I say things I don't mean sometimes, depending on my mood. It's incredible to me, how something can seem so different, depending on where you're coming from when you're looking at it. No one who I love has ever come and shit all over my life. That is a crappy, unempathetic, unforgiving and unloving way to look at life.
Use me as an example, don't be like me.
Anyway. My new "job" is a total cakewalk, mostly. I can't believe it's Friday and I got paid already. All we do, all day while I'm there, is play games on the Gamecube. I'm a nerd in heaven and getting paid ten bucks and hour to be one.
There is one thing that is bothering me a lot. I came home with a pounding headache every day this week until I figured out what it was. My 11-year-old charge is so, SO much like I was when I was her age. Ever since we really became acquainted a few years ago, I've felt a weird and not-so-good-feeling bond with her. I should say that I hated who I was when I was that age. That is the worst age to be anyway, and any personality flaw I had/have was magnified then. Everything was wrong: I looked stupid, I acted stupid, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing or who I was supposed to be being, and watching her go through it is... painful.
I remember what it was like, wanting to stand out, and acting like a loud, obnoxious idiot to get attention. I remember making up lie after lie to try to make myself seem cool. I remember wanting boys to like me, and how I had no idea how to do that, and I remember hating my body because it looked like a woman and I looked like a girl, and having a mother who placed far too much emphasis on how I looked. I remember feeling utterly misunderstood- and like I was doing the opposite of what I wanted to do in order to get what I wanted, but had no idea how to stop.
Adolescence sucks!
The thing that is the most terrible about that situation is that she is just like I was... only worse. Where I was uncomfortable with my body, she is fat. Where I at least had both of my parents sane and involved in my life, she has one that is completely useless at best, and the other away at work a lot of the time. And where I had lots of good friends, she doesn't have any.
Aside from the fact that she is really difficult to deal with from a behavior standpoint, it is just really hard for me to be around her. I know how the next twelve years goes: wishing to God that you could just shop for a prom dress without feeling like you look like this:
...becoming obsessed with what you eat, missing out on great things in life because you don't feel like you're good enough, and worst of all: always blaming yourself when something goes wrong with someone you really like, thinking that if only you were just cuter or thinner or different, somehow, that he would have loved you.
Yes... that is the worst part. Because at some point in the next few years, if she's lucky, somebody will come along and will love her in a way she's never been able to love herself. It will be great while it lasts, but it will end at some point. And she'll feel empty when it's gone and wonder how she ever lived without it, and then look for it again and again in someone else til she finds someone who loves her that much again. Only this time, it won't feel the same. And then, if she is lucky, she'll realize that she's gotta figure out what it means to love yourself.
It is a long, heartbreaking road from there to here.
That's why watching this is so hard for me. I know how screwed up my thinking has been, and I'm only now putting it to bed thirteen years later. I can see so many similarities between us- hell, our mothers are sisters- and I want to do something, or say something, change something so that she doesn't waste ten or twenty years of her life being miserable and hating herself. But she's too much like me, or at least, too much like I was at that age: bull-headed and insistent upon learning things the hard way.
Agghh!! My head is pounding now.
So on to a lighter, happier topics. My life has completely changed in a matter of weeks. A lot of things have changed for the better, but they were the result of my life changing, not the other way around. I've always heard that you can't wait for X to happen to be happy; you have to be happy, and then the good things will start happening. I can attest to the truth of that statement.
The most astonishing thing happened to me. First I had this realization that there was nothing inherently wrong with me. If I understood it on an intellectual level before, I suddenly understood it on a soul level. A feeling level, a gut level. Then I realized that I didn't need to be afraid. That being afraid wouldn't protect me, or make my future any more certain.
Then a few incredible things happened.
The first incredible thing related to the self-loathing. It took maybe two or three weeks for me to get out of the habit of saying bad things to myself. I'd look in the mirror and see myself and say something mean to myself in my head. Then somehow I would realize it wasn't true, and as I was standing there in front of the mirror my reflection literally changed before my eyes. I mean, I would see a little curve in my arm and think, "You're fat" and hate the curve. But then, wherever that place is that knows I am fine the way I am would correct it and say, "that is a curve, that is sexy" And then I would see it that way. I mean, this is a big deal. Huge.
So once my mind stopped having all those thoughts automatically, it stopped having other thoughts, obsessive thoughts about losing weight. It stopped spending hours beating me up for eating whatever it was I just ate. And my mind suddenly had nothing to think about. Every other thought just... disappeared. It was literally breaking a habit of thinking certain things, and then my mind just had nothing to think about.
And so I got depressed for about a week. My mind was a blank and I had nothing to think about. I didn't know what to do, and I didn't really feel like I could do anything about it. But I kept thinking, "No, there has to be more to all this, this can't be the end product of all of that reformation." I just kept a positive attitude about it. I forced myself to have faith that there was something coming.
Anyway, then the astonishing thing happened. I started to get ideas. Tons of them; mostly about things I want to write. Books would start writing themselves in my head. Trips got planned out; questions I wanted to ask people. Jobs I wanted to do. All this shit. It's still happening. And the best thing: suddenly I started to wonder about stuff. And since then my mind has been like a sponge. Everything I read makes me think of five other things I want to read, and suddenly, it's enough. I used to think of things I wanted to know, but I didn't have the drive. I needed to have a reason why I should do it. A person to do it for.
I can't capture in words how it feels to me to want to know everything. Not so that I'll be a "more attractive person," whatever the fuck that is, or a "better" person, but because I really want to.
It feels... strange, caring about me, instead of caring about who I am for other people.
The other astonishing thing that happened related to fear, specifically of the unknown. I let it go somehow. And again there was a shift in perception. My original perception: if I don't know what is going to happen in the future, then bad things can happen to me when I'm not ready for them. My current perception: if I don't know what is going to happen in the future, then good things will happen to me when I'm not looking for them.
They're both true. But I'd rather think about all the good things that happen and trivialize the bad things, than focus on all the bad stuff that is preventing me from being happy. I lived my whole life that way: thinking, "Things are so great right now, if only I didn't have this debt, if only I were perfect, if only I didn't know that I have four cavities, if I can just pay off the debt, get perfect, and get the cavities fixed then and only then will I be able to enjoy a perfect moment." Never happens. NEVER HAPPENS.
Everything is perfect... right now. And I have tons of debt, and four cavities, and I will never. EVER. be perfect.
Some days now, I wake up and wonder what good things will happen to me. I know that when I wasn't looking a week ago, I got a totally great offer of easy money. That was AWESOME. I know that when I was just minding my own business writing some really, really bad poetry a week ago (I am talking "love,glove" shit), my stepfather stuck his nose in my business and got me all fired up about being a writer. And when that stoner carpenter guy Brad (ha, read that) started talking to me a few weeks ago it made me remember that every day when I wake up, I could walk out the door, run into a guy running by on the sidewalk, and that could be the day that I fall in love again.
When I look back on the most fun, most happy, most exciting, and most important things that have happened to me in my life- my sister-in-law announcing she was pregnant, every time a guy has said "I love you," for the first time, the first conversation I ever had with every person I've ever fallen in love with, the day Lee proposed to me, how much fun I had my first time in Vegas, going out for a drive alone the very first time after I got my driver's license, the first time I ever stood up in front of a lot of people and sang something, my brother telling me he was getting married- I hadn't woken up that morning knowing that it was going to happen later that day.
I think that if I can look at life that way, then every day will be like a Christmas present. And my ability to actually be happy will change the ripple effect of my behavior, and more good things will happen to me and everyone else I know.
© beotch at
2:31 a.m.
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