking this job are now utterly entwined with one another, and it's really sort of nice. SocialNet is both doing things I find interesting and have some experience with (databases with lots of information, various combinations of which must be accessed quickly), and it's an extremely people-focused business (and I am much more passionate about things involving people), and one of the people who interviewed me (Simeon) will also be my manager, and he just rocks. At least on first impression. He asked intelligent questions and had a good sense of humor, both of which are important to me.

So I'm intensely, intensely psyched. My start date is July 31st, 'cause I'm doing so much travelling this month it doesn't make sense to start until that's all died down. I wish it was sooner, but at the same time I'm glad to have a few weeks of honest vacation that isn't marred by the pressure and anxiety of job-hunting & the resultant depression.

I'm also dying to go back to playing the Vampire CRPG I bought at Fry's last night (it was on sale!), so I think I shall do so.

It is, predictably, much later. After gaming. Jim is home, sitting beside me, playing with his finances in mild contentment. Tomorrow we leave for Las Vegas, yes. I need to pack.

I have been waffling about the beginning of this entry, about the story I pointed you all to (you did read it, didn't you?), and how much I want to say about the truth of it in my life. Remembering the Utena movie makes me want to say more, but my own body tells me to say less; it's hard to breathe or swallow if I start being too open, and I get very sad and very scared and generally feel icky. And I remember someone telling me how surprised he was to read pieces in my other journal in which I was utterly self-revealing, albeit in an oblique fashion. He was surprised, he said, because he had a hard time imagining a person who could do that. And I think about that, looking at the first paragraph, and wondering what on earth you all think of me. Who am I, to be even showing you a glimpse of something so intensely personal?

Silence equals death. And not just for me, but for everyone else whose childhood was much worse than society allows for one's childhood to be. There's a bit of Pamela Dean in one of her Liavek stories ("The Green Cat", actually), something along the lines of "We did not think our parents would love us any better for causing the neighbours to think we had been made more miserable than parents may rightfully make their children." I don't think anyone will love me any better for knowing that my childhood was much worse than a childhood may rightfully be, but letting people know that is part of getting back to the real world. I was born into the outside world, the world of good things, and even though I was stolen from there as a child I can still get back. I am getting back, slowly, over time.

I guess the self-disclosure stays.