Big Girls Don't...Waffle?

I don't mean the kind of waffles that can be burned. I mean the verb 'to waffle' or to remain indecisive.

Obviously, the first flaw of my title is that everyone is indecisive. Being abroad has given me a new perspective on myself and how I function; this is excellent news for personal growth, and a bit disquieting for personal security. I'm changing and I'm not sure I can handle it.

Recently, I've been doing some thinking about what I want, what I like, and what makes me happy. School, which for a long time was the main constant in my life, no longer excites or enthralls me. I enjoy attending lectures and absorbing new information, but I have less inclination to do assignments and assessments than ever before.

It's annoying, really, to feel mildly guilty about being a slacker while doing other things that are more fulfilling, like cooking, cleaning (yes, I'm weird) and talking to people. I can't decide if this is my life balancing itself out, or if I'm losing it.

I don't really feel like I'm losing it. I'm happier than I can remember being (waffling aside; maybe that should be my constant. I can't accept stability and contentment without wondering what I'm not doing). I'm sleeping better, eating better, and generally feeling better. I look ahead to the future with anticipatory joy. So why the feelings of mid-education-life crisis?

God only knows. Really. I have a few guesses, a few theories, none of which are coherent enough to be aired in public. Part of my growing-up experience is trying not to judge myself (and others) quite as harshly as I used to. It's working, but with the disadvantage of leaving me without a means of measuring myself. Even unhealthy habits are reassuring; losing them, or changing them, is unsettling.

I don't like to think that I'm prone to giving up. I've seen what I can manage when I stick to my guns. I've also felt regret for missed opportunities. I save those for when I feel pitiful and abused. A good pity-fest usually disgusts me enough to negate those regrets.

Now I've lost my train of thought. Oh, yes, waffling. My boyfriend likes to say that I always have a choice, and in a technical sense, he's right. I could decide not to finish my education and just go ahead and find a job. But, I was raised in a society and a household that value education as security for the future. I don't want to be dependent on anyone, and I do want to be able to have fun without counting every penny. Education gives me options. Every girl needs options.

Ugh. Maybe I have too many options. (Isn't that counter to what I was just saying? Nevermind.)

I guess what feels like waffling is in fact, me growing up. I'm weighing personal happiness and instant gratification against immediate Ehhh-feelings and long-term security. I'm all about security, though less so than I once was. And now I'm also about personal happiness.

There isn't any reason why the two can't be mutually inclusive. Obviously, part of being happy is being secure, and for someone like me, being secure makes me very happy.

Maybe waffling is a good thing; it encourages self-reflection, and that's always a good thing. I like knowing myself better. I like being predictable (only to myself, though. Mystery is an excellent trait to cultivate).

I know what will make me happy in the short-term: finishing this silly history assignment (700 words? Pfff I could write that in my sleep) and some lunch.

Cheers!
WolfGrrl

There is Reason

There is no reason for me to have cried myself to sleep.
There is no reason for me to have nightmares every night.
There is no reason for me to be restless and lonely.
There is every reason for me to be excited.

With Christmas three days away and my departure another ten days after that, I should be happy and lively and full of good cheer. I shouldn't be lonely and frightened and sad.

I told my boyfriend last night that I felt small and scared and sad - the big question is, why?

Not sick, not starving, not alone. Not deprived of food and heat and amusement.
I guess it isn't unusual to be struggling to keep a good mood on when the ones you love are far away. For me, I miss my boyfriend and my best friends a lot right now. I am also missing distractions, like school and stress and sleep.

When you're sick, going to the doctor is soothing (at least for me). When you're well, going to the doctor is irritating and stressful (at least in this house). I have been to the doctor too many times in the last two weeks. I canceled my last appointment out of aggravation. Being calm for them, pleasant for them, cheerful and willing and easy-going is a drain. I didn't realize how much of a drain it was until I hit my low mood yesterday...for no good reason.

Maybe I don't need a 'good' reason to be sad. Maybe I just need to let myself feel the sad, acknowledge it, but not let it take over me. I struggle not to judge myself, even when I can't find another way to cope with the things I feel, say or do. It was very difficult for me to ask my boyfriend to call me because I was lonely. I had a need - a valid need, my therapist would say - and I had to fight myself at every turn just to send him a text. I had to swallow several apologies for being 'demanding.'

Does anyone else feel this way before the holidays? I remember being a child, maybe seven or eight, and deciding that I wasn't going to allow myself to get excited about the holidays because of the disappointment afterwards.

I only just rescinded that order two years ago.
I'm in a bit of a funky mood today, Reader, and I can't offer a reason for it except the rambling thoughts above. Maybe you'll see something in them that strikes a chord with you. Maybe you'll look at one of you relatives and go "Oh, I see now."

Or maybe you'll think I'm whining. I wouldn't want to give that impression, but it could be true. Words are words, after all. They don't come with tone pre-packaged.

Have a safe, happy, cozy holiday - whatever you celebrate.
WolfGrrl

A Long Way Gone

One day I will become the person others see in me.

I ascribe such negative views to others, but really, these are my views of myself. It is a habit that hurts me and only me. Or so I believe. Perhaps I hurt others by not seeing what they see.

I seek solace in things that make me feel worse, less so than in the past, but I still do. I am ever envious and ashamed. I am ever feeling weaker, more fragile, less competent than others.

My high school English teacher forwarded me a recommendation he wrote when I was applying to university. It had the same impact on me as my mother's synopsis of my life for the same applications. I am humbled, I am stunned, and I am shamed. Am I really so wonderful to others? Am I so unique?

I feel like the raindrops I kick off my umbrella before tossing it in the corner. I feel like the bread crumbs I brush into the trashcan. Perhaps it's the rain; gray skies demoralize me. Too much sleep depresses me. Falling behind on work makes me guilty and ashamed. Guilt and Shame. How tired I am of those two old, old acquaintances.

My roommate is studying Psychology. This week they are learning about Eating Disorders and Depression. I feel like the freaking Venn Diagram in her textbook: one part depression, one part anxiety, and one part disorder. Why is it that those who are the most organized on the outside are often the most dysfunctional on the inside? Why is my lens so warped?

And why is my first thought always "It's my fault."

Fault? It's not a fault. I know that, at least. There are things I can control - my grades, my sleep schedule, what foods I eat - and there are things far, far beyond my control: what others think of me. The weather. My biochemistry.

For me, writing is cathartic. It lets me exorcise the shadows and mud inside. But it cannot do everything. It cannot be everything. There is a quote I feel is particularly relevent to my mood right now. It goes like this:

"the number one reason why people give up so fast

is because they tend to look at how far they still have to go

rather than how far they have come." 

Yes. Yes. I always look behind me rather than ahead of me. I always see the weakness, rather than the strengths. I want to see the sunshine instead of the rain; my progress is in how much sunshine I see before the rain comes back. 

I can list the skills I recognize from long repetition: kindness, laughter, wit, intelligence, silence, sympathy, righteous rage, tolerance. They all seem so...good. 

I give away public pieces of myself without trusting that others will care for them. Perhaps this is what makes it such a task to get me to talk truly, and mean what I say? Maybe the rest of you know me better than I know myself. I think, therefore I am...or if I had my way sometimes, therefore I would not be. 

I cannot seek the comfort of blame, for I have no one to blame for my guilt, my shame, my constant need to compare and compare and compare. I should not blame myself, but in the end, it seems fairest. I am what forms me, shapes me, holds me back or sets me free. I control me. I build me. I want to assign blame, for therein I dervice order and thus comfort. But I also want to assign blame justly. No. Not justly. I have been told too often that blaming oneself is not justice. I want to assign blame without hurting someone else. No. It hurts me. Do you see how tangled this is? 

This is a very long post. My thanks to those who read it through to the end. I want to apologize, but I have been trying to push past that inclination. I don't want to be a doormat, and I know that the key to not being a doormat is not forming the habits of a doormat. (Muh.) Before I was diverted, I was thanking you, Reader, for patience. And perhaps a little understanding. 

Sorry. No. I will not apologize for being blue. Maybe somewhere, in all my musings, I have stumbled over something that resonates with one of you out there.

There. That's something I can be proud of. Mr. Moore, I'm doing my best. I'll keep trying. 

WolfGrrl

Free Agents and Love

How do you protect the ones you love? Obviously, the quick answer is that you can't. The world is bigger, louder and meaner. So why are we driven by these incredible urges to protect those we consider 'ours?'

I don't know the answer to this question and it's not only causing me to re-evaluate how I view my parents, but how I view myself. Good Lord, being an adult isn't easy, but this seems to extend beyond boundaries of age or gender.

I want to be a child, with a child's ability to find an authority figure who'll take care of me. Yeah... That's not gonna happen anymore. I take care of myself. I allow others to take care of me.

I love my friends. I love my boyfriend. This world ain't so bad a place, but... But. Sometimes it is mean. Sometimes people are mean, and you can't know why.

Is there a message in this post besides my wanting to be a child? I don't know. (Apparently, there are a lot of things I don't know. Joy.) Maybe my message, my thought-for-a-day, is to be kind. To be attentive. To be fierce in the defense of those you love.

I cannot stand between my loved ones and the world. I can defend them, I can fight for them, and I can talk them down from a ledge or a bad decision. How do you balance love and protection? In my mind, they come together. The only problem is, too much of either one and suddenly I'm at risk.

I make choices. I am a free agent. So is my boyfriend. So are my friends. We all make choices, good, bad, ugly or lucky. When I remember that, it makes me feel calmer. When I think about our agency, our ability to change our lives and directions, I don't feel so helpless.

In Political Science we're learning about the danger of generalizing. I like generalities. I like labels. They make my world orderly, and I LOVE orderly worlds. But the world isn't orderly or general. (Stupid dichotomies.) The world is the world, etc. So that makes me...me. A free agent of the world.

Who else wants to be a free agent? It's a bit like going for a tethered hot air balloon ride. You fly...to a point. I'm connected to friends and family by love. What a strange, wonderful, confusing emotion it is! I think you'll know it when you stumble over it. If I was going to write The Greatest Novel of All Time (no Reader, my ego isn't quite that big) I'd write it around the myriad variations of love. I think it's the most fascinating topic of all.

It sure fascinates me.

Dios mio
WolfGrrl

Missing From Me

I know in the past I've mentioned that I don't think French is a very romantic language. Well, there are definitely aspects of it that get right to the heart of the matter ('scuse the pun). In French, one says "Tu me manques" for "I miss you." The literal translation of this is "You are missing from me."

My boyfriend lives very far away from me right now. We do the best we can, and we are pros at adjusting to crappy internet, dropped Skype calls, time differences and shipping costs. I believe that a long-term, long-distance relationship is completely possible if both people are invested in it. We are invested, but it makes us appreciate the little things we don't yet have all the more.

I have never missed another person's physical presence the way I miss his. It's hard to combat, this yearning, for it is nothing I've ever had to deal with before. I don't know if I should distract myself by being happy, being angry, being sad, or being asleep. I am at a loss when it comes to solving this emotional dilemma. Last night I tried an old standby: when unable to sleep, write.

Those of you who followed me from Deviant Art have probably already seen this poem. But there are some of you who have no idea that I write (aside from infrequent blog entries, and school papers). So I'll put the poem here too. This is how I describe the feeling that someone is missing from me.

i am missing more than you
i am missing the warmth of you at my back;
the weight of your arm keeping me from floating away

i am missing being able to wind your hair around my finger
and the way you smile when i come running.

i am missing more than you,
for you are more
than three vowels and a breath.

you are the hand i reach for
and the laugh that answers mine
the reason i can't sleep
and the reason i dream

you are missing from me
tu me manques.

tu me manques, toujours.

Thank you for reading. 

WolfGrrl

In the Closet

The metaphor of monsters in the closet has been used many times before. But not by me. I don't acknowledge the monsters I consign to the shadows. I don't want to face them, on their terms or mine. I live according to a principle of "Live and Let Live." As in, I let the monsters have at me sometimes, but I keep them at bay otherwise.

Sometimes, however, my monsters leap out at me, wanting more than a brief moment of awareness. They take control. They frighten me. They challenge me. Sometimes I frighten me, or I challenge me. Sometimes I speak truths that have lain hidden for my entire life. And sometimes I swallow lies I've told thousands of times before.

I am my own worst enemy - I've heard this said, and thought this, for years. I make my own path difficult. I make my own life difficult. Not always with the obvious intention of doing so, but with the obvious result. My anorexia was like this. My relationships have usually been like this. It has taken me a long, long time, and a lot of pain, to get to a place where I can let the monsters take control sometimes and open the door to the closet.

In my anthropology class fall semester, we watched a movie called "Trapped in the Closet." It's actually a long rap performed as a film, written and posted on YouTube. I'd never heard of it; the only time I heard metaphors about closets was in the Disney movie Monsters Inc. and references to gay rights. I don't even like rap music.

But this rapper made some valid points - the fact that I remember the movie speaks to that end. I am a private person who likes control: it makes me feel safe, as though I have some ability to predict my future. Though I am no longer consumed by the need to know my future, I do like having the means to influence it, to change it as I wish. There are some things in life, however, which happen. You know this - I've mentioned it before. Choices appear, moments arrive, and there isn't time to waffle around and weigh the pros and cons of each side.

Sometimes the monster jumps out of the closet.

It terrifies me to have this happen...but it's also exhilarating. Freeing. My greatest decisions have been ones which I don't think about, moments where I just jumped and looked on the way down. The monster broke out and I didn't try to stop it. These are moments of What-If. These are moments, oddly enough, of self-respect.

I respect my subconscious mind - the closet where the monsters live. My best choices have come from my subconscious; my best grades; my best friendships. I will never be comfortable throwing open the closet and letting the world look at the mess inside me. But one or two people may see the darkness in my heart. I don't know if those people are lucky or cursed; I'm sure they don't know either. They are special, however. I don't think anyone will disagree with that.

Night,
WolfGrrl

WIP

Humanity is such a work in progress.

I live in what was once considered the most advanced nation in the world. No longer, folks. No longer. We have become a nation of petty, cheating, lying, scandel-mongering, closed-minded fools.

Love does not conform. The greatest love stories of all time - the ones which touch the hearts of millions and have endured for centuries - are those which cross boundaries. Romeo and Juliet were forbidden to love. Helen and Paris. Rose and Jack. The kind of love which is professed by God for all His children - yes, screaming religious fanatics, all His children - is the kind of love that transcends boundaries. It is not the place of humankind to determine what is 'natural' and what is 'unnatural.' If that were so, religious fantatics would be covered in vomit-and-orange scales. They would also live in a pit full of sand, salt, and fleas and be watered with vinegar and Antifreeze.

Love does not choose when and where it shall bloom. Love is a matter of the heart and soul, not the mind, not the body. Love is waking up to see someone; love is thinking, even for a moment, of another person. Love is courage and strength and happiness. Trust me on this.

So why, then, should a nation be responsible for saying who can love and who cannot? What grounds have we as humans to determine this for others? What if someone came to your door, right now, and told you that your boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, father, had to leave? You would fight. You would rage. You would scream and cry and carry on like hell.

At first I was angry that my state took away its citizens' right to choose whom to love. Now I am sad. Sad and...regretful. This world here, this small corner of misguided humanity, doesn't deserve my anger. It doesn't deserve my presence, either. I will follow the precepts of a religion I don't believe in: I will turn the other cheek. I will go away.

This is not the world I want to live in. Love is precious to me; I won't force others to give up what I have only recently come to understand. I tried to do the right thing. I failed, but I tried. This isn't my fault. I'm not sure there is a fault. Right and Wrong...I'm not sure they exist. Moral absolutes only cause problems. Love isn't absolute. Life isn't absolute. We can all die; that's absolute. Maybe we should. Maybe the Apocalypse is meant to wipe the Earth clean of prejudice and hatred and blindness. Out of chaos, we will be born again.

WolfGrrl

Failure

I feel like a failure today.
This isn't unusual, but it is sad. Heavy. I'm struggling against my inclination towards self-pity; I know it's useless and not productive, but that's how I feel. I never know what feelings I should deny, or if I should deny any of them. All of them.

I wrote a riddle today.
"What do you get when you cross arrogrance with low self-esteem? Give up? Me too."
You get, as of right now, me.

Reader, I am a writer. I know, it seems obvious, but sometimes I have to remind myself that this is the case. I wish I could write solely for myself; when I do, it's unquestionably my best work. But I cannot always write just for myself; the looming prospect of my readership prevents me from wallowing in the story as I did when I was eleven years old and at the beginning. I am a pleaser, which means that even in this one activity I should (and have on occasion) performed only for me, I try to please the un-pleasable audience of my imagination.

It doesn't work, and yet I'm stuck with it, because for some reason I have...blocked myself from changing my ways. My life changed significantly two years ago. I'm still reaping the consequences of that change. I wish...but what's the point in wishing? Wishes are useless.

WolfGrrl