I AM EMPOWERED, pt.3: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues! (Patreon)

 <Note: You can check out I Am Empowered's previous installment here.

And now, back to Emp's first-person narration, taking place roughly around the beginning of Empowered vol.1: >

I AM EMPOWERED 

Chapter 2: WHAT IS THE SOUND OF ONE HAND (NOT) TWEETING? (pt.1)

You might be curious about the odd formatting of my rambling, here. You might even note that each ramble's no more than 140 characters long.

Well, I solemnly promise to explain this oddity in a bit. First, though, I'll (whiningly) explain the underlying rationale for said oddity.

Ever since I moved to this city, the oft-heralded Mecca For West-Coast Cape Culture, I find that I have absolutely no one I can confide in.

My mom knows that I'm a superheroine, but I very carefully edit and verbally Photoshop the picture I present to her of my so-called career.

Not being a dummy, she's already frownily, forehead-wrinkly dubious—and justifiably so—about my less-than-auspicious vocational choice. 

She's well aware that superheroes have—by far—the highest injury and death rates of any occupation in the country. "WE'RE #1! WE'RE #1!"

Face it, crab fishermen, loggers, and coal miners: We fruitily dressed doofi get injured and/or killed much more often than you do. U JELLY?

Hey, I'm jealous of YOU, deep-sea fishermen. I'd rather wear practical, body-hiding raingear than my supersuit's skin-tight embarrassment. 

Honestly, even the most glaringly neon ensemble of hip boots, fisherman's apron and crabber gloves is still less garish than my costume.

So, yeahp, my mom has plenty of all-too-good reasons to be worried about me, though she rarely voices her hair-graying concerns directly.

Instead, she communicates her anxiety for me strictly through the richly evocative but nonverbalized language of deep, exasperated sighs.

One sigh says: "Why can't you be unemployed and facing a brutal post-grad job market, instead of (semi-)employed and facing a brutal death?" 

Variant sigh: "Never thought I'd be unhappy, if not sick with fear, that my daughter landed a job in her chosen field right out of college."

Another sigh conveys, "Elissa Megan Powers, I will go to my grave regretting that I ever bought you those G-d Awesome Girl Underoos®."

I understand her complex Sigh Code because, just like my mother, I too am known to rock a sigh—or a few hundred sighs—from time to time.

I couldn't inherit Mom's perfect body or her self-assurance or her extreme non-spazziness, but I did receive her gift for incessant sighing.

The common plea that every one of my college roommates was eventually driven to make: "Will you PLEASE stop sighing? It's driving me crazy!"

Naturally, what was my response to my sigh-incensed roommates' desperate appeals? One last big, sad, woe-is-me-ish sigh, naturally. SIGHHHH

The point? I can't confess fully to Mom about how badly things are going, or she'd freak out even more freak-outily than she already does.

I've had to cut myself off from my college-era friends, because I just can't afford to let them know that I'm a (kinda crappy) superheroine.

My post-grad chats and text exchanges with them have been awkwardly and uncomfortably stilted, full of lies and evasions and half-truths.

More like quarter-truths or one-eighth-truths than half-truths, really, as I'm crazy-lady paranoid about blabbing any Secret Identity clues.

Speaking of paranoia, I'm convinced that Kristen and Hanna and Melanie—my college BFFs—can all tell that I'm pretty much blowing them off.

Late at night, biting my lip and grinding my teeth—not at the same time, obvsly—I'm certain that they now think of me as a stuck-up bitch.

I imagine Hanna's trademark Snarky Sneer as she hisses, "Ooh, Emp's too busy being West-Coast Awesome to bother with lowly peons like us."

Not helping: Thanks to craptastic social experiences dating from kindergarten to college, I've never felt 100% secure in any friendship.

On some level—even with Theoretically Close Friends—I always feel creepy-crawlingly uncertain, that I need them far more than they need me.

All the way back to childhood, I've hated my own abject neediness, since A Real Superheroine should be able to stand alone, shouldn't she?

And while desperately masking my abject neediness from friends, I'm simultaneously annoyed by how I think they must perceive me as inferior.

In my warped reasoning, I'm all, "So, I'm too inferior to deserve your attention, huh?", while thinking that, yes, I AM indeed too inferior.

Hello, approach-avoidance conflicts! Hi, passive-aggressive tendencies! Welcome, social-interaction dysfunction! Holy crap, do I ever suck. 

HYPOCRITICAL EMP IS HYPOCRITICAL: While avoiding contact with Kristen/Hanna/Melanie, I'm kinda peeved that THEY'RE not trying to contact ME.

Let's recap, shall we? I can't be fully honest with my mom, and I can't be even remotely honest with my effectively forsaken college buds.

I can't be honest with any of my good friends in the superhero community because, well, I kinda haven't made any friends, good or otherwise. 

I swear, I tried my fumbling and socially inept best to kiss up to Sistah Spooky, the undisputed Alpha B-Word of the Superhomeys' wolf pack.

I did everything but roll on my back and expose my throat and belly to her, submissive-Beta-wolf-style. (Maybe I should've tried that…?)

Just like in elementary school—and all subsequent milieus to follow—I knew I'd be screwed if I couldn't get on the Alpha B-Word's good side.

And just like in elementary school—and junior high through college—I couldn't get on the Alpha's good side, and did indeed wind up screwed.

Sistah Spooky despises me with a level of contempt and disdain most superheroes reserve for villains like Glue-Gun Gil or Jade Jellyfish. 

She never, ever misses a chance to shame and humiliate me. Given my problematic job performance, she gets all too many chances to do so.

Worse still, Spooky is SCARY-GOOD at intrasocial violence. She's just as deadly with cutting remarks as she is with mystical hellblasts.

I feel just as powerless and impotent in the face of Spooky's endless, withering scorn as I do when a supervillain is tying me to a chair.

Around Spooky, I feel just as maddeningly voiceless and stifled and unable to talk back as I do after a bad guy's stuffed a rag in my mouth.

Gotta love being a grown-ass superheroine hiding in a bathroom stall, trying to keep from bawling after Spooky's latest verbal curbstomping. 

Just like in junior high, I'm dabbing at tears and snot with toilet paper, struggling not to make any noise, wondering what's wrong with me. 

Except now, I have superpowers! Yay! Needless to say, in junior high I assumed everything would be different if I could become a superhero.

Why, hello, emotional feedback loop: My shame and self-loathing at still being such a stupid crybaby makes me even more of a stupid crybaby. 

A clue? Passing me in the Superhomeys' ladies room, Yummy Mummy muttered under her breath, "Spooky really, REALLY doesn't like blondes."

Yeahp, my superteam's Queen Bee utterly loathes me for, it seems, the vile crime of being born with intolerable hair-follicle pigmentation.

And as I anticipated, none of the other superheroines on the team will talk to me, lest they incur the Eldritch, Terrifying Wrath of Spooky.

As someone suffering rather badly under the Eldritch, Terrifying Wrath of Spooky, I can't blame the other girls for not wanting to incur it.

Even most male members of the Superhomeys tend to steer well clear of me, as they're almost as intimidated by Spooky as the female capes.

I get along okay with Capitan Rivet, at least, but I respect him too much to burden him with all the icky emotional crap roiling in my head. 

<UPDATE: Just noticed that this story clearly predates Empowered vol.8, judging by the use of "Hanna" for one of Emp's college friends. This version of Hanna has no connection to Mindf**k Hannah, okay? (Just so we're clear on this point.)>

<Next week on I AM EMPOWERED: The rationale for this project's Twitter-based format is revealed! Click here to jump to the next chapter!> 

TOMORROW: Time for another Friday installment of COMICS RIFFS I LOVE!