Free-Falling into Fall

I wish, just once, that I could be completely content with myself. There are times when I almost make it, but there's always that nagging doubt in the back of my mind, the little voice in my ear that whispers insidiously when I look in the mirror. I can't escape myself, and I'm still trying to figure out why I want to.

I don't think I'm a bad person (I don't know I'm a good person, either, but I don't feel like a bad one). Many people praise me for being "poised" and "together" but I usually feel that the outward image is a flawed and inaccurate reflection of my inner self. My only comforts are: 1) Everyone else feels like this too; and 2) It can be changed. Everything can be changed. Like the saying goes, Nothing is certain but Death and Taxes.
And I don't even pay taxes.

Today is the first day of October. When I was planning for school in the summer, I always phrased things like this: "Once I'm at school, it'll be different" or "Once college starts back up and I have classes I will/won't..." Well guess what? School started - has been going strong for a while now - and I still have all the same issues and problems I did this summer, and last year, and the year before that. They didn't magically disappear when my public life resumed. Joy. Rapture. (Is the sarcasm coming through? I don't want to be off-putting, but it's so hard to judge intonation in words.)

As a teacup human I'm naturally quite small; this means my center of gravity is lower and I'm more stable. Well, as my profile says I'm not particularly graceful (strike one against stability) and now it seems my emotional stability is a sham as well. This accounts for the title; I feel like I'm free-falling through life, smashing into various people and objects and ideas along the way. Occasionally this process knocks some sense into me or jars something loose in my brain; you'll find these posts sporadically (my "epiphany" posts). But on the whole the process of free-falling isn't very comfortable. Or stable. And I love stability. (Is this a teacup human thing or a human thing? Ideas?)

Several of my friends have complained to me lately that they feel as though they're "wasting their lives" and that they "don't know what they're doing." Well, neither do I. Do any of us? In the past few years I've heard a lot about what it means to be "normal" and that there really isn't any such thing (anthropology helps dispel such illusions, let me tell you). Great. So we're all abnormal? Maybe I should wish for normality instead of world peace next time they interview me for the Miss Universe pageant. I'll bet a world of normal people wouldn't have wars, or genocide, or mass starvation or prostitution.

So what do we do, my friends and I? Are we lost? Tolkien says that "Not all who wander are lost" but that doesn't help much; if we're not lost are we supposed to be wandering? Am I wandering or falling? For the first time in my life I feel strong enough to make plans for the future, and confident enough to hope that somehow I'll fulfill those plans. And yet smaller, more immediate things continually elude me. You're not supposed to chuck all your eggs into one basket, but how am I supposed to carry them all when juggling becomes too risky?

Mmph. 
WolfGrrl