Jamies Story Page23
on February 9, 2012 at 12:01 amPRETTEH SHIRT JAMIE.
Off to LAC this weekend, though it’s just started to snow so driving will be interesting! See you Monday!
Welcome to Khaos Komix
on January 14, 2013 at 11:28 amKhaos Komix is a GLBTWTFBBQ Comic that ran from 2009-2012. It has over 500 pages is now complete with an archive for you to browse at your leisure.
You can either Start from the beginning or read about each couple.
(Trigger warnings for EVERYTHING and nothing is safe for work.)
For those of you finished with Khaos, I present Shades of A over on my new site Discord.
[ 10 Comments ]
gah. know that feeling.
Though my relationship with my mom is probably not as extreme as this, it comes pretty damn close -_- i love her, but that woman…
Yep. I know the feeling.
my mom basically pulled something like this with me.
it sucks.
I’m 24 and my mother hasn’t stopped giving me shit for my shirts since I was 17. When I was 17 it was “You look like a criminal”. Now it’s “You dress like a teenager! You need to start dressing like an adult” or “You need to dress your age”.
I wear jeans and punk band shirts. I have no idea what the hell that even means. And “This IS what people my age dress like” is not an acceptable answer. I love my mom but she’s kind of an idiot sometimes.
Suit and tie. Don’t you see everyone else out on the streets? Suit and tie.
Right?
Exactly! lol
Man, don’t you love having those love-hate relationships? They freakin’ suck. Why are humans so complicated that we hate someone’s guts but can’t stop loving them?
Because there’s no evolutionary advantage to breaching that precious boundary between really, really wanting to roll a grenade under your mother’s bed, and actually doing it.
now i know i’ve been on facebook too long
cause i just wanted to hit the “LIKE” button for your comment 
Me too.
Crazy Controlling Lady is crazy and controlling
lol I had the same conversation with my mother when I got my first job, but it was over a pair of boots
I’m just jumping in to say that I love my mother and that she’s nothing like this, and that I’m lucky that she’s so awesome.
Cuz everyone relates to this way too well. And there’s still hope in the world.
And my mum’s awesome.
Yes. Just saying.
My mum is awesome, too. My friends’ mums are all kind of lame and/or controlling, etc, so I’m constantly reminded of how awesome mine is. She didn’t just let my dye my hair neon blue when I was fifteen, she did it for me!
My mum is amazing as well. I was stupid when I was a teenager and hated her for no reason, but she never deserved it. I’ve made it up tenfold ever since. <3
My mom actually bought me my first pair of stripper heels to cheer me up over a bad break up, then later bought me a pair of dominatrix boots when I came out to her as into BDSM!!! Although, it’s not that suprising when my sister, all her friends, and MY MOM HERSELF refer to her as a “origa-goth”.
My dad threw me out, but there was a similar sort of reaction of horror and outrage from mom when I got my tongue pierced- so much that she stopped defying orders and secretly giving me money.
Oh man, I make happy sounds every time I come to this site and there’s a new page up, especially so soon after the previous update.
Sorry, I love this page and all, but I want to hear more about Jamie’s sex life!!! You can’t just end a
Got cut off accidentally. You can’t just end a page talking a out Jamie’s first time with a girl and then just change topics to shirts! Such a tease, Tab!
I think… we didn’t get to see much of her because she didn’t mean much to him? Just a way to get off, a one night stand, he might not even remember her name, if he even knew it to begin with.
I wasn’t so much curious about the girl as I was with that period in Jamie’s life when he was sleeping around, if that was what he was doing. But I think you are right that the fact he doesn’t talk about is is probably just as revealing as it would have been if he had.
I wish it wasn’t so easy to relate to all the guilt tripping Jamie gets from his mom.
WHARGARBL
Oddly enough, I had almost the exact same conversation with my mother when I tried buying my own clothes (she was still buying me conservative dresses when I was 27!) however, when I was in high school and wanted to dye my hair, she was the one who suggested that if i was going to dye it anyway, I might as well go for blue-black. Ooookay, so goth dresses and Doc Martins were a huge no-no, but blue-black hair was cool? I gave up trying to figure out my mother.
My mum kinda did that same thing (something that made me stop trying to figure her out). I wasn’t allowed to go to concerts or festivals in my own country, because of drugs and alcohol and strangers and whatever, but when I said that I wanted to go to Roskilde with a friend, all she pretty much said was ‘fine’ and ‘when?’
Yeah, my mother is kinda the same way. She picks random things to freak out and be super controlling about, and when she does she is just as bad as Jamie’s mom. For example, she wouldn’t let me ride in a car with anyone else unless she knew them personally, and they were (as far as she knew) a responsible adult, and I could never stay out later than eight. If I got home (literally, this happened more than once) even a minute late, I would get an hour’s worth of yelling. But when I was ready to start having sex she bought me condoms and said have at it, no warnings, no opinions, nothing. Her perspective perplexes me.
My mom had some pretty bizarre limitations herself… I don’t know if anyone remembers Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but it was N64 game that was rated M and involved a lot of violence and adult jokes. I was 11, and I was NOT, under ANY circumstances, allowed to play that game……….. but she had absolutely no problem with me watching my BROTHER play that game. I still cannot fathom the logic where not holding the controller magically makes my eyes impervious to the content. She also didn’t have any problem renting the South Park movie for us to watch, still when I was 11.
Everyone actually gets this experience with their parents. The sad truth is often society has an idea of what you need to be at each age. Lets forget what is comfortable for you, what you love, etc. None of that matters! You need to keep wearing the same BS clothes to work they did 20 years ago because being a comfortable happy worker in functioning clothes doesn’t make sense! It makes more sense to put someone working on projectors ‘n’ such with grease in a suit! (Actually happened to everyone male ‘n’ female at my theatre.)
Oh.. and as an adult you also are not allowed to have fun or have any oddball fandoms. So you need to dump that asap because society hates it. You know be a good lil drone ‘n’ wear that nice blouse your mother gave you because society hates your Bowser shirt after 23 period.
Anyways… still going with she needs to be hit by a large truck. Then die slowly…
It’s not really about the clothes here, per se. It’s more the fact that HE made a decision about himself without consulting her first, which means something happened in his life that SHE had no control over. The shirt could have been identical to the ones she normally buys for him, and she probably still would have complained. What it boils down to isn’t “you bought clothes that I don’t approve of”, it’s “you did something that was completely for your own happiness without asking me for permission first”. That’s the sort of woman she is.
This reminds me of one of the videos I’ve seen from the Vlogbrothers on youtube. Where Hank suggests that as we get older, we have less fun (He was at walmart and a mother was yelling at her child for putting something on his head. {Likely not a bag or something dangerous, Hank’s not stupid}) and how we get stupider because of this. We take less risks, we do things that are more “normal” as we get older.
This spurred the movement to Put Stuff On Your Head, because it makes you happier.
Then Hank had another video about Having Fun being important, and srs bsns not being (as) important.
I hate it when people complain about clothes. There’s a time and place for fancy/nice clothes, and a time and place for fun clothes. There’s also what you’re comfortable in.
Finally a normal teen-parent fight! It’s improvement, imho.
You folks with awesome moms are lucky. I don’t even like my Mom because of everything she’s done to me in the past. She’s still a guilt-tripping control freak from hell. Not quite to the degree that Jamie’s Mom is but close. Mine once told me I was too fat to be an actress. And when i got my braces off and the orthodontist asked her if I was retarded because my teeth weren’t all one color (there was a stripe of white on each tooth where the braces bands were) my mother took me home, put me in a head lock and brutally scrubbed my teeth. To this day, I won’t go to a dentist because it traumatized me so badly that 12 year old me blamed the dentist for what happened instead of my mother. Of course this was back when i DID love my mother.
I know how he feels when it comes to his mom its hard to hate someone who you’ve known your whole life, especially when they give birth to you, no matter what they do or how horribly they treat you… you can’t help but love them
Am writing this to say that I love my Mum and she never did this to me, because I don’t think the relationship with his mother should be seen as normal and I am sorry some of you feel that way.
I worked during high school to pay for me to spend the last year of school overseas. It took forever and my parents supported me every step. I’m not saying they are perfect but I never had that kind of emotional blackmail to deal with.
My mom criticizes my taste when I buy stuff, like “it’s ugly!” or “it’s too boyish!”. I consider myself lucky, though, because I get a lot of freedom.
But even though I get my freedom (I can do whatever I want to do with my hair, I can wear what I want and I can travel around the country to see friends or go to conventions without a problem), I also get a lot of comments about how I look and my personality. It’s impossible to argue with her, because she always thinks she’s right. She even said that herself once – “I’m always right.”
I know my problems and conflicts with my mom are NOTHING compared with Jamie and his mom. They’re just very frustrating. When someone says mean stuff about me at school or anywhere else, I actually love to listen/read about it, because I find it so damn funny. Yet, I remember times when my mother made me cry. Last time she did, she made fun of me because I sometimes start crying too easily.
I probably make it sound worse than it is, though. As I said, I get my freedom, and I consider myself lucky. My mom often tells me that she loves me. Of course, I love her too, she’s my mom. So it’s pretty much a love-hate relationship. :>
Oh man, I just wanted to leave a short comment, and instead this happened.
You people with controlling mothers,I’m sorry for you.My mom is awesome and always has been.Like when it was brought up that I’m bi it was in passing and stuff.For me it’s my dad who is controlling and all that.I don’t really like him,but I suppose it’s good that he’s parenting like he does.
I love my mother. Reading eveyone’s comment here is a clear reminder of that. She’s kind, accepting, supporting, understanding, loving, doting… She’s sacrificed so much for me and my happiness, it’s kind of hard to even imagine it…
And I’ll be honest. I get SCARED when I see or read about parents like Jamie’s or many of these comments, and even my friends’ parents! It’s insane how controlling they are… And parents who throw their kids out for being different, who hit their children, who mentally abuse them, don’t care, etc etc, list goes on… I see it too much around me!
That’s why I really, really hope that when I’m an adult, I’ll be able to call my mother my friend, just like mom does with my Grandmother… c:
Totally unrelated to what everyone else is talking about…
I really like Jamie in the… fourth panel? The second image of him, where he’s angry, it makes him look quite a bit older which makes him much more attractive to me! I’m in my late 20s so teenagers don’t do it for me, but getting a glimpse of what 25 year old Jamie might look like…. yum!
My first comment ever. Hurrah! Hello folks!
Firstly. I’ve been reading Khaos since Alex’s story, and it’s one of the few comics that have actually touched me on an emotional level. I’ve cheered, and I’ve cried in equal parts. So thank you Tab for creating something amazing that captures so much.
Secondly, I love Jamie’s shirt on this page. It’s just, epic, gah, I don’t even have words. I love it. xD
Lastly… This page is just a fantastic way of summing up not only my relationship with my parents, but my fiancé’s relationship with her mother.
You can’t help who you’re related too, and sometimes they can be the best person/people in the world. Other times… they suffocate you. But you still love them, and you can’t stop loving them, because they’ve cared and looked after you to the best of their ability for most of your life. Even if they’re wrong, you know they’re only trying to do what’ they think is right.
I really feel for Jamie in this. It’s such an awkward place to be, stuck between who you have the potential to be, and the lies you must tell to make it seem like you are who your parents want you to be.
Jamie is such a trooper. I can only hope it all works out in the end for him!
-Penn
this scene and jamie’s thoughts exactly match my relationship with my mom. “this awkward mix of control, duty and guilt. combined with the difficult fact that she is my mother, and I love her.” I’ve never been able to use exact words to explain my duty to my mother no matter how she treats me, or how much I know our relationship is unhealthy. damn, this made me think. without being able to admit the reality of our relationship, I was trapped father and farther down at the bottom of a hole filled with the most important unsaid things between us, continuing to convince myself that i deserve everything she’s done to me, and that her anger and depression was my fault. Maybe this will help make it easier to dig myself out. It might sound ridiculous that such simple words took so long for me to appreciate, but I don’t care, and this is anonymous
. thanks, tab.
Both my mom and my dad are/were like this… The only difference is that I didn’t break out gradually like a normal person. I just let myself die inside and then eventually got kicked out anyway.
Did anyone else notice that we saw his mom’s entire face for the first time from Jamie’s POV? I suppose it’s b/c he’s seeing her more and more as the person she is. More symbolism!
It actually disturbed me how accurately this page described my relationship with my dad. If I show an interest in something that isn’t an interest of my dad, he immediately tells me that it’s wrong. He ‘loves’ me too much, that it physically suffocates me, if that’s even possible, though I believe that he just loves the idea of being a father and having complete control over someone, so that they can’t say no because of forced parent/child love.
P.S I want that shirt \m/
“What’s for dinner?” XD Way to remind mom of that chore of hers you always take for granted.
Sorry, not a chore of my mother. My mother just yells at me and my brother(he cooks dinner) to do all the chores. If your mom does chores like that for you, you are lucky.
I’m not sure you can say that he takes it for granted when he pays for board…
Now for a break, have some amusing meta.
I trained my mum to buy me the right kind of clothes as I hate shopping
. She has a marvelous eye, hell she buys clothes as gifts for other guys in the family. She wasn’t always this way though…
In my first and second grade of primary school, I had uniforms. Then I moved back to my hometown where school is casual. What did mother dearest dress me in? Imagine a 9 year old in a pleated black skirt, white tights, white button-up blouse and a sweater with a HOUSE. It was the gaudiest thing ever – blue on top, green on bottom (grass, get it?) and a red & yellow house straight out from a child’s drawing.
Every day I got a similar formal outift and I never ceased complaining. One day mum went to pick me up and watched my class leave. Now, put yourself in her place and visualise kids in sports clothing running out of the room while your child goes out in a frilly dress. My wardrobe was changed
.
Oh, but a year later she got me a feathery sweater, wore this abomination once and a nickname of Bird had stuck with me till the end of primary school.
I wonder if it’s some childhood fashion trauma – I turned out to be a guy XD .
Anyone else hear Joseph Gribble when Jamie’s says something that sounds like he’s frustrated?
Am I the only one who feels sorry for Jamie’s mom? She’s pretty messed up, and I wonder what happened to her to make her the way she is. Especially when it comes to religion.
I do. I wrote out this whole explanation of why, and then my lappie vanished it, which I guess is a sign. *glare* Maybe I’ll write it up again later… But yeah, I do feel sorry for her. Doesn’t mean I excuse her, but I do feel sorry for her.
I always try to see why someone would act a certain way and by doing this, I’ve justified the actions of about everyone who hurt me. Of course, it’s never black/white, but I can’t feel sorry for someone like this anymore. Even if she was wronged in the past, so many people have been wronged in the past and don’t end up making people miserable.
The reason I can’t feel sorry or feel pity anymore is because they will not do the same thing for me. It’s a one-way street. I can keep on telling myself ‘yeah, but they don’t really know and judge from what they’ve experienced themselfs’ and stuff like that, but they will not do this for me. This is all very me-orientated, but I can only speak for myself of course.
But in cases like this, even though one might sympathise with the mom/’bad’ person, the real being sorry should go to the ‘victim’, in this case Jamie. But maybe that’s just me.
Okay, so the reason that I do feel a little sorry for Jamie’s mum is because my parents were very abusive. More abusive than we’ve seen from Jamie’s mum, abusive. Both of my parents, but especially my dad. Eventually they kicked me out and I had to go live with my dad’s parents, who were even worse. They were worse to me, anyway. I don’t think they abused my dad, exactly, unless you agree with JKR that the Dursleys abused Dudley as much as they did Harry. (I don’t.) But anyway, I ended up running away and I’ve been on my own for a year now, in which year I’ve been through a lot and done a lot of reflecting. I’m currently in evaluation for bipolar disorder, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got it. But looking back, I’m starting to put pieces together and I think that at least my dad most likely had a mental illness of some kind and I’m becoming more able to see him as a person.
I agree that the “real” being sorry goes to Jamie, although (and this may just be me) I’ve never had a problem with caring about more than one person at any one time. However, I think it’s important to consider Jamie’s mum’s story, especially if you do strongly identify with Jamie, as I do. Not right after it happens, maybe. Not for Jamie right now. But at some point. And not feeling sorry as in sympathy, but feeling sorry as in pity. Because pity is what she deserves, but more than that, because when you can see your abuser as a creature deserving of pity, you are no longer under their power. When you pity them, you can no longer be a victim, because pity is not a two-way street like sympathy. Pity is a downwards emotion. (That’s why it’s incredibly offensive to pity disabled people, by the way.) When you pity the abuser, you no longer see them as a powerful person who hurts you, and who you can only struggle harder and harder to please. When you pity them, you see how pathetic you really are. And you’re a child abuse survivor, not a victim.
Wow, Freudian slip. <.< How pathetic _they_ really are, that should be.
Thank you for this reply, I agree. Maybe your reply was the meaning of the first post as well, if so, sorry! I just read the sorry for the mum part and it just hurt me a little. Because of my own experiences and where everything that had happened was sort of shoved away because I should see why this had happened and somewhere along those lines I had to sympathise with them because it always had two sides. And they never did the same for me.
Pity is a better word, maybe it’s because English is not my native language, but to that I agree. Because there are always reasons and such. I hope I can pity the people who wronged me someday, I know they still hold power over me, even though I don’t see them anymore. Maybe that’s why I fumed at the feeling sorry for the mum part. Sorry.
No need to apologize. XD I do think that if someone insisted we should sympathize with Jamie’s mum, I would probably get a little annoyed too, because we all do have personal responsibility for our actions. We can’t control our opportunities, but we can control our choices. Besides which, making people feel sympathy for them is a huge part of how many abusers do their controlling, Jamie’s mum included. So it’s a complicated issue, and everyone’s bringing something different to the table. But that’s why it’s good to have discussions like this, I guess. And so forth. *ramble*
I used to dress in whatever i felt like and my mom didnt really care or nag me about it.
There’s my sob story. It was too verbose for my liking.
I gotta say, my mum is awesome and she actually understands punk style clothing. I’m 23, I have a 13 month old son, and when my mum and I go shopping we still get me punk stuff, she actually finds most of it. I’m incredibly lucky. My dad and I had a horrid relationship from when I was 14 until I moved out, we would have screaming matches every night. But then I’d remember how well we got along when I was a kid a feel like a total ass. After I moved out we actually got back to being on a decent level with each other. So for those of you still living at home, hopefully you’ll get along with each other better once you move out.
I wish happiness and peace to everyone here who has been hurt.
I wanted to say my parents are both absolutely awesome and loving. So many negative messages about how mums can be so annoying made me a bit sad. My parents are very nice people, even though they didn’t always have the easiest relationships with *their* parents.
Thanks Tab for another wonderful page.
I have to say that while my own mother and I have our issue, control was never one of them. I do find that I am very liberal with my own daughter now, to the point that people sometimes think that I am crazy, but I could never even think of treating/raising my daughter the way that Jamie’s mom does. I like that my kiddo is independent and can think for herself. If she can do that at 8, I don’t have to worry about her at 15 and 16 or 21 or 30 etc.
This shit getting updated or what? I don’t need recall the comments being Jerry springer either.
… Am I the only one who wants Jamie to get some ideas from listening to Disturbed’s ‘Down With the Sickness’? Really? Just listen to the song from 3:10 and see what I mean, kay?
Just a thought.
My god. This is my story.
Tab, you wouldn’t happen to have any experance with emotional abusive relationships would you?