i hope one day to be able to live so far outside of myself that i can see what people really see. it doesnt happen all the time, but in various incremental moments, usually when i open my mouth and say something, my brain conjures up all of these ludicrous ideas. every person in the same building that i am in or reading a tweet or seeing an instagram or facebook post in their feed... i find myself thinking im being laughed at. i find myself wondering what horrible things are being said. i hate that i can believe i am so small.
i hate that i can think people waste energy to hate me, verbally abuse me, or think anything of me other than i am just me.
maybe the reason my brain can travel distances farther than it has the energy for is the past.
the unglorious trauma known as my past.
so a while back i'd read "perks of being a wallflower" after my younger half sister quoted it in some facebook post. i dont remember reading a whole book in a day, but something caught me and i read until the room was dark and evening had snuck up on me. charlie, the main character... he's a lot like me. he has scars. he has stories he cant tell a human face, so he writes someone a letter. he lost his best friend to suicide and is wandering his freshman year of high school alone. then he meets sam and patrick and they invite him into their circle of friends and he finally feels like he belongs, like he's home. he's amongst his kind and for once... he's happy.
i know we all have scars and stories and sad things, but i can honestly say to whatever wandering eyes are scanning this page for some outright idiocy or paraphrase to raise an eyebrow and scoff...i never really had friends. i never really felt home. i never really belonged anywhere. at least that's what i thought.
i got bullied and although i love to share my triumphant stories of tackling two guy bullies down with physical force, no one knows how much it really hurt. no one knows how id be too afraid to die cos i was scared into religious beliefs saying i would be damned to hell for a life of imperfect curiosity, so instead of cutting, i would just claw my arm up with any dull object i could find. i never left any scars. i would just watch my pale flesh begin to tear, layer by layer, growing more and more pink, til finally little specks of blood would appear. that shook me back into reality and i felt alive again. somehow seeing my own blood was enough to remind me i was feeling something other than the constant weight of being alone. i would hide in playgrounds, in the closet of my room during college, in bathroom stalls during lunch.. all to find a way to feel. it escalated to the point where i would fall asleep with knives and wake up wondering what brought me to that place. i ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills washed down with a lot of captain morgan and .... i woke up with a stomachache.
even before these physical acts occurred, i remember asking for help. every hand i aimed to grasp would just slap me in the face or push me down and away. every face i sought some sort of comfort and understanding from turned the other cheek. more than anything i just wanted someone to just be there, however it looked, and just let me know i wasnt alone.
i walked in on so many people talking about me. they didnt think i heard, but i have a severe talent for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. i know too much of what i was never intended to hear.
after J i lost nearly everyone. the "family" at the gym i trained at for 4 years was no longer there except really for papa. and J had pretty much taken everything away from me since i allowed myself to be controlled and manipulated by another person all to simply feel and not be alone. he was a mess too. he had similar issues i did and for me, it was enough at that point simply because i wanted to be understood.
then there came this moment. this moment where i wouldnt realize it until many months later, that that feeling of being exactly where youre meant to be, i was there. i, like charlie, stumbled upon my patrick and sam, and they brought me into a world so different from the cloudy gray existence i had been sleepwalking through. they exposed me to life and family and friends and.... acceptance. sam says a line that someone said to me, "welcome to the island of misfit toys."
it's funny walking through life alone for so long, even under the roof where your bed and green day posters are and where your scribbles that pass for artwork grace the refrigerator door, held on by magnets once meant to teach you something important, you always feel this sense of vacancy. it feels hollow and cold and irrelevant. you just want to take flight and run. your spirit, this restless nomad, on the hunt for a place to call home...
i feel like i finally found it. but ...
it is so hard to let go sometimes. it is so hard to let go of the defense mechanisms that just helped me to survive. i was on a planet not my own with foreign air my lungs were never meant to breathe. but i learned to survive. and now that i find myself home, i find myself unsure of how to walk and breathe and speak. all of the horrible feelings come back. memories of being bullied and beat up and made fun of and talked down to and talked about... they seep through every porous membrane, like dry soil in desperate need of a drink.
i still feel so small.
i still feel so unsure of who i am and why the fuck these people even give a shit if i drive home drunk or pass out on their kitchen floors. i have no clue why they want to give me hugs and sit down and eat or drink with me. i dont know how to accept being accepted, especially when im not sure what there is about me to accept.
and this is where i began.
i wonder who i am.
when all the thoughts silence....
when all my preconceived ideas about what anyone else is thinking or saying slow down and fade into elevator background sounds.... who am i....?
i know the superficial shit but i wonder what about me is worth knowing and liking...
i wonder what the fuck i am even here for....
i wonder what im good at...
i wonder if anyone looks at me how i look at them...
i wonder if anyone thinks about me and smiles like i do sometimes....
and sometimes, i wonder if anyone else has these same thoughts that i do...
cos i dont feel so abnormal anymore.
i dont feel like gonzo in the beginning of muppets from space. i feel like charlie at the end of perks of being a wallflower... let go of all the painful memories he has never told a soul, and free... free to be infinite and no longer a sad story... free to experience life and live and just be happy.
well maybe not entirely charlie....i hope to someday get there.
but for right now... i really want to know what people see and think. not so much that their opinions will make me change, but i think more than anything i really have no clue who i am or if im good at anything or smart or fun or ... likeable. i know this sounds so pathetic and high school but this is how i think because for 25 years of my life i have been instructed to hide my feelings, not to cry, and that no one wants to be around someone that has something to say that isnt happy. every time i reached out for help before i was called weird, told i had issues, called crazy and insane, or blocked/deleted/ignored/left to eat lunch by myself in the bathroom.
so im learning now that it is ok to be human and to feel things, happy or sad.
it is ok to have flaws and want to fix them.
it is ok to make a mistake and try again.
what i really hope to learn is that im probably a lot bigger than i give myself credit for.
if i could just actually applicably grasp this concept, i can only gather that i would be unstoppable.
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