Once again, thanks to Heatherbat for her fabulous and self-exploratory post. One thing I’ve always loved about her is her brutal but loving honesty in all things that she is aware of (lulz… and more lulz!), and I daresay some of that has had its effect on me. Though having said that, I’m nervously chuckling and getting random crap from childhood stuck in my head (the first ten seconds, mwah mwah bwah!). I’m not really sure what to say, or how to say it. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to connect to myself, but… *shakes head*

Part of the problem is that, frankly, I’m not in touch with myself. I’m not really connected to my feelings or emotions, nor am I the most stable of people. I don’t know what’s ‘wrong’ with me, per se, but I’m trying to find out. Not so I can wave an excuse in peoples’ faces, but so I can have another tool in my arsenal to survive, to somewhat thrive, to get by in life. The hardship of… whatever this is… has made me a stronger person, because I’ve always had to fight to try to connect in meaningful and socially acceptable manners, and better yet, to find those on similar journeys of self-discovery to surround myself with to keep myself on course, and for that special degree of temperance that being on such a journey entails and imbues.

I feel unwelcome in the mainstream, because I do not wish to clamor upon the backs of those who are supposedly less than myself to make myself feel better. I don’t want to put people down to try and assuage my own fragile ego even if this is the societally approved norm (sigh). Don’t get me wrong – I’m human, and I’ll namecall sometimes. And then I’ll beat the crap out of myself for wanting to wish someone bad thoughts, even if they might warrant them. After all, I am your reflection you are my reflection and we reflect the world – what you don’t like about me I don’t like about you about me… you get the idea. We are all hypocrites, and I choose to learn from that – if I dislike something about someone, I try to apply it to myself. Sometimes, I shock myself to realize depths and darknesses, the pits of bitter and hate; I don’t know what to do with those, since I almost always refuse to candy it over. Sometimes I come to peace with something that I hadn’t processed was there; for good or bad, I am improved and upgraded.

Makes me sound a robot, eh? xD

I think part of the problem is that I don’t know how to be for me. The concept.. it’s sort of selfish, as odd as that may sound. I’m so used to having to be for everyone else that I’m all but driven to give all of me beyond what I can spare to try and make other peoples’ lives better. And perhaps it’s in a desperate hope that someone will turn around and say, “Hey thanks – you’re a good person worthy of being liked, and deserving of spontaneous nice things.” I can’t go asking for them – it’s greedy and disgusting, even if that’s what ‘everyone else’ does. Even talking about it makes me shudder and feel unclean, as if I’ve cheapened myself by admitting this – if it were to elicit responses and back-patting, it would frankly make me depressed and the nearest to suicidal I get. I abhor attention seekers, and do to such a point that the off chance of being mistaken for one makes me feel cornered, uncleaned, unworthy. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to unprogram myself from such a destructive chain of thought, but maybe, maybe… I’m not optimistic about it, since it’s such a thorny thing. 🙂

So then, what can I definitively say about myself? I’m definitely a wife – the ring on the finger is a pretty good testament to that. I’m a mother – the little one proves that. There’s the whole sister/daughter/etc thing, but I didn’t specifically have anything to do with those relationships existing, outside of coming into being. By the same token, I’m also an American, and like Heather, a proud Texan; I didn’t have anything to do with it besides being born. Does that make my impending British citizenship more important because I HAVE had to grab that and make it happen? You tell me people, you tell me.

I’m definitely a gamer – the Sims running in the background while I putter between writing this and doing data entry is somewhat indicative. I avoid calling myself a writer or a blogger, nevermind that I write/blog thousands of words a week. I don’t even know why I do – is it contriteness, is it a time-filler? Or perhaps it’s a subconscious drive to try and appease the extroverts of the world by attempting to broadcast me in the only way I’m comfortable doing it. And yet, the ones I’d want to reach the most never notice, never see, never care, never understand, and I can’t exactly tell them either. 🙂

I’m an ex-smoker. A soda drinker. An immigrant. I am wary of all these labels that people want me to wrap myselves in, and warp themselves with. I resent being easily classified. I resent myself for easily classifying people. I maintain that life is gray, and that black and white is for ignorant children. And then I mentally thump myself for calling people ignorant children. I want to hate and loathe, and I resent those who would dare attempt to take up so much of my mind and heart that could be better spent loving; they’re the same coin, after all. I am anonymous, I am intimately known. I am safe, I am exposed, I am trapped by my own crippling fear and paranoia. I am probably making my friend Marie laugh in rueful bemusement at how much I’ll throw out into the aether that most would consider intimate, that I consider detritus and factoids. I am

I am
I am me. And if you want to know anything specific, all you ever need do is ask.

If you can find me.

<3