Taking out the trash

I miss writing about things that matter.

I know that sounds strange, what with the subjects of my writing lately. Of course school matters (like I never understood before, and am learning more every day now). Of course medical things matter, even when they turn out to be nothing serious at all (because it’s scary when something strange and unknown happens to your body, no explanation and no warning and no explanation after other than “take this, it’ll make you feel better,”). Of course love matters (and I’ll leave it at that, or this will turn into one of those sappy gross blog posts resembling puppy love gone on too long, or some such). Of course the things that piss me off daily matter – sure, you can say “that’s life,” but damn it, that’s not how life has to be, right? Right? Not full of stupid people, mean people, people so wrapped up in their own delusions and fears and ignorance that communication is laughable at best, pitiful or enraging at the worst? Right?

With my blog posts lately, I feel like the ultimate personification of the stereotypical astrological description of a Cancer, all moody and changeable, prone to cry or laugh or say nothing and just glare, with no explanation. I feel out of control.

Really, it’s just that life’s finally caught up with me. In the times when I was prone to write great and philosophical, or just plain weird but kinda thoughtful posts, I really didn’t have much of a life. I had a job – the same one I’ve been working for five years now. I had (for a little while) a pretend love – someone I’d tricked myself into believing was a good person who cared about me (he didn’t, in the end). I lived with my parents, rent-free, worry-free … life experience-free. I had no real complaints, and more free time than I knew what to do with.

And so I wrote.

Granted, not everything I tapped out on the keyboard was magic, but the point is, it could have been, if I’d wanted it to.

I had all the time in the world to form the prettiest, smartest words to express thoughts and feelings that I thought at the time to be very “deep.” I could write poetry, because I had the time to be still and let it bubble up out of me, slowly or too fast to keep up with. I could, if I so chose, just sit at the computer and think - about what I wanted to write, or didn’t want to, about what I didn’t know I wanted to write, about nothing or everything, injustice or wonderment or dreams.

Now I have a life. Oh boy, do I have a life. Not much of a social one, at the moment, but that’s not what matters in the end and it’s not really what I care much about, anyway. I mean I have direction now, and experience, and understanding that I didn’t have before. I have love – the real thing, this time – and all the wonder and learning and hoping and fearing that comes with it. I have the same job but am learning more about life from it now – about what I do and do not want, about what I will and will not settle for. I’m back in college, and by far doing the best I’ve ever done, and learning to be proud of that and make it known.

I’m learning that for the most part, I’ve led a very lazy, self-centered life. No, I’m not going to go terribly, deeply philosophical with this, with empty promises of getting rid of all my material possessions and “living a humble life.” I mean that for so long there was little in the way of consequence for my actions or inactions – or least not much in the way of long-term consequence. I had a roof over my head, a good family life (no matter how much I may not have thought so at times), and absolutely no responsibilities beyond going to work everyday. And really, since I wasn’t paying the rent or the bills, even that wasn’t much of a necessity, but it paid for tattoos and clothes and too many pets, so I did it anyway.

Because of this, I really could do pretty much what I wanted, or not do it. It didn’t matter. I had the computer to write through, and books to escape in. Who needs anything more, right?

It has been a slow and unsteady waking up. In the last two and a half years, I have lost people I’ve cared about to death for some and realizations that they weren’t who and what I so desperately wanted them to be for others. I have learned that I hold grudges very deeply - for years even, after I’ve already scolded myself into understanding that those things and situations really don’t matter and the grudges only make me feel ugly and psychotic. I remember good words and times, but sometimes I remember the bad ones more accurately, and longer.

I have discovered how hard it is to let go of the freedom to simply lie down, or sit down, and do absolutely nothing if I want to. I’m still having trouble letting go of that, finding myself glaring at the computer screen or the wall when I should be working on assignments due in mere hours. And it makes me angry, not because I no longer have that freedom, but because I do it anyway, angry at myself for doing it, unable to move and just fucking start typing. It makes me bitter, more so because it happens less and less now, but like a junkie going back, each time it crops up again now it’s worse than before, leaving me immobile in body and enraged in mind, cursing myself, and if the things I scream at myself in my mind to get moving were heard aloud, you might not like me very much.

You might come to understand that while I’m as good a person as I can be to those around me, I’m not such a good person to myself. I don’t have nearly the patience with my own shortcomings as I do with everyone else’s, and I’m rapidly losing faith in my ability to remain ever-patient with others, so that scares me.

I’m on edge, and I keep finding myself wondering how long it will take for me to fall off and over and start saying aloud the things I think of people and life and “oh poor fucking me, I can’t be lazy anymore.”

I find myself feeling like a petulant child, foot stomping and glaring and harrumphing, and so self-involved that I can’t see how ugly it makes me. How pathetic.

Only, I can see it. I guess I could console myself with that; if I can see it, and understand it, I can change it, right?

Please, tell me I’m right.

I should be happy that my laziness is slipping away, despite its vile, overpowering comebacks sometimes (and always at the worst times) that leave me feeling slimy and horrible and self-destructive. I should be happy that instead of wasting time wishing I had something useful to do for the vast majority of my copious free time, I do have something incredibly useful to do now, even though that means I have virtually no free time left. Rather than feeling bad that I have had to cancel the last five or six dinner and darts dates with Matt and a coworker and her boyfriend, I should be rejoicing that I’ve had the will to do so in order to get schoolwork done, because although I dearly love dinner and darts dates, they won’t land me that wonderful, someday, dream job. A 4.0 grade point average will.

Rather than being all manner of pissed off that I can’t even spend thirty fucking minutes sitting with Matt and talking, or not talking, or watching TV, I should be amazed and honored that despite our “us time” being cut down to those precious few minutes of falling asleep and waking up together, he still loves me dearly and washes and cleans and tidies up and makes me dinner and wants me to be his wife. I should be humbled, not self-righteous.

I find myself telling myself to stop bitching. And then, true to my “sometimes-I-think-too-much-(ok-it’s-more-than-sometimes)” nature, I reason everything out and tell myself it’s perfectly understandable and ok to be disgusted at blatant stupidity, and outraged when it affects me in big ways like almost killing me (“yes, asshole, that was a Stop sign you just blasted past, even though I was already out in the middle of the fucking intersection so that if you’d been paying even the most microscopic amount of attention, you’d have realized that something big (another vehicle, maybe?) was in the way of your forward movement and maybe – just maybe - you ought to slow down and figure out what it is instead of barreling forward straight at it with reckless stupidity anyway.”)

And then I nitpick. Because I see others go through what I go through and remain much calmer than I do, and I feel like I should be calm too. Sure, they’ll cuss, or mutter, or shake their heads with an angry glare, but it only lasts a moment and then they’re over it and on with life. My angers last a long, long time, and run deep to pop up again when I least expect them to. Grudges, remember? I hold them very well. It makes me feel guilty and judgmental, and then like a hypocrite because I hate it when people judge me based on one moment of my life. For all I know, that guy that ran the stop sign and had to swerve to avoid hitting and killing me was distracted and in a hurry because someone he loved was just hurt and taken to the emergency room, and he just wanted to get to them, and everything else around him went away for a while. Ok, or maybe he really was just an idiot who shouldn’t be allowed to drive, but I don’t know that, I just assume and get angry.

This part of my life, where I’m learning and discovering and evolving, is frightening. Sure, there’s excitement too, in learning that I really am as smart as people always told me, and more; that I have found a love that’s better than anything my wildest fantasies could have dreamed up; that I’m closer to my parents now than I have been in a very long time; that I’m finally learning the value of life-experience, like budgeting, and keeping track (on paper, not in my head) of the bills I’ve paid and still need to pay, and that the word “sacrifice,” in all it’s pent-up, vamped-up glory, can sometimes mean something so seemingly unimportant as not going out to dinner with the one you love, even though you know you both need it, because you can’t afford it till the end of the week, and can’t afford to take the time off from school work anyway. I’m learning what it means to juggle life, and I’ve had my share of misses and drops, but I’ve also had some pretty amazing catches, too.

I guess what I’m saying is that I miss this: writing out what’s pent up inside and scratching and gnawing to get out. I miss talking about what’s really going on in my life, in my head. I don’t need to do it every day, but I do need it a fuck of a lot more than I’ve been able to do it for a long time now. It’s making me a little psychotic, or it feels like it. Of course everything will be ok – it always is. But I need to remind myself of that now and then, and I can only do that through writing or talking, and I don’t have much time to do either to great length anymore, and it is exhausting to hold it all inside. And I haven’t learned how to just let it all go. I don’t know if I ever will – it’s never really been my nature to.

*Sigh*

And now I’m drained, but I don’t know if it’s bliss or just a sudden emptiness. But maybe empty is what I need, every now and then.


*Mere minutes later*

Ok, this is creepy. Here's my horoscope for today:
"Be wary of seamless perfection today! It's when things are not going smoothly that your brain is getting the most out of a situation. You benefit from conflict and challenges more than you benefit from peace and tranquility right now, so enjoy any turmoil you come across! Step up to any naysayers and get to the bottom of what their issues are. You'll love debating new ideas and figuring out why people who seem so smart don't agree with everything you say!"

Hmm. Guess it's just another day then. Now I feel sorta silly, sorta relieved, sorta, well ... still kinda empty. But that's ok.

What's trippier - between posting this and reading my horoscope, I logged into my virtual campus only to be faced with a big fat ugly F for last night's assigment, due to the instructor either mixing my grade up with some other student's, or just not seeing my assignment. He said in the comments section of the grade that I hadn't posted by the task deadline, but in reality I did post before the deadline (it was a discussion board assigment). I e-mailed him to correct the situation, then checked my horoscope.

Trippy.