Diary
Me
Today my advisor was talking about how some profound people die young, seemingly to make an example to the world to take nothing for granted. I stared hard into space, refusing to glance up at her while the rest of my class stared raptly at her.
She told me last week that I have an aura of competence and brilliance about me- she can see that I have a clear purpose to do great and good things in the world. She told me that everything I say is golden, no words I used are wasted and I don’t open my mouth without a reason. And she told me I am wise, and because of my low bullshit tolerance I will have some lonely times in this world. “But when you find profound people in your life, you’ll remember them forever because they’ll be just as brilliant as you are.”
This stuff came up because she asked me last week why I was quiet, and I told her my brother said I am dead to him for some stupid reasons. Somehow the praise started rolling. Normally when people compliment me, I glance to the side with a small smirk (misinterpreted for humility)- as if it would be a faux pas on my part to let them know I’m too smart to be made fun of to my face. In my mind, statements like “You’re so smart/honest/capable,” are already preceded by “You may not be lovely/ charming/ indispensable, but…”
I feel that dismissing this consideration as selfish and insecure would be not only naïve, but foolish. My advisor is right: my life will be kind of lonely sometimes. I don’t want people to like me for the wrong reasons or to myself enable them to put words in my mouth. If you think I am valuable, let it be because you know me and have determined that my gifts outweigh my faults.
I was talking with Andy, this guy I’m kind of dating. He’s thirty; I’m twenty. But Mitchell approves so I don’t really care about that. I was listening to him talk about his high school and college adventures- all Animal House stuff, nothing too debaucherous. Then the lull in conversation required me to speak of my own experiences in High School. The ordeal, ha!
I really wanted to lie about it, regale him with sappy and humorous stories of perfect lifelong Breakfast Club connections and lessons learned. At the same time I felt compelled to dish the dirty gory details of it- I was put on a laundry list of psychotropic drugs I didn’t need at age 15 and gained 150+ lbs from them; I spent less than 7 years of my high school education in an actual High School; I was depressed and suicidal and took three years off from living; I went to Day Treatment to get my shit together and met a social worker who saved my life and is now my therapist and father figure.
My abbreviated version sounded halting, weak, and ominous. I don’t know if it’s because I’m ashamed of who I was then or that I’m so far removed from it now, but I couldn’t speak articulately about it. It was too far-fetched, too sensational and I sounded too nonchalant. Because it’s not a big deal to me now. But to clue in someone is just meeting me? That’s a bitch. It didn’t drive him away, so he’s either dumber or smarter than I thought.
I’ll never know unconditional (no love is unconditional, I guess I mean “pure”) love from my family. They are an enmeshed post-trauma-all-scar-tissue-no-recovery-dry-drunk-codependent-textbook travesty.
They don’t know how to give me that love, so I guess I’ve forgiven them for that. It helps as I grow older that I’m thinking of them less as people as more as if they are cases from which I am emotionally divorced. But someday, I hope to have a man in my life who will love me for all my flaws - for who I am, what I do, what I aspire to, and how much love I have to give to him and the world. But if there’s no connection, there’s no point. I have to hold out for the perfect fit.
So I disappeared first from the room after class was over, maybe because I was hungry for a Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sub on 12-grain honey oat. Maybe because I was avoiding more compliments.
Past Five
are you blind or somethin'? - 2009-11-24
given - 2009-11-15
rape of reason - 2009-11-13
rubbed away - 2009-08-13
eager eyes - 2009-07-24