Running Away

Today I feel like giving up. Packing my bags full of Pringles and Caramel DeLites (and several large canisters of Ben & Jerry's) and fleeing to the closest underground couch/entertainment center. Said caché would ideally look bizarrely like my parents' darkened basement, in which I hid during the bulk of my first real depression. Dark, because it's easiest to forget one's shortcomings (or all of the self) in the dark- especially with a marathon of entertaining movies dancing across a very large screen.

I feel like I should hide with the cheapest of comfort snacks and ignore everything on my impending to-do list. Over time I'd give up on singing, and focus instead on critiquing other singers. I'd be especially good at pointing out tiny flaws in the work of established performers.

I'd have to leave the Boy in New York, cause that man is Goin' Places(!) and I'd probably just deter him with all my self-hiding in the dark. I'd miss him so terribly that my stomach would perpetually ache, but I'd work hard to convince myself that he deserved so much better than a little girl who was afraid to try because she might fail.

The truth is that I am terrified. I'm frustratingly distracted from this fact by my ridiculous workload, but still I cannot really hide from it. I have gotten about as far as sheer talent will ever get me, and to make it any further will require work, more than ever before. More honesty. More emotional risk-taking. How could I not be terrified?

One day I feel as though I can't but open my mouth before everyone wants to tell me how great I sound (one of the perks of singing solo in church is that one often has an extremely willing and grateful audience) and the next I'm face to face with the stark reality that a pretty sound does not an opera singer make. And what is pretty to Rebecca at church is not exactly a classical music standard.

I'm constantly re-evaluating my self-worth- and what good does that do?? Surely I ought to be able to accept criticism, to seek it out even, without jeopardizing whole of my personhood (or artist-hood) in the process. How will I ever grow? It's nonproductive and exceptionally painful to invest so much of my self worth every time I sing. I'm not so stupid so as to reveal both my sense of self and my feelings on the critical chopping-block. So what's a smart, extra-sensitive performer to do? Well, I protect myself, of course! I withhold my feelings from my performance, relegating my singing to 'nice' but lacking in soul (the ingredient most necessary to ethereal artistry).

And since I've assigned my day's self-worth on a performance I wasn't emotionally invested in, I also feel like a very large, rather smelly pile of crap.

Not very productive.

Three years old

There's nothing like catching yourself mid-temper tantrum; it's a jolt of humility that I would have preferred to avoid on this gloomy Wednesday, as my mind immediately published an image of me as a three-year-old throwing herself on the floor.

This entry is my best effort to curb the pity party I was just hosting for myself on the back of the crosstown bus. I really hope it works. Lots of things are piling-up against me today, like my gross cold which seems to have stolen my voice. Or my current technique-ennui, which (exacerbated by the cold) has swallowed my confidence whole. Or my lunch 'hour' wasted at the worst bank in the world (I'm looking at you, HSBC) with nothing to show for it but anger.

But mostly I'm upset because that man- the sweet one who makes me coffee in the mornings and has the most wonderful laugh in all the world- left this morning for Virginia for a few days. I know I ought to be crazily happy for and proud of him, after all- he's performing with an orchestra and getting paid(!) Truth is, I'm insanely proud of him, and I hope he has an amazing time, and I'm sure all the little old ladies will throw him roses (he has a talent for attracting octogenarian fans), and i want him to have an amazing and inspiring time, and I wish he didn't have to go.

Or that I could go, too.

I miss him, and in what feels like a terribly selfish way. I don't want to keep drudger-ing on to school and work, seeing that bills are paid, taking out the trash, without the reward of time with him when day is done. I don't remember how life was possible before I joined this relationship, but I assure you there was less laughter.

I know this will pass, as all things do, but I wish it would pass a little more expediently.

Growth

I’ve been rather jumbled lately. My writing has dissipated to an almost nothing, a hint of a whisper in the back of my mind. Actually, it’s more of a constant run-on sentence of analysis, dream, and guilt which refuses to focus into a cohesive line. So instead of writing my musings and airing my thoughts in the public forum, I have been reduced to running about the world like a typical New Yorker in the full bloom of unrealized life. I am busy, busy, busy. . . too busy to contemplate writing an essay on life or experience. (The fact that I have a very understanding partner doesn’t necessarily help the literary agenda; I often just share my thoughts verbally with him, feel understood, and leave it at that. Sorry ghost-audience.)

So what is this? Well, I got taken down by a militant sinus infection, and so I’ve been stuck at home, in bed, for two days. I’m starting to go a bit crazy after twenty-seven billion episodes of Murder She Wrote. I’ve started yelling aloud, “AHA! I knew it was her!!” even when D is working in the next room. I’ve tried contemplating the sixteen separate projects that each need individual attention, but it’s no use. I don’t want to do the busy work today (even if it’s great busy work that I love. . . like learning a Schumann or Beach cycle).

Instead I went for a tiny walk so that I could remember what it is to be alive in this city, and my head began to buzz with background chatter come full center. The never-ending theoretical debate of what it would take to heal our collective soul, why I still sometimes contemplate running in front of a passing bus, what my mother thinks about decisions that have long since been made, and a recent conversation with someone who used to be a close friend.

I had rather expected said conversation to be short, awkward, and informative. It really wasn’t any of these, but something more. . . human? I retreated to old self-patterns, quick to apologize, reticent to outwardly blame (though I’m sure the indirect blame read clearly). I fell back to a strong pattern of humanity-shame, a trait that has in many ways defined my early twenties; a trait I have been actively rejecting in my late twenties (That’s right! I’m twenty-six, thank you very much).

Humanity –shame is the product of a perverted thinking whereby I intentionally reject the parts of myself that are unpleasant, imperfect, or embarrassing. When I pretend that I haven’t just had a petty thought about another person, it is because of my humanity-shame. The same when I hide my disappointment from another to save hir feelings. Also when I take all possible blame for an incident that clearly involves two or more people. It’s the result of an effort I made to become a better person than I was in my late teens, combined with a really old tendency to avoid/mend all conflicts.

Basically, I noticed that it was no longer serving me on my current journey. Humanity-shame blocks my ability to truly connect to others on a human to human basis, because it seeks to uproot my own nature as a person. How can I truly empathize if I’m pretending to be an uber-robot? How can I give my partner my truest, my best self and love if I continually attempt to hide the unflattering parts of myself? If I’m never honest when he disappoints me? The truth is that I cannot be the person I want to be as an idyllic robot; I must be fully human to be a good person. Flaws and all.

It is my hope that this journey toward greater human-ness will define these next few years before giving way to another practical journey. I believe I once wrote, on this very blog, about wishing to be utterly perfect- greatest of patience, humble, giving. . . never needing anything. I see now the idealism of my earlier thoughts, and I love that part of myself, but I also recognize that it is folly to attempt to quash all of one’s humanity. My impatience, my greediness for all the lambie gummies in the Gummy Bag, my petty thoughts about others and their dramas, and my persistent need for attention cannot be suppressed into non-existence. These things must be experienced, accepted, and lived through in order to learn how to live beyond them.

It does not, as I may have previously believed, make me bad to have faults, to be a messy emotionalist, or to have needs. It seems to be one of the ironic truths of life that I cannot truly move past my shortcomings without first truly accepting them. It may sound cliché, but it’s all I’ve got for now.

Don't you like to pretend to be someone else? I do, too. A form of escapism, perhaps? A way vitality has of surviving, trying to creep through the cracks of damage and proclaim its existence? An internal fighter trying to stake its spot in the eventuality of progress? My most recent attempt at evading personal reality involved giving the name Laura at Starbucks. Unfortunately, I happened to try the lone shop in NY with a cashier committed enough to compare my given name with the plastic name on my credit card, so that when my drink was called I was forced to claim my name and own my reality. No chance of escapism even in a simple ruse. . . I should have said Fabio.

In the deep part, the tender spot, a small question keeps sounding: am I depressed?

Can I handle the answer? I look honestly at the evidence- the crying, the unhappiness, the insatiable, unnameable need. The conflicting desire to be held always and to be alone with my shame.

No, I am not depressed. At least not clinically. I am not under the thumb of the old regime. Though in some ways this is a kind of depression, a pain born out of the separation of me with my true self, I am not in need of chemical supplements or extra therapy. Well, actually I wouldn't mind a second session per week. . .

But my real point is to claim for myself the truth that there is a cause in this current amorphous ennui. There is a point to it, there is a path out of it, and it does not lie in the direction of a comparably simple label of depression. I am not myself these days and I can not hide it, even when I desperately want to. So much energy it would take to block up the obvious space in my eyes. To force a genuine smile takes so much effort when one really would prefer to cry.

What is so wrong with crying, anyways? It's embarrassing, a whiny voice declares. It's messy, the practical voice adds. But I need it, I counter. And I do.

What space could possibly be enough for my sadness? How did so much sadness gather? Whenever I begin to let it be free I become terrified that I will spew tears and sadness into the stratosphere without end, and so I try my hardest to contain the sadness, judge how much is appropriate to release, and adhere to those arbitrary levels.

Sometimes I just let go, and though it feels good to do so, there is always a critical voice inside, fearing that such shows are too much. Inevitably I feel embarrassed at owning such sadness. Where does the embarrassment come from? Constantly that word picks away at the best parts of myself. Slowly it devours my new resolves and crushes my newer senses of possibility and hope.

I wish I had a bit more hope.

Scars

When I think about scars odd things come to mind. I’m referring specifically to the literal concept of scars, as opening the topic of figurative scars would necessitate a much bigger format.

I have a lot of scars, which is weird to realize. Does my tattoo count as a scar? I wonder. The permanent marks that are on my body that weren’t there at my birth. . . I wonder if the bright red stretch marks across my recently enlarged belly will disappear someday. Will they, too, be a permanent reminder of a past indulgence?

How many scars do I have? Well, there’s the large slash mark across the back of my left hand, where I brushed up against the top of my old roommate’s toaster oven. It happened a year ago, and though it was painful, I never thought it would create a scar. Yet there it is- a slight discoloration, ovular and long, parallel to my knuckles. It could be a birthmark. Just this writing about it conjures up a tangible image of that apartment. It’s dinginess, the pungency of old cigarettes, the yellowed timbre of the light- I could be there right now. The loneliness, too, seems to hang about in that memory. There are the sounds of This American Life playing in the background, a distant online chat looming from the bedroom. This is what I get from pondering the back of my hand too long.

I am wearing a short-sleeved dress today, so the next scar I’m drawn to is a small constellation near the crook of my left elbow. Ever visible to me, rarely seen by others, these four lines are imperfectly lengthened and imperfectly paralleled. They shine from a distant time and sometimes I wonder if they persevere in existence primarily because I prize them so. Do I will these faint scars into persistence? Perhaps. These are battle scars, and they are the first of their kind on my body. I pause for a moment to do math that should be quick, but because it’s attached to emotion, to experience, to memory, it takes a bit longer. Eventually I figure a sum: 6 years plus a few months. . . 6 years plus a few eons.

Such a short time ago, really. These scars are from self-inflicted wounds. They are detritus from a time of pain. Actually they are from a time without pain, a time when I needed to feel something, when it was easier to feel a pain that I had control of than to let loose the pain within. That torrent would have been uncontrollable.

Eighteen years old and I had no clue what to do with anger. I was continually frightened that if I let the secret feelings I had out that they would destroy everything. I believed my anger didn’t exist, I forced myself to have almost no feelings beyond the utterly permissible. This resulted in my life as a sympathetic automaton, capable of generous thought but never able to truly hear or understand any depth of feeling. I think I would have stayed like that forever if I could have, terrified to look at my true feelings. But as luck, or god, or the Universe would have it, that was not an option.

Every scar seems to have an entire world within it, and I haven’t even begun to think about the small scars on my abdomen. Of course just typing that sentence makes those memories rise. Three discreet little lines, surgically created, neatly closed. A nicely punctuated belly.

I’m not sure what to say about this set of scars. What remains to be said? They are there. They are the remains of a great loss. They remind me of what it is to hope for love, to long for a relief to loneliness, and to be helpless in the midst of grief. These scars remind me that the life I lead could have been very different. As if I needed the scars to remind me.

As if much more than a day could go by without thinking about that time. There is a part of me that worries that I will forever live in the shadow of that time. Hope is the the thing with feathers, and I am perpetually singing the tunes without the words, but as yet my life is still very much affected by that particular procedure and everything that happened before and after it.

It was a particular kind of loneliness. I was alone and I was scared, and at the same time I had friends across the country willing to listen to me late into the night. Willing to assure me that things would be ok.

I don't think I have much else to say about scars. Or at least about these ones. There's still the tiny scratch from my childhood pet, and Good Goddess would that come with an entire chapter about that poor little kitten. I think that for today at least, this is enough.

Saturday Nights are Alright

The completion of a heart? Impossible, maybe. What we long for, what I long for: to be understood. To be seen, to be recognized and felt with, and loved anyways. To say the unsayable and still be known. Is it a mirage? Is it an unachievable longing?

The little hurts bind together, in the pit of one’s gut. They merge and latch onto the parts that never cease. Loneliness is a sick master, dissipating at times only to surge forth again with greater resolve. I have found relief from such singularity so rarely. The loss of that relief starkly mocks the experience of compounded joy.

I suppose I’m feeling emo, which is an easy way to disregard the depth of my own feelings. It is so easy to mock oneself and then brush aside thoughts of sadness. Just a few minutes ago I was walking home past a playground where an eight year old was screaming in pain. His mother was walking away, ignoring him and leaving the park. He pleaded with her to wait, he just needed a minute, and she left anyways. His cries were desperate, sharp, painful. His cries touched me. They made the sadness in me more acute. I walked by with no way of helping him but to close my eyes in solidarity. Not to shut him out, just to feel it.

How lonesome to have such pain and watch as your god walks away, shaking her head and hoping you will grow up and learn to stifle your cries. As she learned to do so long ago.

I don’t know why I am so lonely tonight. I’ve been off all day. I could muster a few sorry reasons. I could ignore them and put on a face meant for happiness. All I feel like doing is burying. Digging a small, deep hole and throwing things into it. Throwing away my whimsies, my frustrations, my alabaster dreams. Then I’d really get down to the purging and rip out all the old hurts- they belong in a hole, too. I’d cut out my fears, my liver, my brain. So much of this comes from too much thinking.

Finally freed, I’d cover the hole in dirt and hubris and sit on it. Then I could be a simple automaton, a thing of beauty from where I’m seated now.

It hurts so much to live each day openly. To respond to pain with an open heart. To attempt in all things to give of myself instead of punishing. To attempt to live each interaction as a new thing instead of a dull repetition of past dialogues gone awry. It is exhausting.

I wish I could escape. I wish that I could imagine a day when I would know that the journey would forever be easier. I wish that when the good days came I could feel as though they might last forever, instead of the knowing that there will always be difficulties ahead. Today the difficulties are not exciting challenges. They mock my hopefulness.

Today I feel mildly hopeless. I count my gratitudes and I find them wanting, even though I know that I have more than my fair share. What is a fair share of gratitude, anyways?

How can I have so much and still feel so empty? Which is a funny question to see myself type, as I don’t feel empty at all. The problem in this moment is a lack of emptiness. I feel too much and I can’t seem to find a way of escaping it. I find nothing to draw myself out of my own self-satisfied moaning. Not that I’m satisfied, but that I seem to be enjoying my own pain. I’m not masochistic, per se, but I do seem to be wallowing in a martyr-like cloud.

I don’t want to feel like this anymore. In some ways I wish I could hide my head in the hole instead. Sleep a long, dreamless sleep while the processes of my body continue on their path toward healing without the constant commentary of my mind. It’s not that I want to give up so much as that I’m tired. I’m tired of training my soul to give more. I’m tired of counteracting the voices inside that speak defamatory screeds. I’m sick of having to actively conjure well-intentioned self-speak.

It’s very tiresome.

And I wish that I could feel less alone in this. I wish that when I spoke of this process I was met with more than a concerned eye, or the good intentions of understanding without ability.

I wish my experience was easy to relate to, and that I wasn’t the only one who saw my thoughts as such a thing of importance. I am so tired. Maybe there will be more hope tomorrow.

The other night I left a concert because I needed space. I was sitting there in the audience, the first song was playing, and I felt so sad. I walked outside to get some air and I sat on the pavement next to the parking lot and I watched the sky get a little darker. I hugged my knees to my chest and I searched for what was wrong and I cried a little. I needed to leave.

I left.

I was walking across a darkened campus, shivering and feeling awful, when a thought emerged: I am so lonely. In that moment I felt so alone. Walking away from a concert filled with people, walking away carrying a hurt that seemed to defy sense but hurt nonetheless. It felt like I could never be understood, a sort of loneliness at its essence. I felt burdensome and loathsome and pariah-esque, and in that moment I considered walking to my car and smoking the rest of a pack of cigarettes I had earlier bought and fumingly smoked. I thought about getting in the car and driving away.

I felt like an embarrassment, some sort of twisted puzzle without a solution, a freakish girl who seems to refuse happiness, who subjects those she loves to the ridiculousness of her willful neuroses. I wanted to put myself in a long time out, and then I wanted to be chased after, to be reassured. I wanted to be told that my hurts were seen, that I was loved even with my hurts and my bruises and my sillinesses. I felt scared and prone to false dichotomy as images of angelic Boy and harpy Girl drifted by, carrying with them a particularly sharp suggestion that I didn't deserve the angel Boy with all my horridness. I should find a rock and disappear. If I kept quiet maybe I would slowly turn into sludge and enjoy the blissful ineptitude of thought enjoyed by slime the world over.

I hated these thoughts. They're the worst bits of myself, compounded and minced into a black chasm of grossness. I banished the worst of the thoughts, tried to put the rest of the terrible things on hold for a moment and headed to the room. Still, the thought of how lonely I felt hovered, almost luminous but for its weight. I could barely understand myself and I knew it was asking for a boon of a miracle, but I needed to be understood. I needed the me I was struggling with to be seen. I felt alone because I was hurting and I felt like I had to be convincing that the reason I was hurting was a valid reason, and if I couldn’t explain it well enough it would never be seen- I’d just be some crazy girl who makes everything harder than it has to be. Who cries over stupid little comments. Who so desperately wants to be peaceful and fun-loving and is terrified that all my little wounds will never be done wreaking havoc.

I had to be understood. I’m a skilled enough writer. . . why couldn’t I just sit down and explain it? The biggest and scariest question whittled itself down to “why is this such a big deal?” and I thought that if I could just explain it. . . If I could only show what I meant. . .

I can’t help that I hurt. I just do. I’m doing my best to take care of that hurt- to be open about it and learn more about what’s going on and not get lost in a sea of pain or hopelessness. I am already drafting contingency plans and small and large courses of action to change what about my life is making me unhappy. I’m trying to take care of my hurt, but I can’t control the fact that I hurt. I can’t control which circumstances set off this hurt, be they silly or socially valid. But I hurt.

When I got to the room I was firmly resolved to sit down and write the long sordid history of emily’s sexual orientation. I thought I’d just tell the story- how long it took to discover who I am, how many back and forths there have been, how many times I’ve been told that I was being ridiculous, how many times I’ve had to come out, how often being accepted by others has been contingent on so many things, how I subsisted for years on a sparse diet of external acceptance, how my orientation affected and affects that acceptance. . . It’s never been clear for me. It’s been a big struggle. A formative struggle.

I sat at my computer and wrote a few lame sentences. And by lame I really mean without the ability to move. I deleted them and began again, and the immensity of such a project overwhelmed me. The importance and the literal hugeness was too much in that moment.

I noticed my friend, K, online and I started chatting with her. Like me, K is a Queer lady in a straight relationship, but hers is a few years old. She’s out and a feminist and she was so empathetic. She struggles with the same thing that I’ve been bothered by, which though I haven’t been explicit yet, centers on making sense of myself as a non-straight woman in a monogamous heterosexual relationship.

One might ask why it’s such a big deal, to which I have no quick answer. Being out and Queer has been such a part of my life for the last 5 years, not to mention the prior closeted 3. Only one year ago I was fresh out of the first successful relationship I ever had, and it was with a woman. I moved across the country, leaving my beloved Bay Area for the decidedly less-Queer New York. I was sure that I had learned the biggest pieces of my orientation identity in the previous few months. I was sure (yet again) that I knew what I liked and would always like: women. I theoretically proposed that I might find some very rare male-bodied person who I would not dismiss if otherwise appealing, but I tended to say that with a strong sense of skepticism.

Then I was in Michigan, falling for a male, and the world turned around. But I was still Queer. A Dyke is allowed to fall for a man once in a while, especially if she still prefers women.

Then I was in New York, over-worked, typically under-slept, ill, detached, alone. I was too busy to find a new queer community. Too tired to do all the work involved, which is not to say that I made no effort, as I absolutely went on dates and tried to meet new people, but rather that it is terribly difficult work to nurture a new community. It takes consistency and attention and energy, which were running low after my summer and fall. Then came the winter and the whispers of spring.

Then I met the Boy.

Somehow I’ve settled into a magical arrangement: I love him, he loves me, and we laugh a lot. Simple, no?

What happens to your identity as a queer woman when you begin to contemplate a life-long heterosexual relationship? How do you define yourself? When you meet other queer people and you are standing next to your partner, how do you introduce yourself without bluntly inserting somewhere into the introduction, “Hello, I’m m and though I’m deeply in love with my boyfriend I’m not straight,”? What do you do when you suddenly discover that it’s Pride Sunday and you don’t even have a clue what kinds of festivities are going on in New York, nor do you have anyone to ask??? Or when yet again a lovely gay man assumes that you’re just another straight chick?

What happens, if you are me, is that you become filled with an overwhelming sadness. You begin to grieve for the part of you that you’ve lost, that you’ve let go missing. A part you fear may have disappeared forever. You begin to wonder what you can do to gain back those pieces, and ultimately, you realize that it’s very difficult to explain to non-Queers why it means so much to be Queer.

Being Queer is not like having been raised Catholic. It’s not like having been a Girl Scout. It’s neither a random bit of my history nor is it a part of my detached cultural background. Coming out as Queer- or rather, as Bisexual, then Lesbian, then Queer, was one of the first big ways that I gained self-acceptance. Furthermore, when I joined the Queer community, like it or not, I joined a dynamic that very much felt like Us vs. Them. You’re either family or you’re not. There are aspects of coming out as GLBTQ, of growing up, of discovering and searching, that cannot be explained the way they can be empathized. When I meet someone and I find out ze is Queer, I immediately feel a little closer to hir, even if we’re as different as can be in almost every other way. It’s a bond.

I know that I haven’t caught my thoughts about this yet. They’re still amorphous and drifting, and maybe they will never settle. Maybe that’s ok. I’m left with a directive from within to go out and forge a new community. I must discover again where I fit and how to go about in the world as a person with an irregular orientation identity.