The turn of a phrase.

For all of my life, up to this point, I have thought "ignorance is bliss" to be the most spectacularly stupid phrase. I question, and seek out answers, and want to know why all of the moving parts move the way that they do. I enjoy knowing why things are the way they are. My brain jots down random trivia and stores it with the other garbage I've collected over the years, like how to sing certain songs in french I learned in childhood. I could comfortably say, "it is the way it is," because I knew why it was that way.

But I can't help feeling, lately, maybe if I knew less, understood less, felt less, wanted less, expected less from life; maybe I could be as content as everyone else is. The happily coupled people, and the ones who know exactly where they're headed in life, and the ones who are just happy to be alive and raising hell, or, hell, raising chickens. I feel like my head is crammed full of uselessness that has alienated me from happiness. From contentment. From finding my place in my own life.

My life is whizzing by at the speed of light, and I'm just sat here shrugging because it doesn't even feel like it belongs to me. I have outsmarted myself. Ignorance could be bliss. I get it now.

I want to unlearn everything. I want to unlearn mistrust, and fear, and abandonment; cynicism, regret. I want to unlearn how to use humor and sarcasm and ambivalence as a shield. I want to unlearn overthinking and anxiety and how to blurt out every last thought that runs through my unfiltered tongue. I want to unlearn all of these coping mechanisms, and start over in a world in which they were never necessary to my survival.

"But then, you wouldn't be you," my brain says. "How would that work?"

I don't know.
Ignorance could be bliss.

Mucked Up, With a Capital F.

It's nearly 2 years since the last time I wrote anything in here, and still I have the phrase "my therapist says.." on my mind. It's been a couple of years since I've spoken to one of my very own; these days the phrase I'm most likely to use is "my friend Google says...."

So, my friend Google says that I have abandonment issues.

A love letter

I haven't seen her in a long time, but I remember still, "my therapist says" that sometimes you have to accept that some people in your life that are very important to you are never going to have the relationship with you that you expect, or need. That you either accept that they are flawed, just like you, and love them anyway, or you cut them loose. Either option seems to take a colossal amount of strength. When you're sitting across the table from this person that you love, will always love with your whole being, and  are faced with this excruciating dillema, it's all too easy to try your very best to hold on; to eat all the garbage they dish out despite the health warnings; to declare that unconditional love means loving through the hurt and unfairness. Because, afterall, you aren't without your flaws, too, right? And aren't they showinging you the same measure of unconditional love?

What are they showing you when they use slurs to your face, and make you feel inadequate as a person capable of caring for another living being, and less than, and doomed? Is that what unconditional love is? "You are all of these really horrible things, and I want you to feel every second of loathing, but I love you, too." Is that the gist of it? Is there some primer to the varying levels of unconditional love that I perhaps missed the day they handed them out? Yes; no?

Because, as a mother, I have a very different idea of what that all is supposed to mean. Things like: you may choose a path that is completely unexpected, but I am absolutely going to be there to cheer you on, to pull you up when you fall, to be the ear you need to listen, to be the arms you need to hug, to tell you how amazing you are, to learn from you the things you want to teach me, to share with you the things I think are important, and to understand that you are not an extension of me. You are your own person. That to help you grow to be confident in yourself, I am confident in myself enough to know that when you don't agree with me, it isn't a rejection of ME, but a step toward your own independence and happiness and truth. That I won't fixate on our differences, and instead celebrate them as much as our similarities, for you are my love letter to life, and I hope to be a part of yours. Rather than some abstract eternity, the stories you tell of me to your children, to your grandchildren, to your great-grandchildren, are how I plan to live on, and so those stories must be exceptional and full of love, and heartfelt, for how else will they know of the great love that they have descended from and are a part of? There is no one else's opinion that matters to me more than yours, no matter who you love, or what career has chosen you, or what clothes you wear, or what shade your skin is, or what your tattoos look like, or what music you listen to, or what your favorite movie is. You are forever my love letter to the universe. Unconditionally.

So I don't understand love labled as "unconditional" if that isn't it.

Because, as I mentioned an entry or two ago, I still very much feel like a kid. My not so average Joe had to go before I was ready to loosen my grip, and I still need as much unconditional love from the rest of my family as I can get, regardless of who, where, what, when, and why my life takes me; I, too, am deserving of truly unconditional love. It has taken my whole life up to this point, a therapist or two, amazing friends and my best friend slash heroic husband, and exactly two glasses of wine, to realize that I deserve it, too. I have an entire lifetime of memories to remind me of what I don't deserve, or want, or need in my life. I don't want to be "a good girl," and I don't need to go pick a switch off the orange tree, or ask you if you're done yet after I feel the welts rise on my legs from a metal coat hanger, or wonder why there is no one on God's entire green earth that I can talk to when I am hurt. I need someone to tell me that I don't have to try to keep the peace, to hold all of the grown up relationships together at the expense of my own safety and sanity. That I don't have to get in the car with my drunk biological father and scream at the oncoming lights as he swerves into the other lane of traffic, or be the one to make all the phone calls to try to get him to interact with me, or anyone else in my family that leaves it up to me, to hear them say they just don't have time for me, or to have to hear about how much you still find them handsome, or fun, or that I should give them a call, yet again. I don't need to hear that I have to try to shove myself into the door of one more church after years of hearing that no matter what I do, and even though Jesus made me too, I'm going to burn in hell because I love one too many genders.

I am enough. I am my own person, and I matter, and I have written my love letters across the ethos of the world, and they will carry me through an eternity of unconditional love. And. It feels. Pretty. Damned. Good. I hope you wake up in time to scawl your post script.

Love, Me.
Love me.
Love=Me.

(Yeah, it's all the same.)

Love is blind, and other illusions.

Sometimes I find myself in this place that feels like a total rejection of who I know myself to be; it's opposite day on Planet Em, and I am the sole occupant and player. The words run out, and I don't see the pictures my camera is supposed to make, and all I can do is try to distract myself with music and ...hang on. Put on a helmet, even. Perhaps a seat belt. As a creature of routine and optimism, it is hard for me to let go and settle in for the ride. It seems that fighting it makes the whole journey all the more difficult, though; I am ill-prepared for the self reflection and intimate examinations of my life that are sure to precede the self loathing, anger, cynicism, and hopelessness.

It starts like this: one day, I quietly realize I'm happy; dare I even say, content, with my life. Sure, there is room for improvement, but overall, the complaints are few and far between. I bask in the warm fuzzy glow of this comfortable life I have made, much like a cat lazing in the shaft of sunlight stretching across the floor on a summer afternoon. That is also the exact moment that I have come to dread, because without fail, I wake up and find myself in this place. It's like my subconscious pipes up with, "oh, feeling good, eh? Perhaps you can finally deal with this pile of bullshit you've been sweeping over into this corner? No? Just thought I'd ask; you don't have to get all hysterical."

Into the hysteria of it all, I descend, however; an unwilling participant to the whim of my id. The man behind the curtain is me, and he has been dazzling me with illusions long enough that I have momentarily forgotten that some of the reasons I sought out those illusions to begin with were pretty unbearable to live with out in the open every day. Facing them for even a few moments is still painful beyond comprehension. They seem insurmountable. So I make busy work until I'm too busy to remember what all the fuss was about, and pretty soon I have pulled the rabbit of happiness up out of the hat once more, and on with the show. Pomp and circumstance; smoke and mirrors.

When "it is what it is" describes the hobble-hop from one distraction to another, ever searching for the IT that my life is supposed to BE, and I still come up with an armload of nothing, it's hard to not imagine that somewhere along the way, things have gone horribly wrong at some point. That the common denominator is ME, and obviously I am the thing that has gone horribly wrong. After all, I am the architect of my own happiness and build my own future through the decisions I have made... right? So there is simply no one else to blame. Clearly I have forgotten to go along to get along until I march my tired ass to the slaughter house of old age.

Today I have been reading science-based studies on love, and what happens to our brains when we step in it, and if love is blind, why, and then what happens. How our brains do this thing where we can no longer make objective decisions regarding the subject of our affections because the reward for living in La La Land is supposed to outweigh the risk, and how the longer you get to know someone, the more you fall out of love, most of the time. Boredom, complacency, repetition, disillusionment; all of these things come crawling out of the woodwork to gnaw away at this thing that you thought was pretty darn great when you first stumbled upon it. How, without our genetically inclined need to procreate, or the endorphin rush of the shiny penny newness of lust, we probably wouldn't make it as a species. That seems to be all that holds us together; the search for immortality, and pleasure. I think much of this can also be applied to the way we view ourselves, too. We reach a point where we can no longer be objective about our own feelings, because there is too much at risk, like trading one happiness for another. You can have your cake, or you can eat it. We make trades on our comfort, while trying to walk the tightrope of commitment, or contentment. There is no fucking net.

And sometimes it all just. Seems. So. Dumb.