Oh my gosh. Meg Ryan (born 1961) played Betsy Stewart Andropoulos on As the World Turns from 1982-84. This makes her 21 and over when Determined skipped school to watch her as a TV heart-throb! Meg first became famous at the age of 20 in the movie Rich and Famous, so the 12-year-old Determined can only have fallen in love with a woman who was at least 20!

I wonder what she’d say to a 12 year old who fell in love with a nearby 20-year-old today. I don’t think she’d want the young person to skip school to see their dream guy or girl in wondrous action.

Which leads to the conclusion that something terrible happened to Determined that involved sex at an early age. Something that has alienated her from her early self at the same time as it has made her ragingly protective. Something gruesome that she sees lurking in any 20 year old Meg Ryan out there who would look back through the screen and respond to that young girl’s adoration.

Except that it would be a man, of course. Some hideous man did something quite wrong to her, and she has seen that face in every pedophile ever since. No wonder she is Determined.

Did it happen before she started dismembering dolls, or was the symbolic violence part of her reaction to the abuse she suffered? Or did it symbolize her own feelings of being torn apart? I’ve had many lesbian friends and they were often energetic and not made for dolly-play, but I’ve never heard of one shredding dolls limb from limb before.

The violence she must feel against her abuser(s) and all simulacra of that person can only be incredible. There is aggression in everything she says, you can hear it, even in “breffus.” And then suddenly you see where it goes when it can’t sustain itself: drunk-dialing.

From wikipedia: “Drunk dialing is a pop-culture term denoting an instance in which an intoxicated individual places phone calls that he or she would not likely place if sober. The term often refers to a lonely individual calling former or current love interests.”

Members of the lesbian community will know that there is a lot of concern about over-use of alcohol. Traditionally it has been a heavy drinking community, arguably in response to the stresses placed on independent women belonging to a minority that until recently was despised (how soon they forget). Getting half-wrecked and calling people up – that’s extreme. Our friend Determined may rely heavily on her daily dose of pedo-retribution to deal with the underlying problems that are bothering her. Which probably relate to abuse that she has never had competent counselling for. She may think it’s sappy to go for counselling. Get out and do something instead. She also admits in her myspace self-description to another addiction, smoking. Plus nervous habits: lint-picking. She lives on a knife edge of aggression and compensatory behavior.

When I see the word “meme” in her discourse, I know she could have picked it up from chatting or reading the papers, but her use is so facile I think she may actually have read Richard Dawkins and is proud of it. I speculate that she strongly rejects God and religion. Her myspace info includes an astrological sign but the religion blank that so many people fill in Christian/other for is not included in her profile. What must she think, looking on this site and seeing a couple of dozen simulacra of her abuser, except weak-kneed versions who aren’t so upfront and ruthless as her abuser was, worshipping that primitive superstition that rational Dawkins has proven is just a myth, a pernicious meme?

She simply wants to tear our limbs off. In fact, psychologically, she has to.

It’s a tragedy on so many levels that it’s beyond speaking. But she would have no idea why I would say anything so idiotic.

She has a daughter and I am sure she is convinced she knows love backwards and forwards, inside and out. Because she loves her daughter and her mom.

Here is the wonder that eludes her (inclusified as per the MCC church):

Luke 6:32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even evildoers love those who love them. 33 “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even evildoers do the same. 34 “If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even evildoers lend to evildoers in order to receive back the same amount. 35 “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for God herself is kind to ungrateful and evil persons. 36 “Be merciful, just as your heavenly Mother is merciful.
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. 38 “Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.”

That someone could be that way and make it work in the tough real world, and get a legitimate sense of elation and victory from it: this is what she cannot know. This passage may remain bullshit to her for the rest of her life.

Yet I pray that it will not be so. If she ever drunkdials the Heavenly Mother in one of those moments, and finds herself making a prayer, I hope she gets a good strong connection.