I Can't Be Mad at the World Anymore, It Has You

 

    I've always been an aggressive person; usually this has been boiled down to a positive trait that discounts my flaws. "She's just fiery" "Oh she's just a hard head" "She's prideful". All of these faux descriptions have only just covered what is undeniable, I'm an emotionally unregulated person. Well, maybe that's not the best description. My emotional control has never been the best, I didn't learn how to be stable until much later in life so I'm still rough at it. Along with a history of mental health problems, I've been delayed. I guess with all of that, I really don't know in what way I can describe myself. Everyday, I work on it , trying as hard as I can to present some changes. I wish I could go through an overnight metamorphosis, but I fear that would make me loose some part of myself. Really, I think that my flaws, even with how monstrous and vicious they seem, are innately a part of me, I would be utterly changed without my imperfections. 

        I am a prideful person, and that has too be the worst part of myself. My refusal to ask for help and my habit of wanting to provide everything for myself. I would point to my habit of lack of thinking when agitated as a point of contention as well. Maybe you could say my sensitivity is a flaw, but to an extent, I think that's just me.  I could sit and name flaws all day, but that doesn't change anything, that doesn't make emotions easier to manage in the slightest. It just makes me feel guilty all the times I could've been better. Either way the past is the past, you can't change it, all you have to do is move on. It's going to take a while before I can properly call myself stable, and I'm willing to put in all the work I can, I mean I've been doing that already. 

    Besides my increasing emotional problems, I've been actually doing pretty alright. However, the worst grievance I've dealt with as of late is cupid's conniving schemes to make me fall deeper in love. At this point it's ridiculous, I've absolutely lost it. He's like a gentle warm rain, one so desperately beautiful that living without it would mean my utter destruction. I have found the most perfect seashell and losing it would send me to places I've once explored, but are painfully barren. I'm in love, undeniably so. Cupid's wicked curse is one I wish to find no antidote for. He's calmed me down significantly and for him I want to be the best woman I can be, he deserves to have that. So I guess partly my motivation to improve myself is because of him. Though cruel, love has helped me come to terms with problems a sought places to sooth them. This world is so vast and expansive that being able to step back for at least one second to take some piece of mind with someone who I long for like rain in a drought, it perfect to me.

Excuse my incoherent nature, I've been out of my mind all day.

Then how have you lived, if you have no history?

     

    I can now pinpoint the emotions I'm feeling as fear. But really, it's ridiculous fear. My life has to move, I can't stay in an almost childlike wonder forever, but still, I long for a bit more time. I love the life I've built for myself and growing up feels like building that all again. I didn't realize how fast a bud becomes a rose until I saw a change in myself; through a mirror hair longer and skin clearer I'm seeing someone entirely different.

    I can look at moments in retrospect and see how I've grown. I feel as if I am a butterfly bursting from hiding. However this new world in front of me that beckons me, terrifies me just the same.

        That's life I guess, balancing fear of the unknown with the vigor to do so.

Fig Trees and the Roots Below Them

     I am undeniably fond of books centering around female rage and the concept of hysteria. A largely explored concept in media today with literature such as My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) and arguably A Certain Hunger (2020). However, in 1892 the concept was just was only a drop in what we would now see as a rainstorm, which we would see with The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

                The story follows the main character as she's trapped in a lofty room with an uncaring husband and a sickly shade of yellow wallpaper that slowly consumes her mind. The short story is captivating in it's descriptions of the woman's wondering mind as she is overtaken by the wallpaper, convincing herself that her problems all stem from it. The brilliance of the story presents itself as the distance the husband has, driving the wife to have a deeper decline, he's insistent on what's best for her but never asks her what she needs. She is isolated and trapped by her perception of things around her, surrounded with dancing wallpaper that encroaches on every thought. The story, that leaves you with a taste in your mouth that you wish could linger for hours, ends like most declines do, with a jump and break and dead woman. This story would be the inspiration for my favorite book, I know it's utterly predictable for someone as pretentious as myself, but I am in love with The Bell Jar.

    The Bell Jar, with it's depictions of life as merely a fig tree stretching with it's possibilities and our unstable main character and her caviar obsession, is brilliant. The book entranced me with it's feminine outer shell that Sylvia Plath so carefully put together and it trapped me, like the jaws of a fly trap, with the mental decline of our heroine. The night I finished reading it, I couldn't stop crying. The worst part of it and what I now know as the reason for my breakdown, was the fact that the main character reflected me perfectly, though cracked in some places, it was my reflection. 

        I've always hated the people that compare themselves to Holden Caufield or Patrick Bateman, however, the hypocrisy reeks from my mouth like garlic when I mention that. I compare myself to Briar Rose and Laura Palmer and sometimes Beatrix Kiddo, but when I say I compare myself to Esther Greenwood, I feel ashamed as to think so poorly of myself. I remember the times at night where I felt so hopeless, drowning in my own mind, I wanted to make that the reality, the drowning part I mean. Progress is not linear, It goes all sorts of directions before it becomes noticeable, but even then, the progress was non existent. For myself and my strange mind with it's wild fantasies that teeter on the edge of delusion, I had found myself on the precipice of some sort of freedom, or I could turn back and drown in my own sorrow, but I took what I saw from a book about despair. I guess somehow I found a way to make progress linear.

I made it through days in which getting up was the hardest part of the day and the only thing I could do without feeling some sort of agony was lay down. My depression had shown itself as a volatile mood and delusions with visons and noises that came from the psyche that was broken into millions of pieces. It's difficult to pin point when it started getting worse, but I can tell when it started getting better (and I'm sure those who have tortured themselves with this blog have too). The story of my depression is long winded and to exhaust it would just would be far too boring, even for my liking. But I will say, that during the process of trying to stay afloat whiles waves crashed down, The Bell Jar was a cruel reminder of where I could end up. In a way, I think it drove me to an insanity that somehow motivated me to fix my perceptions of life. I didn't want to be Esther anymore, I started fearing the process of dying and how painful it might be. 

        I really can't tell if the book ruined my life or not. I really don't think it did even if in some ways it made me feel worse. Though if the book did, I still do recommend it, it's beautifully written and a fun read. But no one should follow in my footsteps and read it when your close to delivering the mail to deaths mailbox. Though I talk callously about my raging and at what seemed like at the time, uncurable depression, it's a time that has long since passed me, and left me to continue living. I'm happy now, I made it to the peak of my mountain and the only thing in front if me is meadows. Life isn't as cruel as it used to seem and The Bell Jar is one stepping stone of the progress I had, in some way, made.

Beyond Black Rainbows

         To catch up on the last two months and the affairs and adventures I have embarked on would be a long winded process that amounts to nothing but similar events after another. Though I have realized how utterly simple I've become. I work, I speak to my lover, I talk to my family, I work some more, I indulge in my hobbies and I sit back and watch the stars burn. For once I picture myself not as a star burning through the cosmos, making waves. But simply as a spectator, as me. I think that's the best way I could've turned out, as I've become utterly uninterested in such ventures. I want to live a life, and mind you in a way so simplistic and boring, describing it would be long winded and boring. Though for the sake of humoring myself, I will. 

            I want to graduate high school with decent grades, enough to get me into the collages I want, I want to marry my current boyfriend and have him by my side with every event that comes. He's everything to me so having him there would be ideal. I want to find a job in my preferred field. Hopefully I want to get a house, something small, I'm not interested in kids so something fitting the current needs would be just fine. I want to live hopefully comfortably, I think that's the hope for everyone, a car that works, food in the fridge, hot water and a husband. To me, that's comfortable, and that practicality is what I want. That's the life I picture for myself, not something grand but something unassuming, because in the end that's all you can hope for, a comfortable life. 

    Though some details have been excluded, that's the outline for the life I ideally would like to live. Everything I want is so provincial that it's undeniably achievable and I don't myself in finding this happiness. However the currants in this peaceful ocean come with my worry. I believe in myself but that can quickly be overwhelmed by the intense paranoia and worry I have.

                    I'm terrible at crushing my worries down and just living, I don't know if it's a bad habit or a curse. I worry that I won't do a good enough job and that I'm not doing enough for everyone. Resulting in me constantly feeling inadequate and needing to do more and more, not accepting anything until I have come to my own fickle measurements. I have, what feels like, uncurable self doubt. I feel as if I need to be the best in most circumstances, but sometimes I need to sit back and let people do things for me and accept that being the best isn't achievable all the time. It's okay to not be perfect, and that's taken me a while to learn along with letting people do things for me and get me gifts. I can't just buy myself gifts, it's a silly thing. Other than that, I have the constant worry that my lover is going to up and leave me. I don't want him to leave my side, he's become my person. I want him near me most of the time, I feel the most comfortable when he's near me. Him leavening me is terrifying, I want him for the rest of my life and I worry that I'll fuck it all up and he'll find someone so much better. I wouldn't be the same if he left, he's the only man I want for the rest if my life. That's the constant, the undeniable cloud that hangs over my head is that I'll loose my favorite person.

    

    Maybe it's all silly and I shouldn't worry, but when I try to have that perspective, I just end up in more agony and I get more stressed. It's all going to be okay in the end though, I know I'll live the simplicity I want and the person I love will be right next to me, it'll all work out in the end, I know it will.

                                        I went to another world, Rosemary. I see what others cannot see. I looked into the eye of God. And it looked backed through me. It looked through everything. Rosemary, it was so, so, so beautiful, like a black rainbow... and it chose me, it chose me, to reveal itself to me.