Ain’t giving a fuck

I think it was Flannery O’Conner who said he didn’t know how he felt until he wrote it down, so please bear with me as I try to figure some stuff out.

As is the norm, my title is a song reference (‘Money Maker’) that sums up how I feel right about now.  It seems the older I get, the fewer fucks I’ve got.  If you’d told me when I was a kid that the fucks you’ve got are finite, I’d have spent them a hell of a lot faster, because this shit is GREAT.

Reasons not giving a fuck is great:

-Embarrassment is a foreign concept to me

-I feel more or less untouchable (see above)

-Things are a lot less stressful when you just don’t care

-I’m more pleasant to be around

-I take more risks

-I’ve accepted the inevitability of death and feel about 1,000x lighter

Reasons giving a fuck sucks:

-It’s stressful

-You’re embarrassed ALL THE TIME

-You play it safe (and experience nothing)

-I asked a girl (who clearly has a surplus of fucks) what her opinion on something was and she told on me to her boss — this does not sound like a fun person to be

-Dying is scary when you care

Now here’s my problem: this FEELS great, but is it the sort of thing where you’re happy not caring, but everyone else thinks you’re an asshole?  If you truly don’t care, does it even matter?  Where does your social obligation to others vs. your obligation to yourself start and stop?  I feel like if I ever have a kid ima tell them to chuck their fucks out the window in handfuls and live that good life, but will that mean I’m just contributing to the narcissistic me-first culture that predominates western life?  That last existential question is the only one that niggles at the spot of my brain that used to house fucks, looking for one to give.

Not giving a fuck doesn’t mean you go around watching people suffer and doing nothing, it means not internalizing the external.  It means being comfortable in your own skin and not letting other people’s shortcomings become your problem.  It means being confident in yourself as a stable person to not need to feel swayed by opposing ideas.  BUT that doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from a new perspective.

Just for the record, I’m not preaching these ideas, I’m figuring them out as I’m writing them.

I think if you’re a solid person, you can afford to give no fucks.  But I also think people only become solid by experiencing the good and the bad while they still care.  If you’re born not caring, you’re essentially a sociopath.  But if you learn empathy and right and wrong and what it means to be a decent person, you can discard caring about other things because you’ve got your A+ foundation.

I tried explaining this to my father and my half-sister recently.  They are estranged from each other, and both have significant shortcomings that lead to the estrangement.  They’re way too alike to not butt heads, but I tried to explain to them if you’re a complete person, you can exist in somebody else’s life and not absorb their toxicity.  If that person is important to you and you want to have a relationship with them, it is possible to coexist and not be harmed by them.  It’s only now dawning on me that living like that actually isn’t possible for them, because neither of them have a steady foundation.  Their foundations are missing huge chunks, and their cornerstones are their own self-preservation.  If the sum-total of your experience in this world is your own comfort, you can’t venture too far out into this wide, strange world.

This is actually how I’ve managed to have a relationship (and it’s actually a good one!) with my father.  I’ve learned how to be, utterly and completely self-standing, at least within the confines of my relationship with him, and it has set me free in a way I’m struggling to put into words.  I can’t explain it other than to say, when he says something shitty, I don’t give a fuck, I just love him because he’s my dad and he’s flawed and he has a good heart but doesn’t always know how to be good.  It makes me happy that I can do that for him, too.  It makes me feel good to give him a safe space where he can act out and just be him and know I’m not going anywhere. It wasn’t easy to get to this point, but having no more fucks in my fuck reservoir means I don’t internalize the inflammatory shit he says that used to rile me up and lead to us not speaking for months.  I can honestly say it doesn’t have an adverse effect on me either.  I don’t harbor insecurities about it, or take any of the bad to heart, but I can sift out the good and hold onto those memories and moments.  Feels good, man.

I think what it boils down to is that you’ve gotta suffer a little bit, pay your debts, learn how to be, build your foundation, and then it’s smooth sailing from there.

xoxo

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When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?

The title, a quote I hope you recognize from Chuck Palahniuk, is as always a reflection of how I am feeling now.

The future. What a funny old thing. You hit your groove, you feel good about life, shit is going alright. The present is looking good. Hell, maybe the future is too. Then something happens. Maybe someone happens. Life is not in your control anymore. Life just happens to you. Isn’t it funny how you can love someone and you can feel really close to them but sometimes when you’re fighting with them they feel like an alien? Sometimes you can see the person you love and it’s maddening because you can’t reach them. But sometimes you can’t even see them. You feel like maybe you used to know this person but you sure as shit don’t know them now because the person you love would never say these things to you. The person you love would protect you and comfort you, not watch you cry. The person you love would understand how you feel and wouldn’t want you to feel that way anymore. They’d do something, a gesture, something humanizing that says hey I’m still here. But this person doesn’t.

Isn’t that funny?

No, it’s not funny. It’s maddening and frustrating and exhausting and terrifying. It’s like Cassandra, always trying to tell the truth but everyone just laughs at her. You can say your piece until you’re blue in the face but nobody listens. Nobody gives a fuck. Apollo used to love Cassandra and my boyfriend used to love me but what the fuck do either of us have now? A whole lot of grief, and nothing to show for it.

How do you make a life with someone? How do you listen to 1,000 I love yous and 1,000 I can’t do thises? 1,000 you’re amazings and 1,000 you’re terribles? 1,000 I want to marry yous and 1,000 I don’t know if this is going to works? How do you love someone but not ever really want to try when it gets even a little bit rough? How do you look someone in the face as you tell them you’re leaving, just to come back and pretend everything is good again? And then, when they rebuild trust in you and start to feel even a little bit stable, how do you take it all back and walk out again? Doesn’t your heart hurt like mine does? Don’t you want to just say sorry and cry and sleep in each other’s arms? I know I do.

But the future isn’t a promise anymore. It’s a threat.

 

Tiger Tiger

It was early 2010 and due to a series of whimsical and rapidly escalating remarks, I found myself in Piccadilly circus. Specifically in the queue for Tiger Tiger, my upper body swathed in the enormous shell of my winter jacket and my legging-clad pins poking out the bottom, comically small beneath the polyester mass. A boy from my halls had sold my friends tickets, and they’d gotten one for me as well. Navigating the hapless streets of central London as the sweat from the crowded tube ride cooled on my forehead, I was the first to spot the club, the facade smaller and less gregarious than my American companions were expecting. 

As soon as we queued up, two boys sidled up to us (pardon my manners– us is me, my American friend Kelly, and another American girl I’d just met called Emily) and in the most roundabout and English way aired for a favour.

‘Pardon me, would you mind awfully, if it’s no trouble, could we maybe– it’s these damn ratios, can’t have too many chaps, you know, they like to fill the place with birds until you’re positively gasping for a bit of fresh air…might we queue with you? We’ll be no trouble once we’re in.’

I linked arms with one of them (he flinched, surprised, no doubt an affront to his English reserve) and smiled brightly at him. 

‘No sweat. You’re with us,’ I told him, and fished out my ID for the bald, cranky bouncer. I oversold us as a group– fervently insisting the bouncer acknowledge us as one cohesive unit, and led my small party inside. They hung around for a bit until I asked one where the restrooms were and he chuckled (English men only chuckle– never snort, guffaw, roar, or otherwise demonstrate an unseemly level of amusement) and corrected me.

‘The toilets are up there,’ he said, using the cocktail straw from his £8 Jack and Coke to illustrate his directions. When I returned, he and his mates had gone off.

I enjoyed my night at Tiger Tiger. It was one of the clubs that only stayed open until 2, so we crammed our fun in as quickly as p o possible. A slew of English boys night us shots from the nubile shot girls. A group, no doubt celebrating something, had come decked in body paint, glowing under the backlights of the club. I had a drink in my hand and my purse slung across my body. I’d checked my coat and was dancing near the bar, waiting for my friends to get served. The leader of the body painters came up to me and watched as I danced. I stopped, took a contemplative sip from my drink and waited. 

‘Why do you look so sad?’he asked, a question I get asked much too much. Without any real response, I said nothing and took another sip from my drink. A moment passed and neither of us said anything. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed that looking at me was enough for him. I liked that I didn’t have to explain myself and it was fine. I liked that he could share an observation and I could absorb it or leave it and it was okay. 

‘I like your face paint,’ I finally said.

‘Thanks. I like your face,’ he replied. 

I smiled, took another sip, and walked away.

The thing to know about Tiger Tiger is that it’s complex. It has twists and rooms and levels, and each one is a bit different. In one of the adjoining rooms, our friends from the queue found us dancing. One of them started dancing with Emily, as Kelly stood moodily along the wall. I was sipping my drink and finding the beat to some ridiculous remix when I felt Emily’s dance partner rub up against me. Placing his hips against my butt, wee started dancing. His instinct was to lead but from years of a heavy diet of reggae, I was following the off-beat. He feel in line with me and we danced for a couple tunes. Having no grasp on this boy’s devastatingly ambiguous sexuality, I want sure if our dance was sexual or for kicks but I wasn’t bothered. 

The club started emptying at quarter to two, and I wanted to use the toilet before the long trek home. Again I found myself queuing with the boys from outside. The other one, the minorest character in this whole memory, finally spoke. He told me about the trouble he’d been having with his boyfriend, and how hurt and confused he’d felt. His troubles were so outside my realm of experience I could do nothing but listen and sympathise. He said something to me, a side remark, during the course of our conversation that stuck with me all these years later. I have no idea how much of it he meant and how much of it was empty flattery, but he said ‘you’re too beautiful to have ever had your heart broken.’ I clung to those words (do I tell a lie? Is clung right? Or would I be more honest in saying I cling still?) because it felt like a buffer. I’d had my heart broken already, and I’ve had my heart broken worse since, but I remember him saying that to me because it has given reason, however illogical, to those heartbreaks. It makes them feel, even though infrequently, sometimes like they didn’t happen to me. They happened to a lesser version of me because I am too beautiful to be hurt. 

I think I was right the first time– I clung to those words, for a time, but the heartbreak has grown too large to escape, even in a memory. So I think what it boils down to can be summed up in one of my favourite quotations: ‘You’ve been running a long time not to’ve gotten any further off than mealtime.’ 

I’ve been running from heartache since before that night in Tiger Tiger, but it’s still right here with me.

Blarrrrghhhh

My title embodies how I’ve been feeling lately.  My heart and my brain are always at war with one another, and I’m pretty fed up with it.  This always happens — I KNOW life goes in cycles — busy, slow, up, down, happy, sad, but right now I’m in a slow/down/sad cycle, and my anxiety is THROUGH THE ROOF.  This weekend and last weekend were slow — only a smattering of social engagements, and my work week was similar.  Even though my body is tired and my wallet is empty and this should be a blessing, my brain is saying but what about next weekend? How shall you fill your time? Aren’t the hours ticking by maddeningly slow? Whatever shall you do with yourself before you’re old and dead?

I DON’T KNOW, BRAIN! I haven’t the answers just now.  I worry very much about reaching the end of my journey (you know, death) and looking back and saying, my God how much Netflix did you watch? Why didn’t you hot air balloon over Myanmar?  Why did you never go snorkeling in Thailand? Why did you choose to sleep until noon instead of going to a fabulous bakery just a few blocks away from your house and getting a croissant fresh from the oven?  Why didn’t you DO ANYTHING?

The external reality is, I do actually do things.  Many things.  My job is in animal welfare, I help save lives.  I foster animals until they’re well enough to be adopted — I, with my own two hands, actually save animals from euthanasia, but for some reason when I look at a friend or a stranger’s Instagram and I see them looking so happy, so exhilarated, it doesn’t matter how many lives I’ve helped save, all I can think is but look at you now, sat at home on your settee dicking around on your phone.  And I do other things as well, I travel and have adventures and meet people, and go interesting places.  All I have to do is look at my own Instagram and I can see that.  But if every waking week, every single day, every last solitary moment isn’t spent engaged in something, I feel I’m wasting my life.  I can feel the hours ticking away, I can feel my body aging and decaying, and my life rapidly hurtling toward oblivion.

I often wonder about the quality of other people’s lives.  Are they actually doing that much more than I am, or do they just know how to market themselves better?  Some girls can turn a bubble bath into an exquisite event unto itself.  At the end of the day they’re sat at home as well, but they advertise it as an exclusive, decadent, enviable affair.  It’s a known saying that a little bit of information is a dangerous thing, and maybe that’s applicable here — I know a little bit, and it makes me fill in the blanks and compare myself against this imaginary world.  Maybe my mind has concocted a version of reality they want me to believe in, but is just that — a fantasy.

I think what I need is a good hobby.  I like baking and cooking, but there’s only so much food you can make in a day before your boyfriend chases you out of the kitchen and calls you a madwoman.  Today alone I have made: banana chips, a large batch of iced chai latte, simple syrup (for said chai latte as well as my reserve of iced coffee), banana muffins, eggs Florentine, and half a dozen lunches, tucked away tidily for the week to come.  I’ve also organized my refrigerator and completed a painting that’s been 20% done since last winter.  (I’m no painter, it was just words messily transcribed onto a canvas.)  I took up knitting for a tiny amount of time, and liked it, but found when I dropped a stitch I couldn’t correct it, and I dropped them often.  So my hat is now a botched, irregular lump of yarn.  I blog, obviously, and am an on-and-off-again video game player.  I enjoy reading and documentaries, but have been having a devil of a time getting my mind to focus on either.  As you can see, my dear reader, I am a mess.

I’m still trying, though! I am getting a nice camera so I can resume my second love, photography, and I’m trying to get back into writing, but the only thing I like writing anymore is this story I started back when I was 11.  It’s a total train wreck, full of copy cat ideas and my interests du jour, but I love it.  I want to get into running again as well, but the more things I take up the more manic I feel.  I feel manic and wired and sleepy all at once.  One second I’m pacing around my apartment bored stiff, then the next moment I get an invitation to go out and I immediately recoil at the idea.  What is my deal???

Anyway, I’m off to go munch on some banana chips and stew a bit more.  Hope your night is less angsty than mine.

XOXO

The Awkward Duckling

 

 

 

 

 

Ain’t That Just Like Me

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately.

True to form, I’m neatly torn down the center of the issue.  Half of me is terrified of it, and half of me isn’t necessarily yearning for it, but looks toward it with a sense of… relief?  Cliche, I know, but you’ll forgive me.

Surprise, surprise, I’ve always had a penchant for the macabre, and angst.  Much angst.  Well, I’ve had a lot of both lately. Maybe it’s my job, maybe it’s my home life, maybe it’s me, but one way or the other, I’ve wanted out. A lot.  Nothing is interesting, only sad.  Nothing is fair, only infuriating.  Nothing is how it should be, only wrong.  Sometimes, when I’m walking through my crowded, noisy, dirty city I get these really clean, comforting smells that waft over to me from God knows where and it’s so calming and familiar.  It smells like what I sometimes think home feels like.  It’s nice while it’s there, but when it’s gone again, it hurts.  And I’m reminded again of all the ways in which life isn’t fair.

Backstory time!

When I was 7, my parents got divorced.  My mishmash family was torn asunder (I was too small to realize it then, but it was never really together), and my tiny little kid brain was a whirling cocktail shaker of feelings. So many feelings. Hence, the angst. I hated myself, I hated my life, I hated everything.  I was sad and confused and awkward.  It was dark. Well, as dark as life for a suburban preteen could be.

I had a good relationship with my dad at this time. Always had. It was my batty mother who I’ve always had the most issues with. Her house was disorganized, undisciplined, emotional, irrational. Dirty. Dad’s was clean, strict, regimented. Bright. My mother had a problem child of her own to deal with, my half brother 8 years my senior, and had no room left in her heart for me (so my dad said. So I believed. So  sometimes still believe).  My brother got violent with me one day and I ran away to my dad’s.  He convinced me to file a police report. I got a personal protection order. My mother beat down my father’s front door not to see if I was alright but to see if I would drop the charges.  This cemented my bond with my dad — for the time.

As soon as I started growing up and wanting some autonomy, my dad couldn’t handle it. He was a bit too regimented, and me going out with my friends until the unreasonable hour of any time after sunset was just not going to fly under his roof.  I was 11 when he kicked me out the first time. He said pack your bags and go to your mother’s, you cannot stay here. So I packed my bag.  And he said if you leave you can never come back. So I said I’d stay. And he said no, you can’t. You understand my dilemma. This continued on for some time, the sporadic evictions of his young daughter, until my mother said Thomas you simply must stop this, I have a life of my own and she cannot stay here on her weeks with you.

I believe it was about this time I started to believe nobody loved me.

My now-turbulent relationship with my father vastly improved the moment I moved 360 miles away.  I went to university as far away as I could afford to go.  He came to see me once a year, no more, no less. My mother never came to see me. My father says he was at my graduation, but I didn’t see him. My mother I did see at graduation, at which time she promised to come back a fortnight later when I had to pack up my tiny flat and move house back whence I came (I would be staying with my father, as my mother had moved in with her boyfriend and there was no space for me. My father graciously allowed me to stay in my old room, what had been converted into a guestroom and is currently his music room).  I called her late on my penultimate day in the flat to ask when I should expect her the next day. She said she wasn’t coming.

I cried for most of the 360 miles, and then pulled up into the empty driveway of my father’s empty house, and unpacked my tiny car into the tiny guestroom I grew up in. I rifled through the memories brought home with me from university and cried for all the friends that were hundreds of miles away. My father didn’t say hello to me when he came home. I didn’t much mind.

I was home approximately 5 weeks before he kicked me out again — this time for good. It was, as it usually is, over something small.  My then-boyfriend picked me up at the positively whorish hour of 11.30 pm, and therefore I was a harlot and unfit to reside beneath his roof.  Against my stepfather’s wishes, I was permitted to live at my mother’s house — for one month.  3 weeks later I had a flat 40 miles away with my best mate and fuck the lot of them.  A week later I met my current boyfriend, and never went back.

Let’s speed up time to 4 months ago. I live well over 600 miles away from both parents, in a dirty, heathenish, sinful, expensive, dangerous city.  My father has not come to see me in three years. My mother has come twice.  She cancelled her third trip the week she was meant to fly out. Her ticket was nonrefundable. She wasn’t bothered. I go back to my hometown approximately once a year and it is more than enough for me. By the time I was in my early twenties I was far enough from home and my teenage years to develop a friendship with my parents. I got in the habit of calling my mom every other day or so and listen to her problems with work, her husband, her step children, whatever. I rarely offered anything from my life. If I did, it wasn’t a topic of discussion for long, and would typically end in a jab at the quality of life in my expensive, loud, noisy, cramped city.

Then, four months ago… my mother stopped answering my phone calls. Always a bit of a space cadet, it wasn’t a huge shock initially. Then she stopped calling me back.  I let it go on for a while, just to test the water. I didn’t text or call her. I went nigh on a month before I heard from her, and then I was the one to reach out.  I’ve spoken to her maybe half a dozen times since then. I was home for my brother’s wedding (the same brother, you will recall, who I had the violent skirmish with — credit where it’s due, he’s grown into a really stand up chap) and although I stayed with her, I barely saw her. I cooked the rehearsal dinner for my brother, and due to a space shortage at the table outside, sat in the kitchen on my own.  I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel like hired help, and poorly paid hired help at that.  I’ve spoken to her once since then. Guess who called who.

My dad and I have a good relationship if we keep it superficial — we talk about moral issues, and he’ll tell me about his happenings, and I tell him what animals I’m fostering at the time.  It’s not a terribly close relationship, but it’s safe. But my mother…

I’ve spoken to a few people about my mother. I pretend I’m not surprised (I’m not), and that I’m not hurt (I am) because she’s always been like this (she has). But it’s really done a number on my self-esteem.  It’s hard to wrap your head around your own mother not liking you.  I feel defective to my core. When a mother in the animal kingdom rejects her offspring it is almost always because there is something wrong with it, not her.  So what is wrong with me?

I regret asking that question.

I am judgmental, cynical, bitchy, abrasive, dark, unhappy, punitive, delicate, emotional, irrational, explosive, illogical, unintelligent, egotistical, selfish, and frankly a little bit pudgy.

And what is right with me?

These days, I don’t know.

I care. I try.

So we come full circle.  Here I am, slightly terrified at the prospect of a big nothing, and slightly relieved, like a traveler who has had a long journey and knows his bed is waiting for him just a little further ahead.

 

 

All’s Well That Ends Well

It has finally happened. After nearly four years in customer service (most recently and most gruelingly the restaurant industry), I have moved on. I am wildly, unimaginably, catastrophically proud to say that I, The Awkward Duckling, am now a full time employee at an animal shelter. 

The reason I truly, deeply loathed the restaurant industry (and customer service in general) is manifold: for starters, I am not a people person. I hate the lot of them. People are by nature self-obsessed, self-centered, and self-involved. As a person myself, I am not free of these earthly faults, but I like to look at the world outside myself. I am not an inhabitant on this planet, merely a moral observer walking upon it. Another heavily contributing factor as to why I hate people is because I am conscientious to a fault. I agonize over every single action, I see its consequences unfold like a ripple. Nothing is simple to me, everything is part of something greater. So yeah to you you’re just fishing out your metro card but to me you are the asshole who is too utterly thoughtless to stand off to the side until you find it.  I’m sorry, were you surprised that you would need to pay the fare to ride the train? Has this transaction you undertake every single day of your life suddenly become novel and unfamiliar to you? Of course not. So use your damn head.

Do you see what I mean when I say I’m not a people person?

But I digress. Naturally. So yes, I hate people. I hate the routine of doing a job that means nothing. Your dining experience does not serve the world. Your being seated at a booth instead of a table does nothing to leave this world better than it was when you found it. And you know what? I don’t give a shit if you prefer your tap water with no ice. How, in the scheme of your life, does any of this matter? If you paid attention to the quality of your actual experience (your companions, your health, the means by which you can afford to pay for this dinner) you would be a much happier version of yourself than the person who simply had to sit next to the window even though you ended up sitting with your back to it.

And here I’ve gone and digressed again.

My point is this: there are universal truths and one of them is that we owe it to the world to be good. We need to help. Sure, be an affluent venture capitalist all you want, but volunteer at a soup kitchen. Be the senior partner at a corporate law firm and help rich people get richer if that’s what blows your skirt up, but pick up litter from the side of the road. I believe in balance, and to maintain balance you must actively pursue good so that it may offset the bad we all do every day (don’t pretend you’ve never spat your gum out on the pavement or angrily pushed through a pack of tourists). So in that spirit, I have secured full time employment at an animal shelter. 

Beyond the views I’ve fervently (insanely?) expressed heretofore, I also believe we owe it to those who are helpless to protect and provide for them. Animals are entirely reliant upon us to protect, house, and feed them. But unfortunately it is often the case they are neglected, abused, or in some manner ill-treated. I want to spend my life fixing those wrongs. I will gladly take the frustration and long hours that seem to come with most jobs if it means at the end of the day I have done something constructive.

On that note, have you considered donating to the charity of your choice lately?

Xoxo

The Awkward Duckling

To Err is Human, to Forgive is Seemingly Impossible

Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself.  I meant to swim till I sank– but that’s not the same thing.

 

There are times in life when bad things happen and you’re powerless to stop them.  In fact, you can’t even do anything to fix the aftermath.  All you can do is just look around you and see all the parts of your life strewn about in every direction and cry because it’s not what it used to be.  Sometimes you have to sit and do nothing but cry and rage and feel sorry for yourself and the life you used to have until you’re too empty to cry or rage or brood any longer.  But what I’m unsure of is, what do you do after that?

Something happened to me about 7 months ago, and I’ve been raging and crying and moping ever since.  I had so much sadness and anger inside of me; I felt betrayed, hurt, and hopeless.  I was distinctly aware of this feeling that nothing would ever make me happy again.  I might smile or laugh or feel better for a while, but I could always feel my anger stirring deep inside me.  It would manifest in really strange ways, catching even me off guard.  I hated everything and everyone.  Everybody was a piece of garbage, and I wanted them all to suffer like I was suffering.  I wanted to tear everybody down and thrown them into the disorganized piles of shit my life had become.  I wanted to fight them, physically fight them, and stamp on their faces until their noses dripped snotty, mucusy blood.  I wanted to pull their hair out and make them understand every shortcoming and flaw they had to the point that they felt too horrible to live.  I think I wanted a world in which everybody was so ashamed of themselves, they killed themselves.

Now what the fuck does that say about me?

As time went on, my anger abated more and more.  It became more centralized, focused on a few main players in the tragedy that had become my life.  I was central among the people I hated.  I hated myself, my actions, my emotions.  I hated waking up every morning and looking out of my same odious, miserable eyes.  I couldn’t get out of my head, no matter how hard I tried.  At times I could sense I was speaking to somebody, and I could feel my mouth moving and forming words, but I didn’t know what I was saying.  I was going through the motions of life, trying my hardest to look like a happy, regular person.  But on the inside I was seething with anger and trying desperately to hold back tears.  All I wanted was to die, just to avoid spending another day as me.

Fast forward to last week.  Last week something came over me and I decided that happiness was a choice.  Forgiveness would come in its own time, but who was I really punishing by being miserable?  I was punishing myself (the victim); the person who I truly blame for what happened is not a physical part of my life.  It exists in another realm, untouched by my hatred and living unpunished for its offenses.  So why should I be miserable?  I set my focus on overcoming my own misery, and letting go.

It has not been easy.  I was good for about three days, and then one small thing triggered me and I fell to pieces.  Clearly if something so small could topple me, I had rebuilt myself very poorly indeed.  But imagine my frustration when I was right back where I started, in a cesspool full of everything bad and destructive.  So that’s where I’m writing to you from now, my dear reader.  Just at the shore of that cesspool, trying my best to scramble back up to the top.  I want to feel warmth and sunshine again.  I want the company of other people to be a cool breeze on my warm cheek.  I don’t want to recoil from interaction anymore.  I guess what I’m trying to say is,  I want to be happy.  But I don’t know how.

Lately I’ve tried to find strength in a quote.  It’s the quote I started this post about, from Joseph Conrad.  It means that even if you know going into something that you will fail at it, the crime isn’t in not succeeding, but in not trying.  So I leave you, struggling as I was when I started writing, with another quote.  This one by a Mr Samuel Beckett.  May it see you through better times than it has seen me.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

 

XOXO

The Awkward Duckling