The Dangers of Dating.

Letting go should be easier.  This is the part I hate the most; the inevitable crushing fall after getting my hopes up.  I didn’t intend to get them up; granted, she had a hand in that too, but ultimately it’s my fault for believing it could be more.  I know the whole “not ready for a relationship, I just want to date around” tirade is a lie we tell people we aren’t interested in so they don’t feel so bad, when in reality, it’s not that we don’t want something more, it’s that we don’t want something more with them.  Then of course the part where she mentioned what she couldn’t tell me about, which is code for “I met a girl I like better.”  That shit hurts. Maybe if she hadn’t kissed me and touched me like she did, or hadn’t whispered sweet things in my ear and agreed there was something there, I wouldn’t feel so slighted.  It’s hard not to feel led on in this situation and I’m not real sure what to do with that.

 

I’ve always been good and remaining friends with people who’ve “Dear Johned” me, but I honestly don’t think I can manage that this time.  That makes me feel like a terrible person and petty, and it’s hard as fuck to not pick up the phone and text her or call her but if I do, it will just be more apologies and reasons why and I honestly can’t listen to it anymore.  It can never go back to the way it was and that is probably the worst part.  Well, that and the whole, “what’s wrong with me, why doesn’t she more than like me anymore, what did I do wrong” bullshit that plays endlessly on repeat inside your head like it’s the new Taylor Swift earworm the radio stations are determined to make us hate simply because we hear it too much.  I knew things were not the same gradually…a day without a text or a call…”sorry I was on the phone with my mom”…”I don’t need you to pick me up from the airport”…”I was out all weekend meeting new people, which I can’t tell you about”…”I can’t hang out the one day I’ll be in town because I need to spend more time with my family”… That last one would be understandable if that had been the case before the sweet whispers and kisses, but following being cast off slowly, it falls into the gradual brush off.

 

I’m not even sure what to do with these words; if I tell her, I seem petty and like I can’t let this go, and yet the other side of me wants her to know that actions have consequences and instead of leading someone to believe you more than like them, only to change your mind days later, is emotionally and psychologically damaging.  If I post this on my blog, it will be seen by everyone and it’s so shameful to admit when you’ve been dumped that I’m ok with talking about my mental health issues, but this seems so much deeper; like I’d be standing naked in front of a crowd.  This would be admitting to the world that I wasn’t good enough for someone, so maybe I’m not good enough for anyone.

 

That’s the heart of the issue, isn’t it?  When one person decides you’re not what they want romantically, we automatically assume we’ll never be good enough for anyone and what makes them so special that they can’t see how special you are?  Maybe that part’s just me; I automatically assume everyone hates me and wishes I would just go away so when someone does give me the brush off, it’s only confirming that fear.  I’m well aware those thoughts are part of my illness, but dear God, what if they’re true?…Fuck.  This vomit-inducing merry-go-round is only going to get worse from here, so I’ll jump off before I terrify anyone having the misfortune of reading this.  I wasn’t kidding when I said mental illness is a bitch.

 

So here we are back at the issue at hand; do you tell someone you feel like they lied or led you on or do you tackle those words to the ground, pushing them into the dirt until they choke and are never heard from again?  Or, try to forget they did you dirty and attempt a friendship because you do care about them and want them in your life, even if it’s just as friends?  Is that truly even possible?  The jealousy and hurt feelings, resentment and anger are still going to be there, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and anyone who tells themselves otherwise is either delusional, or needs to get off their pious high horse before they break a limb in the fall.  Is a real friendship possible or would it just be damaging until you’ve actually moved on?  Maybe, maybe not.  What I do know is that letting them go and suffering the pain of missing them isn’t necessarily better or worse than trying to hide the animosity in the name of friendship; it’s just trading one type of torture for another.

For Joanne.

 

3 years ago I came really close to killing myself.  It was a dark time for me and if you’ve heard this story before, I’m telling it anyway as it’s still relevant so just skip ahead.

Where was I?  Oh yes, dark times.  I was living alone in a shoe-box apartment in the sky with no one save my cat and the cockroaches to keep me company.  My family lived in another state and I had absolutely no friends; at least none close enough that would even know if I’d died.  I’d just come out of a really bad relationship and was on intermittent medical leave from work, so I had a lot of time on my hands.  I knew I needed a distraction so I picked up an old hobby where I would pick an actor or director and watch everything in their film library.  I happened to settle on Johnny Depp.  Without going into the details, one thing led to another and he ended up introducing me to writers I now adore, such as Hunter S. Thompson, Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc.  Anyway, that journey led me out of the darkness and is what inspired the books I’ve written, so if anyone knows Mr. Depp, please tell him I said Thanks for saving my life.

That was 3 years ago.  I’ve struggled with Clinical Depression, Anxiety and PTSD, among other things, pretty much my whole life.  Sometimes I wonder what kind of person I would’ve been, what I would be like, if mental illness hadn’t shaped every facet of my personality since I was a child.  Things have been pretty rough for me this year.  There have been a lot of changes, some good, some not so much and it got to a point where the stress broke me.  Suicide has never been far from my thoughts since I was a kid, but it got pretty serious very recently.  Serious enough that for the first time in many years, I sought professional help.  I knew if I didn’t, I would formulate a plan and act on it.

Last Monday, I contacted a mental health clinic and was able to be teamed up with a great crisis counselor until they could get me into a Psychiatrist.  I explained my life and circumstances and we agreed a ‘stay at home suicide watch’ would be best suited for me for right now.  Since Monday, I’ve had to check in at certain points throughout the day otherwise police would’ve been dispatched to my location.

My counselor recommended that day that I try and reach out to someone who usually lifts my spirits; she thought it might help put things into perspective for me.  So Tuesday I contacted a relatively new friend in my life, but someone I’d come to associate with laughter and generally good times.  I didn’t tell this person anything that was going on, but they let me know in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want my friendship anymore and didn’t want me in their life.  That was a rough blow.  That would’ve probably been difficult for anyone, let alone someone in my shoes.  I didn’t throw a fit or tell them why I was reaching out, lest they assume I was being dramatic, so I just erased their number and decided if they didn’t want me around, probably no one else did either.  So I deactivated my social media account and stopped answering text messages from anyone but my inner circle.

I did, however, write a couple of blog posts that alluded to my situation, but didn’t out right say anything about it.  I figured that was safe as I knew no one I know reads it anyway, and writing is the only way I know how to process things.  Well, someone did read it.  A complete stranger named Joanne contacted me on Goodreads to express her concern for me and urge me to get help.  Of course she didn’t know I’d already done so, nor did she give me any other platitudes.  She simply recognized the signs of someone about to kill themselves.  Not my friends, or my family, but a complete stranger told me to get help.  Of course my inner circle knew what was going on because I told them, but this was someone who did nothing more but read my words and see the anguish.  Thanks, Joanne.  I’m glad things got better for you and I wanted you to know I had already sought help when you reached out.

I reactivated my Facebook today to find a few messages of support and encouragement and I thank you all for that.  I woke up this morning and it wasn’t quite as hard to breathe and my first thought wasn’t about wanting to die, so I thinking I’m coming back to life.  I’m not off watch yet, and if things get too bad I’ve arranged an inpatient stay, but I think I’m going to be ok.  Things aren’t any different, but I’m not being crushed by the sorrow today.  I think a lot of the reason I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself was the recent shootings and alligator killings and the general suckness that has been the news lately.  I didn’t want to be accused of being selfish and wanting attention or trying to draw any attention from the people with “real” problems.  I know well enough that unless you suffer from a mental illness, odds are you don’t really understand why a person with a seemingly good life would suddenly want to end it.  You can’t see their scars or their pain, thus we often mistake those people for attention-seeking drama queens.  I hate being called a drama queen.  I hate it enough that I will go out of my way to not announce my internal struggle, lest I be called one.

I don’t know how long this reprieve will last.  I may fall right back into it 10 minutes from now.  All I know is that in this moment, things don’t feel as bad. There’s air in my lungs and if someone told a good joke, I’d probably laugh.

Untitled.

Hearts are funny little things.
They can break at the slightest provocation,
But they mend in the most extraordinary ways.

Sometimes it’s too much.
The lights are too bright,
The ride is too fast and the sounds are deafening.
I reach for a hand to help pull me through;
There’s nothing there to grasp ahold of and I fall.

We each bear our loads;
One by one,
Trudging up the hill and sliding down the other side.
My foot slipped and I started to collapse under the burden I carry,
Your hand wasn’t there.
I thought it would be;
My fingertips were greeted by the wormhole that consumes
All assumptions we make of others.

That is how a heart breaks.
Backs are turned to us,
Love and friendship roll out as though the sun is clearing a fog.
This is where the sadness comes from;
The void we know should be filled with a compassion that is so often
Long from this world.

I’ve been swept into the Empty and there may be
No coming back for me.
All I can do now,
Is try like Hell to find the hand I’m still reaching for.

 

Reasons Why I’ll Probably Die Alone.

When I was young, I dreamed of falling in love, getting married and having family.  I had my wedding planned and baby names picked out and all that was missing was the one person I would love for the rest of my life.

Things haven’t exactly worked out the way I planned.  I’m 32 now, single and still no kids.  I’ve been single almost 2 years and no prospects on the horizon.  At what point do you throw in the towel on your dreams?  I gave up the dream of being a Broadway star years ago when I realized I can’t sing to save my life and I certainly wasn’t attractive enough to be on a poster, but what about the idea of finding love?

There’s probably a million blogs written by single girls about their love lives and dating exploits and they’re all fun and witty, but are we desperately clinging to an ideal that has been ingrained in us since we were young?  Fairy tales, Disney, TV, books… all of it has been telling us our whole lives that love will find us in the end, and yet the divorce rates are through the roof.  Is love just another idea that we should grow out of, like we grew out of wanting to be cowboys and astronauts?

Dating sucks.  You know it, I know it.  There’s tons of dating sites, singles mixers and of course, when in doubt, you can always go to a bar.  But how often does that really work out for anyone?  I’ve reached a point in my life where my favorite activities include reading quietly in a park; how would I manage to meet someone who shares that interest at a bar?  I’m not big fan of bars and I don’t want a partner that is, so the whole idea of finding someone there is basically a lost cause.  So how does anyone actually manage to meet someone who shares their interests if you’re introverted and your idea of a good time is sitting in dark room and thinking about stuff?

I’m pretty sure it’s not just me in this, and there’s likely millions of other people who feel the same way and yet I haven’t met any of them yet.  Literally everyone in my life is happily in a committed relationship or enjoying the single life with no plans to settle down.  It’s as though I’m caught in some sort of dimension where I’m permanently a third wheel.  Don’t get me wrong; being single has its perks, for example, there’s no one to judge me if I want to lie in bed all day and eat grapes, or go on a shopping marathon.  I don’t answer to anyone and no one expects much from me, but that can get old pretty fast.  My newly single friends are over the moon enjoying the solitary life and my married friends are green with envy over my freedom.  What they fail to see is how lucky they are to have someone who will make fun of you and bring you another roll of toilet paper when you have diarrhea, or argue over what to have for dinner.

A friend says I don’t try hard enough and I’m not positive enough and not putting myself out there enough.  I call bullshit.  What more should I do? Rent a billboard and post my dating profile there for all to see?  I’ll give her some credit though; I am relatively gloomy, I’m not as attractive as other women, I have terrible habits and I’m so shy that I usually come across as rude, so most people who meet me automatically assume I’m a raging bitch.  I also have a disgusting habit of falling for people who will never reciprocate my feelings and having zero interest in anyone who shows interest in me.  I’m also relatively certain there are at least thousands of other people with the same problem; why isn’t there a dating site for us?  How the fuck are the awkward introverts with a litany of mental health issues who want someone to have water fights with supposed to meet?

It’s probably time to throw in the towel.  I have a good life; I have friends who like me most of the time, a great job and lots of time consuming hobbies and responsibilities, so it’s not like I have a gaping hole I’m trying to fill.  I’ll admit, it would be nice to find someone to share my life with who also enjoys plotting world domination, but part of growing up is accepting that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus aren’t real, and maybe ‘Happily Ever After’ isn’t real either.

Nothing Stays Buried Forever.

Squirrels are good for some things…

There’s very few words in the English language that cause me to do much more than raise an eyebrow, but the one that bothers me the most is Rape.  It didn’t used to bother me in that manner; it used to be a sad thing that happened to girls who put themselves in dangerous situations and that would never be me.

Until it was me.  I don’t like to talk about it and I buried it so fast after the fact I didn’t even realize how much it had affected me until very recently.  For whatever reason, I keep coming across more and more articles about how common rape really has been and how few victims ever bother seeking justice from the legal system.  Most of that is because it’s so incredibly hard to make a rape charge stick and the victim ends up going through more emotional trauma than the attack probably left, so we move on.  Or worse; we make excuses for our attacker.  I’ve spent years blaming the alcohol and the fact that I am essentially, a very flirty drunk.  I also blacked out for most of the evening so who even knows what really transpired, right?

Well, turns out that you can justify it away as much as you want and move on with your life, and if you’re lucky, you do move on with your life and continue to have happy, healthy relationships.  Turns out I am not that lucky.  This isn’t something I like to talk about, or even want to talk about, but it’s entirely relevant to point, so here goes:

I have not been able to maintain a healthy sexual relationship since I was raped.  Even just admitting to myself that I was raped is foreign; like when you say a word too many times and it starts to lose its meaning?  But then crossing all the dots and realizing that I have to be drunk in order to have sex makes it that much harder to accept.  I would think it would be opposite; that I wouldn’t be able to have sex unless I was stone sober, but apparently assumptions are still completely useless.

My assault happened 6 years ago and I am just now starting to deal with what happened.  I’ve had relationships over the years since then, but to be completely honest, sex was always really hard for me.  And then a year ago, I just stopped completely.  Even now, the idea of being intimate with someone else is terrifying.  You’d probably ask, “Why now? If you’ve had relationships since then, why now has it become difficult?” Well, I stopped drinking.  Now, I still drink occasionally, but I’ve definitely hung up my party girl tiara and put down the Rum.  As a result, I now have to face my fears sober and anyone who’s ever had to sober up off of any substance knows just how incredibly scary and hard that is.  No one wants to really look at themselves and see the damage and the weakness.  We want to see ourselves as survivors, and that’s what most rape victims are doing; they aren’t calling themselves victims anymore, but survivors.

I think that’s great and empowering, but when you think about it, isn’t that just another way to justify the emotional and possible physical trauma you’ve been put through so you can get on with your life?  I am a survivor.  I survived domestic abuse, homelessness, childhood molestation, meth addiction and chronic depression that have resulted in more than one suicide attempt since the age of 10.  Now I get to add rape to the list of things I’ve survived?  I’m starting to wonder if life isn’t really about finding happiness and fulfilling dreams, but surviving the monsters that have been hiding under our beds this whole time that we’ve forgotten about.

The good news is that rape in general is on the decline, mostly due to the open conversations and willingness to take accountability for our actions and obtain consent before alcohol gets involved.  There are articles that will support those statements and you can read about them here, and here.

The point is, if it’s happened to you, don’t try to justify it.  You don’t have to go through the justice system, but don’t make excuses and push it under a rug.  Rugs have a funny way of getting shifted as things come and go in our lives and the dirt can’t be hidden forever.  Get help, talk to someone, and work through it so you don’t end up a lonely cat lady scared of sex.

 

 

Jealousy.

If I could stab you in the eye with your empty words,

I would.

If I could watch the dreams you set on fire disintegrate before you,

I would.

If I could force the earth to split before your feet causing you to stumble into a river of lava,

I would.

If I could take back every sweetness that ever left my lips in your name,

I would.

The world is filled with beautiful and terrible things I would do if given the chance.

Life is not so easily manipulated,

Not like I was for you.

So all I can do is sit and stew in the boiling anger and heavy betrayal you’ve left behind.

But if you hear one thing, hear this:

She’s lovely.

Teachers Change Lives.

It’s impossible to prepare yourself for the death of a loved one.  You can know it’s coming and try and steel yourself from the onslaught of emotion you know is inevitable, but when it comes…it will still destroy you.

This past Monday I learned that the most influential adult of my young life was in the hospital with terminal cancer.  It had been 13 years since I’d seen or spoken to her and something inside told me I needed to let her know how much she’d meant to me before it was too late.  So I tracked down an email address and we exchanged a few words on Wednesday.  I’ll never be able to sum up the beauty of our conversation, so I’ll let the images speak for themselves:

 

 

Today is Saturday, and just after noon, while the sun was shining in through my window and I was laboring away at my third novel, I learned of her passing last night.  Instantly, that pain and anger when we learn of another’s death hit and the tears began to fall.  No one has ever had more of an impact on who I am as a person and how I’ve managed to endure over the years.  It wasn’t the American History or the Math she taught me; it was the trips for coffee she took me on, the time we spent talking in her car as she dropped me off at home that carried me through the years.  She’s the reason I’ve been able to overcome the trials and tribulations in my life and I have never forgotten that nor will I ever forget in the future.

If anyone has ever made this impact on you, tell them.  Those who shape us in our younger years aren’t always family, sometimes they are teachers who go unacknowledged and unappreciated for their tiring efforts to help us grow into adults who aren’t compete assholes.  I will always be grateful for Mrs. Carla J O’Boyle and her impact on me and I hope everyone else has at least one person they can say the same of.

The Tale of Beyonce and Pam.

(A follow up to Anatomy of a Broken Heart)

 

I will be the first to admit that I’m somewhat of a “bleeding heart”.  I always try to find the best in people and often think there has to be some underlying emotional dysfunction that causes them to act in a way that causes damage to others.  This type of empathy has caused some extremely unsavory characters to enter my life at various stages; although some lasted longer than others.  I often turned a blind eye to the harm they inflicted in my life and to my emotional well-being; often convincing myself they were really just a “lost soul” and that with enough love and compassion I could heal them.

Then I grew up.  I still encounter these people as I’m some sort of homing beacon for the malevolent, but I certainly don’t let them hang around long anymore.  There have been 4 in my life who’ve damaged me beyond recognition and basically constructed exactly the person I am today.  I’m not sorry for that; it’s nearly impossible to stay soft and caring in a world such as this and be able to remain strong.  So I became hard, distrusting and, I guess, mean.  Not “running around popping the balloons of children” mean, but the “please don’t tell me about your problems because I can’t muster enough energy to care” mean.  That probably makes me a terrible person, but if you look hard enough at anyone like me, you’ll see the battle scars we carry from the individuals who’ve tried to destroy us over the years.

I used to get angry and spend days crying into toast whenever someone like that pulled the wool over my eyes, but as luck would have it, I now spend that time trying to uncover the motive and intent.  In this respect I probably should’ve been a serial killer profiler but I don’t like people enough to want to study them that intensely.

So this begs the question: why do people do the things they do?  I’m a believer in Kantianism and just about everything I do is out of duty, which is my motivation.  I always feel it’s my responsibility as an inhabitant of this planet to help where I can, not because it gives me “warm fuzzies”, but because I feel I have to.  I haven’t ever really seen anything wrong with that; what difference does it make why you do the right thing as long as you do it?

But what about the people who don’t seem to have some ethical code they follow?  What motivates them?  I recently told you the story of *Pam and that came to a type of resolution today.  Last night she called to apologize and tell me she was sorry, and then in the same breath blamed me for everything.  Well, ok, I’ll let that slide.  Remember when she said she was seeing someone?  Well, that little gem reached out to me today and we’ll call her *Beyoncé because I can.  Anyway, Beyoncé filled in all the blanks; turns out Pam was playing the same game with her and she caught Pam in a few lies and decided to reach out to me for confirmation.  In this glorious age of technology and interwebs, how is it there are still people who believe they can play people against each other?  In my day, we called them “players”. (Are they still called that?  Probably not, there’s probably some bizarre acronym the kids are using these days.) Long story short, Beyoncé and I compared notes and realized we were both being played and decided that we’re awesome and now we’re friends. (This is actually a heartwarming tale of two girls developing what is bound to be a long lasting and mutually beneficial friendship. We’re going to have pillow fights and paint each other’s toe nails.)  I’d post a screen shot of our conversation, but to be honest, I’m too lazy for Microsoft Paint today, so here’s a cute kitten:

 

I’d like to be angry and crestfallen, but I’m just too damn curious about the ‘why’s’ of it all.  I enjoy picking people apart to find out what makes them tick which means I probably should’ve been a medical examiner.  So what makes Pam tick?  She’s definitely an alcoholic, and as a recovering Meth addict myself, (I’ve been clean 11 years, thank you very much) I remember getting tangled in my own web of lies, but it was all to fuel my addiction.  I can’t see any part of this clusterfuck that would put a bottle in her hand, so what was the point of it?  I’m relatively certain there’s some deep rooted emotional damage that gives her a sort of joy from playing Puppet Master and I don’t think it’s far-reaching to assume she gets a sense of satisfaction and feels powerful, which likely makes her feel better about herself.  Alright, whatever floats your boat.

Or, it could be that she’s always been like this and is still old school enough to think she can get away with it for long periods of time.  Pam’s 36, so I’m sure she still thinks 2000 was 5 years ago and no one meets unless they run into each other at a bar and girls never talk to each other.  Thankfully, feminine power has evolved and many of us actually do our homework and play ‘Sherlock’ a lot more often than men and women like Pam think.  Since the law prevents me from hooking Pam up to a machine that sends pulses to her brain and records what areas light up when presented with a variety of stimulation, I can only hypothesize at this point.

I’m sure someone much smarter than me and likely with a degree in Psychology could tell me what motivates a person like that, as I’m sure most other people would just decide she’s a terrible human being who enjoys being the mean kid with the magnifying glass and the rest of us are just ants. All that aside, here’s my theory: (You knew I’d have a theory at some point) I believe we are all capable of great good and great evil and it all comes back to the old edict: if light and dark are wolves fighting, the winner is always the one you feed. Sure, we learn basic right and wrong as we grow, but I think those lessons are mostly based on a universally accepted principle, for example, we know murder is wrong because it’s universally frowned upon.  But there’s a deeper set of morals that we each get to set for ourselves and as much as I hate it, it’s a million shades of grey.  I’m sure people like Pam honestly don’t believe what they do is wrong and are able to convince themselves they are vindicated and that shit’s scary.  I can’t seem to convince myself it’s ok to change lanes without a turn signal and yet millions of people careen shamelessly down the freeway in a giant game of leap frog without a care for the safety of those around them.

That is Pam, she is the asshole weaving through traffic and pissing off everyone around her on a daily basis.  Maybe she doesn’t realize the damage she causes, maybe she doesn’t care.  Either way, people like her don’t change and will always exist to remind the rest of us which wolf we should feed.

Sorry I just bummed you out, here’s another kitten: 

And here’s what I’m listening to: https://www.youtube.com/embed/kAUepQpvZjY” target=”_blank”>’The Dutch Courage’ – The Spill Canvas

*Names have been changed to protect the awesome and the awful.

New Year’s Day.

It’s the morning after and I’m comfortably on my sofa with a cigarette as ‘The Spill Canvas’ on Pandora lulls me into an introspective stupor.  Staring out the patio window, I reflect on the previous day’s events and my reactions to them.

Today is New Year’s Day and I have not a single regret.  I did not go out and drink myself into oblivion like I did in my twenties; instead choosing to spend the night watching movies and falling asleep before midnight, only to wake up long enough to watch the ball drop on TV and go right the fuck back to sleep.

Usually the morning after we confess something deeply unsettling on the internet that is bound to piss of at least one person, we tend to regret our actions and our words the next day.  That is not the case for me this day.  I reread every word I wrote and still feel vindicated.  The person in question has since blocked me on social media, which tells me they read every word and weren’t pleased.  I’m still not sorry.

When I reflect on the various lessons I’ve encountered in my life, the one that seems to stick with me the most is not apologizing when I’m not sorry.  I’m one of those people who constantly apologize for things that I had no hand in or things I’m genuinely not sorry for, but say I am anyway.  Why do I do this?  I’m pretty sure it has to do with being raised to always be polite, courteous and accommodating and to not hurt people’s feelings.  I’ve come to find these lessons were complete bullshit and only damaged me in the long run.  Why am I apologizing?  I didn’t do anything wrong.  Sure, I hurt someone’s feelings, but feelings are the collateral damage on the battleground of life.  They’re supposed to get hurt; how else would you know you have them?

I have a terrible time letting go of people.  I have a bad habit of letting people remain in my life when I know they serve absolutely no positive purpose for me and generally just make me feel like shit.  I know most of us do this, but we chalk it up to “we’re good people”, or “we’re trying to lead by example”, or some other complete bullshit we want to use to placate ourselves and reinforce our bad decisions.  I am not a saint and have no right to martyr myself.  I don’t claim to be a good person; in fact, I’m probably pretty terrible in comparison to the guy who is currently living in a third world country helping dig wells for fresh water and shit as I sit in my jammies on my sofa punching away at this keyboard.

Whether or not I’m a good person isn’t the point; we’re all capable of being a good person and being a shitty person and it depends on how much motivation we have towards either side on any given day.  No one gives a shit about how punctual I am, (Ok, my boss cares) or that I never forget my mom’s birthday or that I try to say at least one nice thing to someone every day; none of that matters.  What matters is how useful I am to other people and society in general.

I’m not talking about my financial contributions or how I feed orphans living in alleys behind the Dairy Queen, I’m talking about my contributions that help those around me do more, be better and be happier.  In turn, those things make me happy.  The hard part is recognizing the things you need to change about yourself in order to be a more positive person who attracts the kind of people you would want in your life.  Change is fucking hard.  Everything in your body will scream and fight it every step of the way because we are programmed to take comfort in familiarity.  If you don’t believe this, ask an addict about how hard it is to quit whatever it is they’re addicted to.

My favorite thing to do on New Year’s Day when everyone else is hard at work on their resolutions is to read This article. I love Cracked more than any other news source available, but this one post sticks with me every year.  This man’s words are exactly what we all need to hear on the first day of a new year to remind us what it’s really about and what we need to do to accomplish the goals we set for ourselves.  This article reminds me every year that I am not as pious as I often let myself believe and that I am really just another lazy, shitty person making excuses while I sit on my sofa.  And every year I use it as the cornerstone to accomplish something, anything. Because of it, I wrote and published more than one novel, I found a job I absolutely love and am not too bad at and I continue to step outside of myself and work on the awful things about me that I know drive others away.  No one wants to drive people away; it’s why we invented bathing in the first place.

So today, I will smoke cigarettes until my stomach hurts, I will listen to crybaby emo rock and reflect on all the ways I absolutely suck at being a human being and figure out how to change my people-deflecting habits.  Baby steps though, because I still pretty much hate humanity in general and my heart is still broken so a seething hatred for the perpetrator is still pretty prevalent today.

Baby steps.

 

Girls Like Me.

I’m never going to be the girl who stops traffic and hearts with a smile and a laugh.

Girls like me stand in shadows and watch the world around us.

Girls like me see things for what they are

While maintaining complete anonymity while everyone is busy watching the beautiful girls.

Ah, the beautiful girls; where would the world be without them?

They shine and laugh and bathe their glorious light on all those around them while everyone clamors to be the one who catches their eye.

That’s not for girls like me.

Girls like me sit in corners and sip coffee and wish we were brave enough to say hello to a beautiful stranger across the room.

Girls like me step lightly and carefully down avenues brimming with new faces and go unnoticed.

You’ll never pick us out of the crowd and if by chance you see our faces as you pass,

The image will disintegrate from your mind just as quickly.

We may smile extra big and take a little more time to comb our hair and paint our faces and in the end we are still opaque.

If we were books, we would be the book with the remotely interesting looking cover you pick up and scan the back before setting back on the shelf and walking away.

Girls like me will never catch your eye and keep it;

We can only sit on our dusty shelves and watch as you shuffle on by.

The next time you see a girl like me, try to really see her and appreciate her.

One day society will collapse under the weight of a zombie apocalypse and it might just be a girl like me

Who saves your ass in the end.