Hello.
 
Hello.
 
Is this thing on?
 
*Ahem* No will not say "sibillance" - what is that anyway?
 
Anyway - for anyone out there who may be looking round or listening peripherally - I stumbled across the smattered ramblings below just now - written Feb 20, 2004. So obviously not a lot has changed - rising like the phoenix is apparently a fairly lengthy process. Guess the accomplishment is in keeping on.
 
Oh, come on, humor me:

Human interpersonal relationships – a wonderfully scientific label for the art of getting along with your family, friends, lovers, co-workers, and any person you stand next to on the bus or pass on your way into the gym. It is a tidy, sterile way of describing all of these complex interactions. These daily dances with the other people accompanying us on this journey called life – designed to maximize happiness, minimize social discomfort, and make the world run smoothly. Or so it seems. I have lived my life under the banner of the happiness maximization (theirs), discomfort minimization (mine) for as long as I can remember. It has allowed me to cope with a lot of difficult situations. It has allowed me to adopt the self-aggrandizing moniker of “peacemaker” and “woman of compromise.” But mostly, it leaves me feeling compromised. Afraid of expressing my own opinions – as it is little known, that expressing one’s own preference on matters as important as whether Derek Jeter really looks good in pin stripes may cause one to spontaneously burst into flames – I dance, I dance. Dropped into a situation where an opinion might be required, I cleverly put forth some neutral statement – hoping to entice a nugget of what the other party’s opinion in the matter might be, from which I can then base my own statements on the matter. It is not so much a matter of agreeing with the other person all the time (that would make my fear of “rocking the boat” too obvious) but rather of embarking on a tight-rope walk of one-sided diplomacy, where any position I might have is appropriately tempered by acknowledging the inherent fairness, justification, and, ultimately, superiority of the other person’s positions.

I ask myself – when did I get this way? The echoing answer – I didn’t get this way. I have always been this way. So here I sit, a woman of vast education and an accomplished paper resume – Ivy League honors, topped with a J.D., a practicing attorney at a “BigLaw” firm, with the icing of having accomplished all such tasks at a break-neck speed before the age of 24 -  unable to express myself. So is this it? I am English major, book junkie, lawyer who talks and talks to fill the silences but who ultimately says nothing? I have been told for years that I had a gift for writing. Yes, it is my mother who is saying this, but it is someone nonetheless. Someone else recognizing the facility with language that I have been fortunate to be deeded in this life, that many others are continuously searching for. And yet, even acknowledging, if not a talent for writing, at least the inherent comfort I feel within the medium, I have been – for at least the last 15 years, afraid to write. I will write when I am in situations of comfort – the e-mails to family, to friends. On a smaller scale, in a sheltered environment. I have been unable… no, I have been unwilling to write in a larger forum, on a grander scale, for eyes whose biases are not tempered by affection for the spastic writer and her sensitivities. I have not had the courage to write in a forum to be judged by the biases of the rest of the world. I have not thought that anyone would want to hear what I had to say. I have long thought myself “the other,” that my quirks, my neuroses, my problems were all unique to me. And they are. But it occurs to me now, as I continue the long process of awakening from my guilt and anxiety ridden stupor that I may have something to say. That I do have something to say. That others can relate to the core experience. The quirks are just what make it funny, what make it me. What will allow me to express myself.

Lately I have found myself feeling different. The old pains are still there. The fear, the anxiety – my security blanket still present. But there are now moments. Flashes of time when I forget myself – the image of myself that I had long ago created and spent all subsequent years propping up, applying more spit and bubblegum to the cracks as need be, for the world to see. The me I thought the world could be comfortable with. There are slices, slivers and beams of me that begin to seep through the cardboard image. I let them out now. I did not even know they were there. They surprise me. But they are a victory. They lend hope to escaping what has always been the ache of being me. Relieving me of the fatigue that comes in tap dancing through life without respite to the steps of some mad choreographer who cares only for the image presented and not the toll taken on the dancer.

Often I only realize the moments in retrospect. Often they are born of painful situations. But they are there. They are mine. One particularly difficult area in my life has been my love life, or lack thereof. I have been involved. I have been on dates. I have had a long term relationship. But it has all been a struggle. A struggle for love. I like to play myself as the doomed lover – the one whom the fates have aligned against. The one who cannot fight the destiny of being alone – but who along the way will incur more pain in trying to love those who will not love her. She is unlovable. I believe myself unlovable. This could be because I choose to love those who are not capable of love, or who dole it out in little teaspoonfuls here and there. To serve their needs – both conscious and subsconscious. True enough, I pick men with issues. However, we all have issues. Really, the truth is this: No man can love me enough because I need enough love for two people – the love they would give me, and the love I need to make up for the fact of my loathing myself. No one is capable of that. Not in the long run.

I always pride myself of saying that I think a relationship is or could be healthy (were it to work out) because I can see the other persons flaws and I “know they are not perfect” so I am not suffering from idolatry and it would be a partnership of equal footing – blah, blah, blah. It’s all lip service. Yes, I do see the other persons flaws. I excuse them, I love in spite of them, I love them for them. Lovely thoughts. Appropriate even. However, it leads to the same idolatry as thinking the person is perfect in the first place. Idolatry is okay. A relationship filled with adoration is wonderful – we should all be so lucky. A relationship of lasting adoration, resplendent laughter, and unending respect is, if I do say so myself, the ideal. However, the admiration must be mutual. Everything, absolutely everything, in a relationship must be mutual. If I love someone in spite of and even because of their flaws, they must do the same. And maybe, they have. I have always been unwilling to accept that scenario though. I figure they love the paper-machiere version of me that I dangle before the masses. The “perfect” version of me. The “perfect” version of me, that I have always been aware, fools no one. The strain of maintaining it is too much. The chinks in the armor necessarily revealed by the crying jags and the nervous hysterics unleashed by the self imposed 24-7 puppet show. I have been conducting this show so long that I have forgotten what the real me is like. I have not spent any time with her in a long, long while. As I said before, she is starting to seep out a bit. Mostly in angry little spurts (she has been cooped up for an awfully long time). Yes, it is time to put the lights out on my travel-edition Broadway, the hatching process has begun.