Post Forty-One: Mercurial Musings

I no longer feel like a woman primarily controlled by the deaths of her pasts. There is no question in me of "is this right?" or "is this wrong?" because it is simply what it is.

In less than two months, Zach will have been gone from my life, physically, for a year. It's maddening how quickly all that pain and horror passed by, because it felt like years. Every week felt like a year of my life. And here I am, almost 52 weeks away from that fateful September day, and I am NOT nearly 52 years older. No, instead, I am nearly one.

I feel, as a person, as a Juliana Marie Smith who is continuing on in her ever stretching before her life, much more calm. Maybe emotionally dead (is that stoic?). But whenever I admit that aloud, my eyes prick with shame, embarrassment, guilt, fear, regret, and denial. So in truth, I am still emotional. I'm just more in control. Or. More decisive about showing it. Or less likely to greet emotion with alacrity.

Life is strange. Often, I have to force myself away from realizing what a sham life can seem like. How it's all just a covering up, or a tacking on, of who I really am. My house and my cats, my material objects, my job, my roommates, even my little brother living with me, and my companion, my friends, all these things feel so "meh". So fake. So. not passionate. So not really me. Kind of like when you're watching a movie, and you suddenly realize how everyone's an actor/actress, and everything's a set, that's how I feel about my life these days. Sometimes.

But I trudge on. Eyes sternly focused on the horizon, feet moving towards whatever goal awaits my end. Push forward towards my unknown destination.

Self Actualization. That's something that's been brought up to me quite often lately. By my "companion." I apologize, I don't know what else to call him. "Boyfriend" is gaudy, "Significant other" without feeling. "PIC"? seems too cavalier. "Lover" seems too one tracked. I guess I'm still figuring that part out. For now, companion will do. Maybe even "mentor" could fit, too.

Either way, I'm continually self-actualizing. Figuring myself out. This whole blog began because I wanted to figure myself out, "return to myself," whatever that means. I feel now that there is no true 180, there is no returning to myself, my past self, that is. Scars cannot be undone, they always burden, in a way, the skin they touch. I worked through my emotions, my anger with life, my bitterness, my adoration and appreciation for Zach, my eventual satisfaction with who I was. And then life tipped me over and poured me out again. The whole cycle started over.

This one has been dark. This cycle, I mean. I have picked my pieces back out of the world and put them back together, with my eyes closed. It was easy to move without seeing. Feeling felt fully functional, fully feasible, fully the bare minimum of action necessary to figure myself out. But I wonder..well, I wonder quite often if maybe this was unwise. My eyes are opening again, I'm feeling more comfortable with seeing the truth. I'm feeling more confident. More, here's the term again, "myself", whoever that is. But I'm also looking around me and what I've built from my pieces lolling in the ocean of life, and I'm noticing that I'm not 100% sure I like what I've done. That I feel what I am is right. Or what my life is is right. But I'm comfortable, so I deny the doubt. And trudge on.

Which I guess..in a way, is continuing to move forward with my eyes closed.

But sometimes, everything feels so right. So perfect. So exactly what I need.

And other times, something feels off. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Irritating. What I MIGHT have needed, but maybe not what I'll always, or right now, need.

I keep waiting for a "refresher" to happen. For someone to open my eyes. For clarity, so that I can see my big picture, discover what's wrong, and find the courage to right it.

I question myself. And everyone around me questions me, too. Where can I find the answers?

Sometimes I feel the only answer is to leave Charleston. Everything here is not as simple as it seems. Relationships are not as malleable as I expect. Or maybe they are, but I don't see them that way. I yearn for freedom from my bonds. A desire to roam to some far off land that doesn't know me, so that I can start from scratch. Not start from ruins.

I'm not unhappy. Don't get me wrong. I'm just not sure how long this setting and cast will keep me happy. I have little faith in it. I need something stronger. A stronger love for my surroundings, not a half hearted hurrah. A stronger, purer, less tainted tie to my people. Something built from curiosity, joy, jokes, respect. Not something forced to form from devastation, desperation. And that isn't ungrateful. I'm not ungrateful. I'm just tired of the weight everything here carries. I'm ready for something fresh. I'm ready to stop allowing my past to rule my future. To stop openly tying myself to so much sadness. I can never forget my loves ever ever ever. I can never stop carrying them with me, and I don't even want to stop. But I do want to be independent of the stain their droppings created. I want to be free of the reminders, people, places, or things. The obligations i feel to said reminders, people, places, or things. I'm ready to be ME in a world that's ready to see ME for ME.

If that makes any sense.

It feels hard to self-actualize when I feel like so much of my here'n'now doesn't want to see me be anything different than what I once was or what I might still be. It feels hard to move forward when I feel bonds preventing me from taking further steps. It is natural, for me, to be mercurial, i believe. I shall never stop being who I am, but I will change in that I'll add life experiences to ma "am". Ma am will grow. And I don't want anyone hindering ma am from the ability to do so. "Yes, ma'am, be free to change," that's what I'd like to hear from my peers, my mentors, my family, my friends.

Life fire changes and reshapes metal. Life changes and reshapes me. metallic, liquid, mercury. my wings say so much more now than I could have ever foreseen.

I cannot allow the charred remains of extinguished fires to put my own fire out, but I will allow them to change my composition, but not so much I lose my original material. I cannot allow my past to stop my life, but I can allow it to be a part of me, not so much so that I lose me.

Ma am shall change, like mercury. My flaming life will continue to mold me. And when my own fire is extinguished, maybe only then will I truly be self-actualized. Maybe only then will I be totally permanent, unchanging, my mercury hardened into it's final form, so that the world left behind will be able to know just exactly who I was.

Maybe. And this is all coming to me as I type it, but maybe self-actualization isn't so necessary for life. Maybe all I need is a confidence, or a knowledge, that what I'm doing is what I want, what I feel is good. Maybe...well maybe THAT'S Self actualization. that knowledge.

I'm losing my purpose right here.

But, it feels good just writing it out. I don't want your restraints, current life. I don't want your expectations. I want your bonds, but I don't want them to hold me back. I don't want your demands, because you are not my life, not in the long run. For now, yes, you are a rung to my climb to happiness. but you are not my happiness. I am happy, but I have not yet reached the pure, blissful happy I may have once felt when all was good and life had not yet taught me pain.

I will perceiver because I am strong. And determined. And wild. And independent. Like the wind that hits this town, I too will pick up scents of my life and carry them forward on into the world. I will not be stopped, obstacles will be overpassed.

And I spose that's that. I am free! I am brave! I am life! I am woman! I am fearless! I am strong! I am Juliana Marie SMITH! And these will never change.

Post Forty: Swimming Lesson

I dive head first into life. Eyes squeezed shut. One giant gulp of oxygen held tightly in my lungs, rationed accordingly, never wasted except in times of great emotion. I do not see where I am headed or even where I am. I only feel the velvety caress of life as it washes through my hair, over my shoulders, sliding down my back and over my curves, tickling the backs of my knees, my heels, my toes. When I open my eyes, when I feel brave enough to face the waters I've plunged into, I cannot see clearly my setting. I do not know what to make of it. The others who are swimming along side are wobbly images I've edited in my mind, to fit better my own sordid dreams. When they're close enough for me to see more clearly, I shudder from the truth and clamp my eyelids over my pupils. It's much easier to feel than it is to see. In the self-imposed darkness, I know not where I am headed. I only have theories. I might hit the bottom if I keep going, never stopping to check my route, my direction, my passing landmarks. I might end right back at the beginning, the surface, lost, alone, confused, but full of fresh, new, sweet air ready to be inhaled and taken for a trip. I may meet dangers. I may encounter enormous expanses of emptiness. I depend on my sense of touch for clarity, but it can only show me so much. I am afraid of what I might see, I am afraid of the way the saltiness of life will feel on my baby blues. I resist seeing, but I sink ever so slowly into feeling. All the while, behind my lids, my brain is racing. Coveting the air leaving my lips, bubbling to the surface, longing to be free of the weight of my surroundings. It whispers my doubts to me, only loud enough for me to barely hear in the whooshing of passing days, but ever existent, ever pressing. Behind my visage, scenes are played out and replayed, analyzed, dreamt up, imagined, edited, discarded. My thoughts are unable to be unseen to only me. But my position in this murky sea of humidity and sky is visible to all but me, leaving me with one inquiry I am unable to find an answer to. No, not where am I. I am in life. But who, WHO, am I? And is it me who determines this, or the unsteady, blurry corporeal beings around me? I'm running out of air, my ability to concentrate weakens, I must make a move and fast. Either I act and breathe, or I submit and founder. The current may continue to move me, but in order to survive, I must decide. 

Post Thirty-Nine: Hankering

I've been feeling a pull to write in here instead of my private journal lately. I suppose I want people to pay attention and this is the only way I know how to give em what I'm holding back.

Life in general is good, but there is an undercurrent of discouragement, boredom, loneliness, and impatience lurking beneath my happy countenance. I feel like I've come full circle in feeling the same feelings I reported when this blog was first started. A general frustration with the lack of progress & happiness in life. At least before, when I was working at CreateSpace and not really progressing at all, I had Zach to fall back on. To encourage me, make me feel as though I wasn't completely idle, to keep my spirits up when they fell.

Now I don't really have anyone to do that. Just myself. And man, is it an internal battle almost daily. If I don't develop multiple personality disorder by the end of this year, then I'm gonna be pretty proud of myself. I'm pretty professional when it comes to ignoring the dark thoughts flitting in and out of my consciousness, but it's only because there's Juliana Pt1 and Juliana Pt 2 and who knows how ever many other Juliana Pts. Whenever the downer Pt 2 speaks up and calls my attention to my permeating lonliness, the determined to be optimistic Pt 1 puts it back in it's place, counts it's blessings, or calls upon the industrious Pt 3 to distract pt 2 with menial chores or distracting novels. Pt 4 is the pt hanging out with everyone. The pt that ignores the arguments between pt 1 and pt 2 and the impulses to clean something from pt 3, so that I may effectively have fun with people.

But me, Juliana, is so tired of myself. Tired of being alone almost everyday, even at work. Seriously wanting someone to dedicate their lives or time to making sure I'm not sinking into Pt 2 or that Pt 1 isn't failing at it's task (because sometimes it does, and that sight is the saddest, most pathetic sight to behold. no one ever ever does.)

All in all, I am suffering from a loneliness I just cannot kick. And a tug towards God knows what. Something. Some greater purpose. I'm worth more than this, I know it. I'm tired of the fog i constantly live in just to make it through the day without really feeling the passing hours. I am sleep walking. I do laugh a lot more these days than I may have ever laughed at any other point in life, but it all feels so empty. I can't even properly express my concerns, care, love, gratefulness to those who are around me of their own free will because I'm just so empty. Except for all the Juliana parts, I guess, but each of them is empty in turn.

Where is my motivation to move forward? And once I find it, where will it move me forward to? And more importantly, how DO i find it? I feel, like i said, SO discouraged. I am so impatient, I want to know NOW where my happiness will find me in my trek through life.

Waa! What on this great green earth can I use to fill myself back up so I might someday be worth the happiness I want!? Because everything I try, painting, reading, hilarious tv, kitty owning, chores, drinking, friend hanging out, sleeping, working, bike riding, all of it inevitably ends with me right back in my room, alone, weary, and so uncertain that I'll ever be happy with who I am.

And the struggle continues. Back into my sleepy, hazy world I slip in order to move with alacrity to work.

a pretty fitting anthem.

Post Thirty-Eight: Wholiana

Written December 7 and read for the first time since then today, January 3. :

      When i wake up every morning, I know I am not myself. “how can you tell?” Because I don’t feel alive. Instead, i feel scared. Is scared being alive? I’m not sure, but I know that I am not myself. I resist the morning call of the sun. I refuse to answer that mysterious tune that begins right outside my window played by an enigmatic feathered musician who I haven’t taken the time to discover. I loathe, ardently, the sound of bass footfalls in the hallway and the cacophonous chiming of the alarm residing next to my pillow, one of the denizens of my bed, my only sanctuary. I cower from that world lapping at my sandy bed shores. I am scared to taste it’s saltiness. I used to be brave, brandishing my tongue and stealing tastes of life, but too many unwanted, enormous gulps of brine water have caused terror of suffocation and my tongue has retreated, whimpering, foolish, covered in brackish blisters back into the pink cavern of my mouth. It will not be trying that saline solution again for sometime I fear.

My comforter, a colorless, billowy, cumulous shield from reality provides refuge that I cannot locate anywhere else. Here I am honestly emotional. Here I can dream of better days, a better life. Here facts are held at the door, by my bouncers, cuddly and bearlike, and I am free to pretend that I know who I am. But I do not, because I am not myself. 

My mind, no, my entire being, has been infected by an unnamable illness and it’s impossible to remember what it was like to not be ill. Chicken pox thwart me from seeing my true self, confusing and distracting me with itchy little volcanoes of milky fluids. What was it like to be clean and fresh and unmarred? I cannot remember. The oatmeal ointment of passiveness does not assure me. The Heedless Anti-Itch Salve only blocks the prickly past for half hours at a time. I cannot heal with either, oatmeal or salve, passiveness or forgetfulness. Not entirely, anyway. No, these weapons against pain merely keep me barely conscious, like a drunkard who’s had seven too many beers and two too many shots. They do not aid me in being myself. They simply keep me aware enough to know that I am still here, though I do not know who I am or what “here” even indicates. 

So, I lie in my haven, listless, languid, defeated, pestered by bristles of bad memories, wrapping the feather-stuffed invisibility cloak tightly around me, hoping against all odds that if I stay here long enough, the world will forget about me and recall it’s insistent waves to go harass someone else, someone easily seen. Sometimes, I’m lucky enough to fall into visions of my preferred reality. Other times, I find a continuation of the dark, hazardous, foggy hallways I slide through in my slipper socks, the days I merely pass through like a glimmer of a being. But, ultimately, I am always yanked out of bed like a splinter from a finger, expected to face the day. 

Powers that be, if you’d let me, I’d be happy to stay in bed forever. Ms. Haversham makes sense to me now. I cannot blame the recluse for finding a clandestine alcove within the gloomy, safe corridors of her own home when I dread feeling my feet touch the unfamiliar floor of my temporary room in my dead Zachary’s parent’s house. 

        I built many strong, original relationships in my lifetime, before I was not myself. Looking back, the majority of them have ended, but two were not voluntary. Two ended without anyone’s approval. Samantha was lost after our college graduations. She adventured too far into the guardrail of a walking path in a garden while roller blading one day. Zachary, oh Zachary. The only pillar of strength still standing after my Samantha induced depression burned every other one down, fulfilled the adage “curiosity killed the cat” when scratching an itch to see a little bit further down a waterfall. Humans do not have “spidey” senses, after all, and he wasn’t able to react fast enough to save himself from his inevitable, literal fall from glory. Both of these relationships were deceivingly built on the notion that they would never end. Made of faux steel, they rusted with a sudden ferocity and broke with only my halves lasting and Sam and Zach’s halves crumbling back to dust. We, all three, have been cheated out of magical, blissful dreams of futures together. Samantha on the same street as me with her family, my maid of honor, my sister from another mister, my ever-lasting confidante, there no matter the situation, weather, season, or elemental form. And Zachary, the truest love I have known yet. The father of our never to be begotten children. Fully accepting of all my faults because he wanted everything I had to offer, he showed me what it was like to really live. Zach’s acceptance paired with Samantha’s dependable reception of whatever notion swayed me, I found an oasis containing crystal, still lagoons of knowledge about who I was. Who I really wanted to be. 

They were taken from me within two consecutive, long, harsh, deceptive, traitorous years.  These incidents, these tragedies, these downright crimes of life, have hurled me into a complete, utter state of confusion. Who the hell am I without them? And how am I expected to figure it out without being able to consult them? I’d rather abscond into never never land than to muster the strength required for self-realization. “Wholiana”, the Spanish pronunciation of my name, never seemed so fitting an appellation. My confidences and aegises against pain have shattered and cannot be glued back together, no, not even with gorilla glue. No shops I wander into offer replacements. Materials have not been provided to create them anew. I am not myself. I am not safe to be myself. I am scared to rebuild, because I rebuilt before and was ruined again. Being kicked by the donkey twice is not learning, they say. 

Nevertheless, I fear that as I am incapable of investing anything, my personality has split and the other one of me is taking command. While my outright self is on auto-pilot, barely successfully engaging with each day, an enraged, courageous self is acting behind the scenes. Pulling the strings to make my appendages work, it somehow successfully took the GRE. Mysteriously and surprisingly it applied to my grad school dream school. The puppeteer has also produced two paintings for me within a month. This is abnormal. When I could take care of myself, I only produced one painting a month, and at a sluggish, almost reluctant, indolent pace. This inner, passionate bearer of my before-the-bad-times hopes has not managed to invest in others, however. I am, despite being surrounded by people, alone. I cannot bring myself, any part of myself, to truly care or..at least express care for anyone. I cannot set myself up for devastating failure. Not again. 

This inability to love, this selfishness, is unwanted, because I cry all the time, in solitude, desperate for physical comfort that can only be received from a trustworthy, patient savior who I’ve confided in enough to really allow them to know what’s required to rescue me. But i cannot confide, not honestly. I often omit, afraid of rejection. I dance around topics, especially if I fear they will conjure hurt feelings, pride, etc. I am not straightforward, I am round about, curvy, topsy turvy. I fluctuate from sentence to sentence, often. I oscillate from hour to hour. I think of myself this morning and am shocked by my behavior, though I clearly remember being certain of it at the time. I am a wind up doll. I act. I do not think. Five minutes ago is lost to me. Stories cannot be appreciated any longer unless they can be surmised into one concise phrase. I am incapable of keeping up. I forget the minute immediately after it passes. I am too full of too many bad minutes. I don’t want to chance collecting any more. 

This story will hopefully improve. I cannot say for sure, because as life has seared into the back of my hands, eyelids, too, I do not know the future. Despite my fear to BE, I hope harder than a five star rated sudoku puzzle that I know true laughter again. Happiness. What you are about to embark on is my journey. Don’t worry if you feel you are being left behind, I myself am in the same boat. My bed is my vessel of safety, the world around me is the treacherous, shark ridden waters threatening to topple the only diminutive protection I have. But, if I can churn up the courage to swing my legs over the side and slip into those uncharted waters, I have a tiny, moonbeam of hope that I can make it to the tropical, exotic island of euphoric self-awareness, no matter it’s size in the grand scheme of things. Out across the angry sea, I hope to die in ecstasy.