So a couple of days ago I wrote this post about my experience, which was partly blissful and partly, well, NOT. And I guess I pissed some people off and made others think and even others are now turned off of the conference thing for good because they think I said it sucked, which really I didn’t but that’s how people took it and now they’re all scared-bunny that they’ll end up cowering in a corner, weird and wall-flowery, like me.
The point is, some people took it as an angry post even though it really wasn’t. It was just me blabbering on about how socially retarded and weird and fucked up I am. Maybe that just sounds a lot like bitter and angry, I don’t know. They certainly all belong to the same emotional family.
But then I wrote another post that really WAS angry, about STUPID VALENTINES DAY and how much I hate it, and I imagined myself chasing down the Cheerful Holiday Sweater Lady and beating and kicking her for being so goddamned HAPPY about this ridiculous holiday and feeding the Valentine Beast with her stupid doily-heart-shaped party invitations and pink sweatshirt with the lace and the satin hearts and the fat cherubs and the bells that don’t even ring. Toward the end I spit on her and stomped on her doilies and told Cupid to go fuck himself.
And it felt good to be all violent and hateful and judgy and awful.
Too good.
So I didn’t publish it. And I thought to myself, What IS your fucking problem? And the answer was simple — or not, depending on how you look at it. The truth is, I’m just CRAZY and AIMLESS right now, and FRUSTRATED on so many levels, and UNSURE of myself, and JEALOUS of the people who seem to have it all “together,” and BORED, and SELF-DESTRUCTIVE, and a little NUMB, and GUILTY for all of the above, and SCARED of what the future holds, and WORRIED that I can’t be all things to all people, and DISAPPOINTED that I’m letting everyone down, even myself …
…and the whole thing just makes me want to BARF.
I’ve always been superstitious, one of those people who knocks on wood and blows eyelashes into the wind and makes wishes at 12:12 every day. But I don’t even know what to wish for anymore. I used to wish for specific things – a vacation, a new job, those cute shoes in the window at Nordy’s. But now I just wish for a feeling – any feeling other than this.
I pretend, I pretend, I pretend like everything is cool, I’ve got it all under control, I can handle it, no problem here. I pretend so much that I convince myself it’s true. Until it all comes spilling out in a blog post that was supposed to be about stupid fucking Valentine’s Day.
You know what I am? I’m the lemon tree. My outside is pretty and sunshiny yellow but the inside is just impossibly sour. And now even the outside is starting to show signs of rot.
And the blog is a part of that, sure, but it’s not the biggest part, not even close. It’s just a small section of a much larger picture, a picture that’s terrible to look at because there’s no fruit, no sunshine, no COLOR. Just varied shades of rotting, ugly gray and a quick smattering of blue around the edges.
So I write stuff like the Violent Valentine post, and I laugh as I write it but then I go back and read it again and I’m shocked when I realize how BITTER I sound, because I AM. Bitter’s never really been my thing, but here it is, in all its glory, and it’s not about my son or my husband or my family or my friends or my life – it’s about ME.
Just me.
The writing has become a manifestation of all my inner struggles – the insecurity and sadness and worry and stress. Underneath the words that tell the funny story, a tiny voice screams out for something to happen – something fun, something good, something real.
Just… something.