So…what is it I'm supposed to be doing?

This is going to be a depressed post. I'm sorry for that, and if you wanted to read something positive, I posted one good story for you today. Just scroll down two posts.

I'm not sure if it's the weather or just a number of glitches and arbitrary decisions that have left me feeling helpless and defeated with most of my problems. Y'all already know about the problem I had with Smashwords, and you should know how depressing it is for me to put my books up at Amazon and wait to see which ones they'll decide to lose to a "glitch". (Blood Relations is a given, but there may be others.) There's also been news that they're going to stop making CDs in 2012, and here in Italy we're still not allowed to have digital music downloads or video streaming from the US or the UK. So my access to new legal music is in jeopardy. Today, I decided to download the new Xbox update, and my machine and games will only run in Italian now. Microsoft Xbox support on Twitter tried to help me out with no success, and the tech support number they gave isn't working. Even if it was working, I suspect my game box has just been taken offline for at least 2-3 months due to it speaking the wrong language at me.

So, short recap, all of my hobbies, the things meant to take my mind off my issues, are now being hindered or threatened by problems that are all completely out of my control. I can't undo the update, so I can't game until Microsoft sorts out what's wrong. My writing hobby is a fucking joke thanks to the constant "help" of my vendors, and sometime next year, the music companies will force me to begin constant piracy of music instead of letting me support the artists legally. It's the most ludicrous idea ever, that I will be forced to steal from these people because they flat out refuse to open any legal digital markets to me. I was getting around that by buying CDs, and now they've decided "No, we don't even like having your money that way!" It's like living in Bizarro World, where not selling to people equals huge profits.

It's more than just these first world issues depressing me, but all of these problem share the same theme. I have to contact people and say "Hey, this isn't going to be helpful or fair for me. Can't you please reconsider or at least offer a workaround for someone like me?" And for my troubles, I get back a reply like: "Thank you (client name) for your interest in us and/or our product. Unfortunately, you're not good enough to deserve our concern. If you have other problems that you'd like us to give you the same automated answer on, feel free to try again." And unlike Regretsy, no one is going to go to bat for me with iTunes, PayPal, Amazon, Smashwords…pretty much every online company I have to deal with where I've dared to need actual customer service instead of rude condescension.

Six years ago I had my first stage vaginoplasty. My doctor told me that he wanted me to heal about two years and come back for the second stage, labiaplasty. It's a much cheaper surgery. Or, it was six years ago. Now it's inflated to about half the cost of my original surgery, not including local pharmaceuticals, hotel, food, and travel accommodations. And it wouldn't matter if the procedure had stayed the same price, because nothing I did these last few years earned much money.

I suppose that if I had never sent donations to other people, and had never spent any extra money buying books or music, I could have easily afforded the airfare and surgery. But I was trying to follow the advice I'd seen on how to be a good member of the social media world and ensure that other people would care about my stuff and would want to help me promote it. I had this naive belief that if I followed the rules and busted my ass, I might sell enough books to support myself, maybe even pay for my own surgery.

So I shared links. I did reviews and invited people to do guest posts. I talked up my other hobbies, even came up with a drink recipes feature to do something a little different every now and then. I got out on the social sites and tried to join in the forums. I stretched myself as thin as I could to meet and know as many people as possible, and with everyone, regardless of their positions in the creative totem pole, I tried to sample their stuff.

But despite making hundreds of connections, the feeling of being alone with my problems and working alone on my projects didn't change. I mean, there's the creative folks who try to help with promotions. But like I said in an earlier post this week, the few readers I connect with are creative people. I don't connect with anyone else. So I write up these posts about child abuse, sexism, racism, and bullying, and nobody cares. They don't get shared or discussed. I'm just ignored. I'm not going to connect with other victims by posting these stories. Much as I hoped it might happen, Audrey and Rachel aren't going to contact me so we can sort out who needs more help in healing. I'm not going to inspire another blogger to chat up these topics. I've halfway convinced the writing community that I'm speaking up for the molesters, not the molested, and I can't connect with normal people either. They don't want to hear anything I have to talk about. They don't want anything I'm selling. Just like the customer service agent at the mega-corporation, I'm not good enough to deserve anyone's individual attention.

I'm feeling the same way about my future stories. I have so much work out, and none of has ever made a blip on the radar. When I promote any of my old titles, it feels a waste of time. Every new social network provides perhaps a month or two of hope that starting with an all-new community and a smaller pool of followers, I'll be shared on their network because there's no way to miss my posts. But even when people see my stuff, they don't share it. I share their stuff, but I have no idea why nobody ever feels compelled to return the favor. I see that they will share links from other writers, and they will thank me for sharing their work. But they won't promote me in return.

I see how they have lists of authors on their blog rolls. But even the folks who'd praised my writing in the past didn't feel the need to share links to my books, or to publicly count me as a fellow author. I did what was asked of me, so in the absence of any other explanation for why every project I launch sinks without so much as a whimper in response from others, I end up with the idea that I'm just not good enough.

It's a natural mindset for me, being the victim of two neglectful parents, the victim of bullying, and of constant belittling by teachers, counselors, principals, pastors, police officers, and any other adult authority figure who felt qualified to talk down to a queer child. I wasn't good enough for my mother or father to hear me or take me on my terms. Hell, these days, I feel the same way about Mom thanks to her about-face and journey to conservative Jebus worship. Dad's tried, but now that he's got grandkids to pay attention to, somehow every conversation with him could be summed up as "I'm sorry, Zoe, could you repeat that? There was something going on here that's more important than you." I tried stopping calling for a few months, to see if maybe not having talked in a while would mean we'd have more to talk about. Well I had more to say, but Dad would walk out of the room without telling me, and then I'd ask a question and sit there for a minute or two before he came back. When I asked how long he'd been gone, he'd just blow me off. So I'm not even good enough for my dad to pay attention to me.

I wasn't good enough for my friends to stand up for me when I was bullied. I'm not talking about childhood, although it was true then too. No, I'm talking about this year. That's what's ripped the soul out of me, and out of my passion to write. It's coming to the terms with how many people I thought I had a deep and real relationship with, and it didn't mean anything to them. I was just being stupid believing them when they said they loved me.

I wasn't good enough for most of the people I submitted work to. They didn't even consider my work worthy of a form letter. 98% of all my queries are met with dead silence. That was true before I got online, when almost nobody accepted electronic submissions and I was using a copy of The Writer's Market at the public library to look up contacts. Once I could get online and submit queries to more places electronically, my pattern of near-constant silent rejections remained consistent.

I've doubted myself and have written to editors and other writers to say "I'm not submitting this. I just want you to read it and tell me if it's awful." And they come back and say, "No, it's just different." But somehow being different doesn't mean being special or unique. It means everyone ignores me because I don't fit in. Sad thing is, I had a publicist tell me I should promote my work with gays and trans people, and I had to explain to him that I did, and that they ignored me too.

I'd hoped that at some point in my life, I'd be able to harness at least one talent and become well known enough that someone would care, and then, finally, I could talk about bullying and abuse without being ignored. And now…now I'm just counting down the days until I die. There's this howling chasm between me and most of you, and I don't know who to reach you. There's nothing I've shared or given of myself that's been deemed worthy of your attention. There's no hope that anything I'll share in the coming months will matter either. Every day, I'm just getting up and burning off another empty day of life without meaning, without connection to others, and without any sense of progress or direction. And at every turn that I ask for advice or help, I'm attacked for being negative, or for being entitled.

Fuck, people, I'd give you the clothes off my back if I thought it would help you out. I'll send you money for bills or food if things are desperate for you. I can love and feel empathy easily, and when you wound me, it hurts worse because you aren't just words on the screen to me. You're real people who I thought I knew. But for years now, people have treated me as just words on a screen. I'm not a real person with a breakable heart. I'm just that stupid entitled attention whore.

I want to love and know you people. So why am still so broken that I can't deserve something more than your scorn and derision? And how do I keep pressing on when every day feels more hopeless and pointless than the last?

So, what am I supposed to do that will make life into something bearable? Because I can tell you, not a one of my forms of escape can disguise how isolated and hopelessly lost I feel now. What's the plan here, people? Cause right now all I got is "wait to die."