Post #6: Self-reflection. Literally.

“Maturity is that time when the mirrors in our mind turn to windows and instead of seeing the reflection of ourselves we see others.”

-Author Unknown

I think that's my favorite picture of me from our wedding. I just thought I'd share it because it kind of captures how I wish I would be seen at all times and how I hope I'm seen most of the time. I'm thinking about this because I just had a weird moment. Have you ever looked yourself in the eyes in your reflection long enough to feel like you have an entirely new perspective on yourself? Like there's this paradigm shift where you suddenly have this strange intimate moment with yourself and realize that you've had yourself all wrong? I just had one of those moments. As weird as it sounds, it made me cry.

I feel like all this stress and worry just came to a head, and I realized that if I were anyone else looking at me then I would give myself a huge hug and say, "Relax. Seriously. It's okay."

I faced this struggle I've had for a long time between seeing myself as a polished woman versus a carefree child. I'm always afraid being the former will make me boring, but then being the latter always makes me wonder if I'm just avoiding growing up. I mean, I fully intend on always staying a kid at heart, but it's hard to find your place in a professional setting and as a married woman, etc., when you aren't quite ready to be an adult just yet. I want so badly to feel prepared, but this playful child inside of me keeps tugging at me to not forget her.

There are a lot of things that, no matter how "grown up" I will ever be, I just don't have control over. I don't have control over what other people will think of me (though I can take actions to shed a better light on myself), I can't control who likes me or wants to be friends with me, I can't control car accidents, natural disasters, or almost anything in the outside world really. However, I have control over my own actions. I think for way too long I have felt subject to my personality. Why do we think it's okay to blame things on our personalities? I say this because we all do it. "That's just who I am."

Yes, to a certain extent, that's a healthy attitude to have. It's good to have self-confidence and be able to weed out your typical nay-sayers from people who have something legitimate to tell you. But the key is to listen to those people who really have something to say. In this particular case, that someone is me. I have a lot of things to say to myself, and I'm going to do it. Hopefully I listen.

I apologize for the confusing nature of this post. It's almost 4am. The point I was eventually going to get at is that I want to fix myself so I can stop being so focused on myself. It's like getting a car tuned up so you don't have to worry about it for another 3,000 miles. I must tell you, my soul is way past it's check-up date, and it causes me to worry about it on an almost daily basis. I would like to fix my internal world so I can focus on everything that's outside of it. I'm going to start by cleaning out my closet and getting rid of clothes I don't need.

Please don't ask how that's going to help my soul because, if you don't understand that, then you could never possibly understand me.

Did I mention it's 4am?

Edit: (February 17,2011) I just saw this poem on a friend's blog and couldn't believe how well it goes with my post above:

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Post #5: The New Year

"So this is the new year, and I don't feel any different."

-Death Cab for Cutie, The New Year

I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't have a post for October because then I would have at least been posting once a month since I started this thing. Oh well, new year, new start. Tomorrow marks the beginning of 2011, and I still can't believe it's been 11 years since the big Y2K scare. Ridiculous, right?

I have to tell you, I struggled with publishing all these posts again. I had them hidden for the last few months because I always end up critiquing the way I sound when I look back and read them again. I decided it's time to let that go.

I just realized how unfitting that quote up top is for the actual tone I plan on having for this post. It just made me nostalgic because I remember driving in my best friend's car in high school listening to that song as we rang in 2005. You want to know what embarrassing shenanigans we were up to that night? We were driving past a party where this guy I had a monster crush on at the time was hanging out. What did we think we were going to do if he saw us driving by? Act nonchalant and say something like, "Oh, fancy seeing you here! We were just in the neighborhood...marry me?" Oh to be 17 and stalk guys who never deserved your affections in the first place.

It's scary to me that I was up to such nonsense only six measly years ago. Oh well, it was fun at the time. My life is much more uneventful these days, but I have to admit I like it that way. The memories are enough for me.

So, the real reason I think I started posting is to list a few things I plan on changing. Yes, I know everyone does this. I know it's uber cliche. But I don't care. I want to have a more carefree attitude this year and every year after it. So bear with me.

[Actually, scratch that. I wrote out a list of five things and then just deleted it. Man oh man, were my resolutions ever boring.]

I think I just want to have one resolution for the whole year. I'd been tossing ideas around in my head, but this is the best thing I've been able to come up with so far. All of the resolutions I listed before deleting them were really self-centered. Yes, we could debate for hours about how totally and completely genuendo it is to do things for others and think it's selfless when it's really self-serving because it makes you feel good. However, at least it's one small step closer to being focused on others rather than blatantly focusing on myself. So let it go. I'm trying.

My One and Only Resolution for 2011:

Each week, I resolve to pick one person and do something, whether anonymously or not, to show them that they mean something to people in this world. Heck, there are so many people flooding into my mind right now that I think I may even make it two or three people some weeks. By the end of the year, at least 52 more people will feel special or appreciated. That still wouldn't be enough, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.

The main guideline for the whole thing is that whatever I do for them has to be well-thought-out and geared toward that specific person and their interests. I have this friend, Pam, who I've known since first grade. She gives the most personal, thoughtful gifts of anyone I've ever known, and she is my inspiration for the way I'll be showing people they matter.

Also, my mother-in-law gave all of us gratitude journals for Christmas because she thinks it's an important thing to focus on, especially in times like now with the economy looking somewhat bleak. She is my inspiration for focusing on the positive things that I'm thankful for rather than the negative things in life.

This has been the most helter-skelter post I've written thus far. I sure am out of practice. I'll be posting more often, so hopefully my thoughts will become more coherent as time goes on. Hopefully.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Post #1: Beginnings and Endings

I like to start off everything with a quote. So here goes:

“Growing up is never easy. You hold on to things that were. You wonder what's to come. But that night, I think we knew it was time to let go of what had been, and look ahead to what would be. Other days. New days. Days to come. The thing is, we didn't have to hate each other for getting older. We just had to forgive ourselves... for growing up.”

-The Wonder Years

I think it's only fitting that this is the quote I finally decided to use for the first post that I've been putting off for weeks. I just didn't know how to begin because I felt like I had so much to explain. But you know what? In life, not all things start at the beginning. In fact, more often than not, the best stories start at the end and backtrack to explain the past.

I used to compare getting to know someone to starting to watch a television series in the third or fourth season. You get hooked, but there's still so much more to know. About the characters, their connections, their pasts. So you either go back and watch all of the previous episodes, or you put the pieces together as the series progresses. This process gets a lot more complicated the further into a series you start watching. Similarly, the older a person is when you meet them, the more baggage (both good and bad) they have to share with you before you ever really know them. Even then, there are just some things you have to have gone through with a person to truly understand them.

So, like I said, some of the best stories start at the end and then jump back to the beginning to explain how and why things turned out the way they did. This always seems to make sense to us, seeing as how hindsight truly is 20/20. Therein lies the catch-22 of life. Looking back, we can make sense of everything. As it's happening, though, we often can't step back far enough to see things clearly. We are often a mystery even to ourselves.

We really only get to see ourselves unfold at the same rate that everyone else around us does, though we may have an inside perspective. However, we can only speculate how we would or would not react to situations and never truly know how we would until we experience those things. We're all making our best efforts to get to know ourselves but are simultaneously creating those same selves. I'd like to think that everyone, in the moment, is always striving to be genuine. But because we can't ever truly know ourselves (and therefore even one another), our every word and every action is simply an allusion to who we truly are and will become. Hence the creation of the term "genuendo."

Every word I type on here is genuendo about who I am, why I'm here, and what that means, if anything. I don't know how to end this. But I'm happy about that. To beginnings!

Post #2: Being Yourself

"More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself."

-Chuck Palahniuk

For most of my life, I've always known exactly who I am--almost to the point that I pigeon-holed myself into a certain role. I've always been the outgoing, guilt-ridden yet ironically carefree, somewhat absent-minded youngest child. Luckily, I've somewhat escaped that in dating Kyle. He lets me feel completely comfortable and confident in the decisions I make, and he always takes me seriously.

Unfortunately, I've always felt like I have to fit the roles that I've perceived any certain person may have assigned to me. I always tell myself, "Well, if they think I'm like ______, then they must think that for a reason. Something about me must be kind of like that." Then I never escape the role whenever I'm around that person, therefore proving their perceived assumptions about me to be correct. The vicious cycle continues.

Why do I let what I THINK others think affect the way I think about myself? Granted, some people never care enough about what other people think, but why do I have to care so much?

The older I get, the less I like who I am. I'm anxious, can't trust my own opinions, repeat myself, skip around when I tell stories, am late everywhere, am never quite put together, make promises I couldn't possibly keep, talk a lot, and think too much about every word coming out of my mouth or out through the tips of my fingers. I need to get back in touch with the person I am and the person I want to be. Where did I stray off course? How did I end up here? Did I ever really love myself? Or does it just seem so in hindsight? For as long as I can remember, I have worried. Worried about everything and everyone. I'm sick of it. Time for bed. More...if/or whenever I feel like it. Now that's honest.

Post #2: Chest Feeling Heavy

Every time I go to sign into Facebook, I get this heavy feeling in my chest. It's been a side effect of this social media network for as long as I can remember. "Great, what drama am I about to discover NOW? What rude comment will I see next? Who will I notice has deleted me this time?" I don't understand any of it. Sure, I'm biased, but, for as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to include everyone. I'm not necessarily calling around to invite everyone and their brother to everything, but, for the most part, I think I'm always more than happy to have more people join along in whatever I'm doing with friends or family. I've just never been really exclusive. Probably the only time I ever am is if I'm really feeling a girls' night and don't want any of our boyfriends to rain on the all-female parade. But that's not anything personal against the boys specifically. I love all of them bunches. Plus, I've probably rained on a few all-male parades in my day. In fact, I'm sure of it. Sorry to anyone whose guys' nights I may have ruined in the past.

I've only ever deleted one person on Facebook that I can remember, and it was after the person was so incredibly mean to me that I realized it was the healthy choice to cut them out of my life as much as possible. Even then, I added the person back because I didn't want to cause any problems. Gosh, I hate Facebook. I hate it with a fiery passion. Yet I don't delete it. Rather, I delete it, and then sign back in again weeks later. Why??

Well, I'll tell you why. People start forgetting you exist and stop inviting you to parties and events. "Oh, sorry, I forgot you don't have Facebook. I used a Facebook invite." You start missing out on people's pictures, and you lose touch with friends who live far away or are on vacation. You know what, though? I keep in touch with my close friends regardless of whether or not we both have a Facebook page. Maybe some relationships are meant to fade over time. We're preventing that from happening, and I'm not so sure it's always a good thing. It's just one more thing keeping us trapped in the past. I love the past, trust me. I'm one of the most nostalgic people you'll ever come across. I have difficulty throwing things away, and I shop almost exclusively at second-hand stores. It's just that some relationships aren't meant to last, and that's okay. We can always remember them the way they were; we can even idealize them if we so desire...which I usually do. I just don't think we should drag them out. We ought to quit while we're ahead more often.

If some of the relationships we have with "friends" on Facebook were to be actualized as humans, they'd be total has-beens on celebrity reality shows that leave everyone screaming at their televisions, "Give it up already! No one cares who you are anymore! Your career died in the '80s!"

The point I'm getting at is: Why do I care if someone who treats me like crap deletes me as their Facebook "friend"? Why do I beat myself up over not inviting people to my wedding when I haven't seen them for months, or even years? Because I care too much! Because Facebook has led me to believe that I need to care what all of these people think about me! But I don't! It hurts to know that someone has gone out of their way to decide they would rather take the active steps to delete you from their online lives rather than passively allow you to maintain the title of "friend." But, you know what, what better way to find out someone is a petty, asshole piece-of-shit?

So I was wrong after all. Thank you, Facebook. Now I know who my REAL friends are! Sort of.