Britney

This week has been driven by sick, with a sore throat and mucous jaws coming for me at the very beginning and a bout of nostalgia complete with rotting layers of skin and new old memories finalizing the Great Ill. It is almost over, only to begin again. I used to think that cycles gave you chances to right wrongs, but if anything, it forces you to add to the list of missteps, with a gold star moment or two thrown in between the series of screw-ups. I love learning that I haven’t learned. I don’t look to people for constants anymore, but to my own bad habits and somewhat deficient common sense.

For once in my life it feels strange to be talking so openly about what a blemish I can be, and I wonder why I do it—why I talk so much about myself and what other people must think of me and what a joke I must sound like. I don’t write about any of the good things I do. I only talk about my happiness when it involves another and that disgusts me, not in a beautifully repulsive way but in a “stop being so dependent” way. Except even then I didn’t acknowledge that I’ve already acknowledged this in real life! I’ve begun to learn. I already took my mental notes on this lesson.

Maybe it’s that I feel the good is sacred and the bad is public domain. I wrote a whole post on disliking how I’ve been defined by all my tragedies and how angry it made me when my college advisor became perhaps the hundredth adult to tell me that I was lucky to have such a “good story” (meaning that my life would be a pain to live but an enjoyable pain to consume from the safety of a seat in Barnes & Noble or in bed with both of your parents in the next room). Except, the thing is, my default is defining myself by my tragedies. This is a bit of a personal jawdropper for me because I antagonize others for forcing this image onto me but I play into it without fully realizing it. As I am writing this, this is the first time I have fully confronted this fact. So what now?

All I can do to save face is be more conscious, and change the narrative. Everything is not all good, but everything is not all bad. (Duh!) Today is a safe kind of emptiness, where I am not smiling or forcing myself to laugh if I don’t think something is that funny, but it feels good. I am not being artificial towards myself or others. I am remaining positive while maintaining realism, instead of moping or trying to pretend that everything is [insert one-sided emotion]. I am OK. I am content. For the past few days, I’ve been shockingly happy, and today I am content. It doesn’t feel lesser and I like that. I think I can be ridiculous, but I like myself. This is where I am. Moving up and across and sometimes backwards and sometimes very much downwards and then up, up, up again. ♦