We Live, We Learn, We Create, We Burn

Between waiting for the end of the world, working and being an active participant on the planet, it’s no wonder we often view this life as being a treacherous task. When I was growing up we never talked about the bad things. When life pulled a swift one on you, you would suck it up and swallow that bitter pill with the last drop of water you had. But I always had writing. I always had a journal, a diary or a piece of paper to write down my letters of life.

I have learned a lot in my twenty six years in the universe and I learn more every day but it never ceases to amaze me when the same old dramatic situations rear their ugly heads. When you grow up as a regular, suburban, middle-class family and come home one day when you’re twelve to a completely shattered existence, you grow up and you wake up pretty damn fast. Amidst broken promises and continuous lies, you create your own little world safe from all the wrongs and injustice. You escape by watching movies, and listening to endless hours of music. In my case, you also escaped by writing. You can take away every pain in the world if you write it out.

I’ll admit, on the outside I look completely normal and mostly put together, but there is a darkness inside this vertically challenged figure. I am an angry person. I’ve cried myself to sleep many times fearing that I would grow to be hateful, just like the hateful one who created me. Now I’ve checked and swallowed my anger so many times, so when it escapes, it tears things apart, but as a wonderful lyric by Frou Frou once expressed, “There’s beauty in the breakdown.”

Maybe I should provide some history. Since I was about 13, I’ve become a guarded, jaded, and suspicious being. I’m extremely selective on whom I let in. Every time I’ve let people see my darkness, it has always bitten me on the ass. So I’ve learned that some people can understand the fact that they just can’t understand, and other judge you for believing that fact, seeing you as holding your own life above all other matters of the world. True, darkened people like myself, are often selfish, but some of us are in fact selfless.

I could sit here and tell you my life story. I could tell you the great moments and the horrors, but would that make you accept me? Maybe it would. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it until I die, with me you must understand that there are many things that you just cannot understand. Just like I have no real idea how my two best friends feel, having lost their mothers in their teenage years to tragic circumstance, you all have no idea how I feel having gone through what I have gone though.

What have I gone through? Here’s a taste: absentee parent at age 12, tried to repair the relationship at 15 and moved away from my entire world and the only real parent I’ve ever had. My first boyfriend when I was 16 was four years older than me. The first guy that cared about me had a girlfriend and I helped him cheat on her. I was physically dragged away from my new world into another one 3,000 miles away from everything. I almost didn’t graduate high school. My senior prom date dumped me a month before prom to take a freshman after he’d picked out my dress with me. My boyfriend at 18 was pill-junkie, unbeknownst to me, and he raised his hand to me once and almost hit me, stole $1200 from me, almost stole my car, cheated on me and lied to me throughout our entire relationship. An old family friend preyed on my vulnerability and destroyed my self-esteem to the point where throughout our relationship I was a cutter, hurt the only man that ever truly loved me, lost and gained over twenty pounds and completely lost touch with myself. I stopped my life to take care of a family member thought to have cancer only to later find out she’d lied, stolen and lost everything she had. I single-handedly cleaned up the mess, with no appreciation and in the middle of it all; a life-long friend was lost to drama and bullshit. I destroyed and repaired the 7 year relationship I’ve ha d with my husband to the point where he is just about all I have to depend on in this world.
I have some amazing friends who have fallen in love with my flaws and celebrate them with me. I’ve been through some crazy shit. I could write a novel. But really, in the end, I want to know why people seem to be surprised when I’m callous, abrasive and fly my freak flag? I realize I have a kind of clean image but I was raised to keep up a certain appearance and make nice. That doesn’t mean I can’t turn on something completely different.

This world has kicked my ass time and time again and I’m still standing. However, I still manager to get beat up by anyone I let in. There have only been a handful of people in my life who’ve seen the darkness and jump in there with me. Those are the people who hide the darkness within themselves too. I’m into that whole dark and light thing. I learned it in art, its call chiaroscuro, the distribution of light and shade in a picture. What’s my favorite painting? Van Gogh’s Starry, Starry Night is my favorite and talk about the difference between light and dark! MAN! I embody the distribution of shade and light within my personality.

I can be sweet as pie but don’t cross me. I’m a hard one to understand. Recently my husband was brought to tears explaining that with what I’d been through, he will stay with me through the rest and he knows how I’ve struggled and he refuses to watch anyone hurt me anymore. There are people in my life who love and accept me as the mess that I am. I own my fucked-up-ness and wear it with pride!

People find me fake and two-faced because they catch my “shade” when my light has dimmed. I was raised to be polite and cordial to everyone. I was raised to “get along,” with everyone, even if I don’t like or agree with them. It always carried me through. Don’t get me wrong, like the rest of the world, I can talk some shit. I can talk myself into a frenzy, but I can also talk myself out of one…or write it!

In the moments where the world slaps me in the face and I’m perplexed and upset, I write it out. In the new age, that’s what blogs are for. Sometimes when people read my blog they are touched. They see the darkness and they appreciate my point of view. I often write from a negative arena, but there are some pieces that are balanced and lighter.

I’ve lived and learned. I will still create. I will burn and bury the things that have brought me distress. I think Death Cab For Cutie’s lyrics can put it quite succinctly:
“Will I have learned so very little, when these bones are old and brittle?I wait to talk when I should listen and cloud mistakes with false revisions…and I can feel them pulling away as I'm resigned to stay the same. And you can't even begin to know, how many times I've told myself, ‘I told you so.’ And you can't even begin to believe, there’s so many bridges engulfed in flames behind me…”

I write about the burned bridges but I will admit that the dark side of this redhead thought the flames of those burning bridges to be gorgeous in the destruction. I refuse to live in regret. Sometimes I wish that the scenes had played out differently but I wouldn’t take away any of my dark times and bad days because what doesn’t kill you only makes you more badass.

One of my favorite comedians, Dane Cook, talks about how there are two kinds of connections in this world: when you are with someone and you are having a great time it’s a “good relationship,” but when everything goes wrong and it’s a bad situation it’s called a “relation-shit.” It’s quite brilliant, really and I fully agree with the idea. When you’re in the middle of something great, be it a friendship, a job, a city, whatever, you are so in love. It’s always light, fluffy and sweet. When things get tough, it can get ugly real fast and when that love fades, you’re left with a relation-shit. We’ve all had them. They come and they go. I don’t regret them, I’ve learned from them both, they’d gotten me through a lot but don’t be upset with me because I see “the break-up” or the “breakdown,” as a beautiful disaster while you may see it in a completely different light.

I laugh and poke fun of a lot in this life to battle the inner darkness. In the film “Anger Management,” Jack Nicolson’s character calls sarcasm, anger’s ugly cousin or something like that and he’s right on. My frustration often comes out in sarcastic spurts, but my grandmother always said, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I guess I thought a little spice makes everything nice…see there it was again!

What can I say? I’m simply a complicated girl; even that statement was a total oxymoron! People hold these expectations upon me and become disappointed when I don’t live up to them but I see at as, if I’m disappointing I’m still getting your attention, right? I can’t say if I see the glass half empty or the glass half full because if I don’t have a full cocktail in front of me, who cares anyway! HA! I don’t like making enemies out of people but if I let you in and you use my darkness against me, I guess we can’t get along after all. I’m not afraid of controversy. I am a controversial being, but it annoys me when perceptions and feelings get rolled into a cluster-fuck.

I’m an expert on the whole feelings versus perceptions thing, people. No joke. I’ve been arguing both sides for years. You feel what you feel, that if a person’s right, but if you perceive a situation to be one way, and I see it the opposite, that’s no one’s fault and you can’t really argue it. Take it for what it is! And yet it’s a constant struggle!

Recently I’d felt personally violated, like I couldn’t think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and write down my story. I’d lashed out, I’d felt upset and then I swallowed my pride and just faced that music. Music is a big part of my life, so I’ll always face it head on, even if they are playing my most hated song. I’d had an awakening though. Whatever happened to sticks and stones can hurt my bones but words can never hurt? I’d been called a lot of terrible things throughout the years and I always managed to stand back up. I’d also seen, first hand, that cordial attitude of getting along, the very thing I’d been chastised for, given right back to me, like a reflex. It’s in our nature.

I’ve created a world for me where I’m comfortable. I’ve selected some amazing people to keep around me. I’ve lived. I’ve learned. I’ve created some questionable objects and situations. I’ve burned things, people and many bridges. I’ve seen the light, I’ve seen the dark. I won’t apologize for being me. If you get hurt on my personal journey of living, learning, creating, and burning, damn straight I owe you an apology, but I won’t stop being me for anyone. If my husband, my family and my closest friends can accept me as the great mess that I am, you should just be able to accept that you don’t “get me.” I’m still meeting great new people every day and finding friends in different places. I may not have been what or who you wanted me to be, but if I’m happy being me, that’s the end of the discussion.

For now, I’ll continue my living, learning, creating and burning, until I’ve lived my last day, learned my last lesson, created my last great achievement and burned everything left in my wake!