"Who were all these strange ghosts rooted to the silly little adventure of earth with me? And who was I?" -Jack Kerouac. This is the blog of a British girl, figuring things out one post at a time.
I haven't written on here for a very long time. I'm almost certain I never will again, and in fact, I think this might be my last post. This is not because I don't believe in blogging, or posting out personal things for the world to see. The pride and vulnerability in blogs is immense, and it's beautiful, and I love it. I just don't think that it's what I need to do any more.
But I wanted to write this down, because I guess recently I've had an epiphany. I'll put it in a 'read more' because I feel this will be a large post and I don't feel like clogging up anyone's dashboard.
I finished my degree this week. Four years of my life have been headed towards this moment, eighteen if we include all my education. I'm educated, so to speak. And whilst I wasn't exactly expecting a gong to ring as I handed in my last piece of work, I was expecting...something. Something final, or ultimate. Something resembling a peak. But the peak never came, and I found myself sitting aimlessly outside on the university campus, thinking about nothing in particular.
Two days on, and I was suddenly filled to the brim with thoughts. More thoughts than I thought could possibly be contained within the human brain, but there they were, swivelling around in my head. And I realized something, something that had never occurred to me until just now. The simple fact that this year, I fell completely and utterly in love. With myself.
Before I go on with that, I want to back-track a little. Last summer, I was sat on the pavement with one of my best friends in the whole world, crying uncontrollably, and trying to explain to him why I felt the way I did. Why I felt so awful, and empty, and so mentally pained that it felt physical. But I couldn't. I couldn't explain it, because I didn't understand it. And if you can't understand the agony of your own turmoil, how on earth are you supposed to explain it to someone else in a way that makes any kind of sense? You can't. So I simply told him that "I am in pain. And I don't know why". A few weeks on, I told him before he left to travel that I had made the resolve to fix myself, to heal, to find happiness by the time he came back.
But I didn't. I kept putting off the soul-searching walks, the meditations, the writing-down of my feelings on my blog or my diary, anywhere else. I occasionally splurged out a few lines of incomprehensible, indecipherable nonsense, but that was about it. I eventually took to weekly CBT treatment, but as with all therapy-based practices, I felt like my responses and the words I said were simply fashioned in a way that it looked like I was improving. The treatment didn't help, and that only made things worse.
So to distract myself from this failure, I threw myself into the busiest lifestyle I have ever known. Taking on more hours at work on my contract, the role of programme coordinator for an arts festival, adapting a novel into a play and directing it, and of course my degree. All of these things combined equated to zero time to think, and zero time to heal.
But the truth is, on reflection, that I did. For longer than I can remember, I have hated myself. For who I was, who I let people make me, who I knew I never wanted to be. For giving up on myself, and hiding myself behind closed doors. For shutting out the people that I shouldn't, and letting in people that I shouldn't.
This year has changed all of that. Not only have I stopped hating myself, but I utterly and completely love myself. Everything I have accomplished this year is down to me, and absolutely no one else. I did this. It may have been exhausting, frustrating, and painful at times, but through this entire process I have found respect and love for myself.
For the moment, this is more than enough. This is not about distracting myself from all the things that I am not, or that I fail at, it's about challenging myself to greater heights and battling against them with everything that I have. It's about self-reliance, and the absolute sense of pride that comes with that. This is going to sound a little out of place but...it's about wanting a partner, and not a boyfriend, and being thoroughly content in knowing that getting that can take all of the time in the world, because until I do, I am entirely whole.
I'm not saying that I'm perfect. When you fall in love with someone else, you don't love them because they are perfect, nor do you love them in spite of their shortcomings or flaws. You love them because you know them, you understand where they're coming from, and it is through their entire being that you. Falling in love with yourself is no different. I have come to know, understand, respect, support, and trust myself; me, with all my slip-ups and errors, and imperfections. And that's a pretty huge deal.
So it turns out that getting outside of your head is the best medicine to heal yourself. Achieving things by yourself is massive. Understanding that happiness is not a constant state; emotions fluctuate left-right-centre, but that's okay. Human beings have an enormous spectrum of emotion, and happiness is simply one of the many to indulge in from time to time. It's the fight against the negative ones that is found in productivity and not over-self-analysis.
I realise that this got somewhat waffly. I don't mind. I know that there are people in my life who will read this and scoff. And if you are one of those people, I would rather you didn't do it to my face. Not because I couldn't handle the 'banter' per se, but rather because for me...this is already over. I'm onto the next step, and I'm excited about that. I have no idea where I'm going, or what I'm doing. For the first time in my life I have no idea what's going to happen next, and whilst I'm fearful, I am also passionately thrilled for the unknown.
So I leave this blog today. Not because it hasn't been fun, but because for me, it's been over for a really long time. And I wanted to end it on a high.
The lengths a girl will go to for a little bit of comfort.
I was in rehearsal today and these lines came up:
"I love you, Edith. My methods may have been wrong but I never stopped loving you. Was it selfish of me to try your pain, yours and his? I saw pain everywhere. I could not bear to look into your eyes, so maggoty they were with pain and desire. All I saw was pain, all I heard was mutilation."
I was directing this moment, and I told the actor that I wanted this moment to have a real sense of authenticity. I wanted this to be the shiny, glorious slither of human emotion to burst out for this character in this passage.
When we played the scene out, I suddenly got this. This moment is not authentic. I'm realising this now. This pain, this maggoty pain this character sees, it means nothing. It is nothing. It's pain, but it's a mere tool. Telling someone you see this pain is not the same as feeling it coursing through you. It's not. It's a rouse, it's a clever, slimey rouse and it doesn't mean a thing. But for her, for Edith, even though she knows it doesn't mean a thing it's what she needs. She needs a lie, she needs a fake voyeur of dark torment to push her through this. Because everyone loves a flithy little lie.
And that's what I'm doing right now. Because I need this to get me through. And in spite of the fact that when I saw this line being played out, I felt physically disgusted by it, I know that I'm going to go back to my life, and let the same lie consume me.
Because I need it. Because without it, there is absolutely nothing to hold on to.
I want to not feel like a moron, to not feel absolutely incompetent, to not feel so guilty all of the time, to not want to scream out loud every single day, to not have to fight the urge on a regular basis to cry, to not miss people who should be in my life, to not shut absolutely everyone out, to not screw up my own life at every given chance, to not have so much going on and no one to talk to about it because I can't even verbalise it, to not feel so lonely, to not be spoken to like absolute shit, to not have a migraine settle in every time I try to read academic papers, to not have that voice in my head that won't let me do any work, to not have a to-do list so long I don't even have the time to write it down, to not have every single man that enters my life make me feel so utterly and completely worthless and insignificant, to not miss out on everything fun, to not be stuck here with no chance of going home for months,
I'm just sick of everything. And all I want to do is sleep forever, but I have about a thousand obligations, and oh yeah that whole future thing where I'll never get the job I want, and the whole guilt thing again. Guilty because my god, why can't you keep it together. Guilty because I made a promise I cannot keep. Anger because I am better than this, I am stronger than this, I cannot drown under this malestrom. Anger because I've fought for six years and it hasn't gotten easier. And maybe there's a point where you just need to call it a day and surrender.
What you did to me was unbelievable, Connor. But then, I got stuck in a hell dimension by my girlfriend one time for 100 years, so a few months under the ocean actually gave me perspective. Kind of a M. C. Esher perspective. But I did get time to think... about us... about the world. Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel. But that's why there's us - champions. Doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world is as it should be, to show it what it can be. You're not a part of that yet. I hope you will be.
Joss Whedon.
God, I love Joss Whedon. God I love my dissertation.
It's like a song. Now, I can hold a note for a long time. - Actually, I can hold a note forever. - But eventually, that's just noise. It's the change we're listening for. The note coming after and the one after that. That's what makes it music.
I don't know what to do with the cards I've been dealt.
I feel like I'm taking a step back, but then I convince myself that I deserve this. I deserve to have that feeling, for a little while.
How am I supposed to know what I want, when the only thing I know for certain is what I don't want? Living with the negatives makes the positives so utterly blurry and confusing.
There are things I need to keep remembering. I need to hold myself regularly, like I'm the strings and the kite at the same time. Can't not fly, but I can't let go entirely.
I had a whole thing I wanted to write down, and I tried...I really did. But the words aren't sailing out the way I want them to. I can't get the message out there with any kind of clarity.
So for tonight, I'm holding on to white noise. And this song.
I've played this record so many times, I'm surprised it doesn't get stuck.
When I was sixteen years old, a beautiful man told me that I was a curse. That I would never be anything good, or pure, or worthwhile, or an ideal.
According to existentialist theory, existence precedes essence. We decide who we are every day, with every single choice we make. Who we are is who we make ourselves become. And I believe that, I really do. But I find it hard sometimes. I find it hard because every choice I make, everything I want and try to achieve just leads me back to this moment. The moment I was told that I was a curse. That I was disgusting. That I would never be anything good, or pure, or worthwhile, or an ideal.
I'm trying, I really am. And even if existence precedes essence, then maybe essence forms on a moment? And maybe somewhere along the line I made that agreement, and chose this to be my life.
I don't know any more. I'm just sick of the same song playing over and over again.
Gnawing my fingers apart, having an inability to read, procrastinating to hell, feeling guilty all the time, thinking about moments in the future that will not be happening (life is not that exciting, nor is it that kind), getting angry and frustrated when things prevent me from getting to bed at my assigned time, freaking out because I can't enjoy savasana, drinking so much coffee and smoking so many cigarettes, having so many meetings with no result, crying every time I realise that I am doing NOTHING in effect...
I'm tired. I'm upset. I'm frustrated. I'm sick. I'm fed up. I'm angry. I'm remembering. I'm feeling it all, all over again. I'm scared. I'm repeating myself. I'm guilty this time. I'm wondering why, just why. I'm not letting in.
It's like the Eternal Return, and I can't do anything about it.
It's a cycle. A never-ending cycle.
The place is different, but the picture remains the same.
So, I recently discovered the hashtag #100HappyThings
With my life rapidly becoming something that is no longer inherently mine, with the various extra-curricular commitments I have taken on, the library hours I have to clock in for my dissertation, and the extra shifts I've agreed to at work (money money moneyyyy), there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of time to myself.
Like, I haven't even shaved my legs for what seems like an eternity. There's some brutal honesty for you. And I'm defending myself under the guise of feminism. And the fact that it's winter.
So, my discovery of the #100thappythings is basically a challenge to find something that makes you happy every day for the next 100 days. Doesn't have to be amazing, like...I don't know, discovering the method for world peace or anything. But it has to be happy.
With that in mind, I challenge myself to 100 happy things. And these 100 happy things CANNOT relate to
A) University
B) The Play
C) MEN MEN MEN
D) Work
They have to be external to my life. Like...sunshine and rainbows...no. Maybe finding a new meal I like. Or happening upon an excellent book.
Summer Glau practicing fight choreography for the movie, Serenity (2005). Her kicks are amazing for not having any martial arts experience. She only did ballet. It makes me wish that more ballerinas got into martial arts. Their flexibility is perfectly suited for it.
She is the most amazing human being on the planet. I love how she manages to seamlessly make her ballet turns fit so organically into the fight choreography. Perfection.
I got the go-ahead yesterday to direct a devised piece, adapted from this novel.
I just had a meeting with the theatre committee and I am so unbelievably excited about this. We're making it into an installation piece, and making it conceptual. And I'm getting a humongous production team, including a movement choreographer and set designer.
This is going to be incredible. I have twelve weeks to do this, which is ample time. I won't be rushed, and I get the chance to create a stunning, visual piece that will introduce so many people to my favourite book.
So excited. Can barely contain self.
...I also have budget money to acquire a humongous, Danish vibrator. This play is going to be insane.
if you’re ever mean to me i’ll seduce your dad and get him to marry me then i’ll be your fucking stepmom and i’ll disable the internet every night at seven pm don’t fucking try me
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