I'm just going to start writing and hopefully this will turn into some kind of cohesive effort. I really doubt it though. I really just need to talk. And my supply of readily available, intelligent, sympathetic ears has been running low lately. It's my own fault, I'm absolutely miserable at maintaining relationships. I mean, I take it down to a whole new level. I give up on people too quickly. I don't give them enough credit. One questionable friendship move and I'm out of there so fast...and yet I expect them to stay as I do the same. It's a mess. I'm a mess. I'm such a mess, in fact, that I just had to PRE-CLEAN my apartment just to get ready to actually clean it tomorrow. There were things all over the floor- clothes, books, the remnants of whatever it is that my dog chewed up and left for me in a pile, dirty dishes all over the floor...that's when you know it's bad, when your dirty dishes aren't even on the available surfaces anymore. They've oozed off of the tables and counters and down to the floor. It was bad. My apartment looks like a miserable little hovel, and it was an excellent representation of what was and is still a little bit going on inside of me.
Being a twenty something is so completely overrated. I went out last night with two thirty-ish year old men, and they both seemed to have their shit all sorts of together. I don't know why people gripe about age the way that they do. A few wrinkles and a bit of osteopenia seems like a small price to pay for soundness of mind and a convergence of purpose. If I were to illustrate my sense of purpose on a page right now it would look like another portion of a Rorschach test. I want to go so many directions at once that now I can't seem to go anywhere. I want to be so many people that now I can't seem to be anyone. Almost worst of all, I want to write so many different novels that I can't seem to write anything. The best I can do is this piss poor purging word vomit that doesn't do anything but make me feel a little less like I'm about to explode.
I want to write a story. Writing a good book is the closest human beings really can ever get to true objectivity. As a reader you step into the authors skin and see what they see, interpret it how they interpret it. For a few hundred pages you really are as close as you can get to seeing the exact same thing another human being sees, without your own subjective experience to color it. But I can't seem to get my fingers on to the keyboard. My biggest hang-ups seem to be that it is A.) Such an enormous task, B.) Such a difficult task and C.)I get so caught up in wishing that I'd written the Game of Thrones that I can't come up with my own ideas.
In other news, I shaved some of my head. I know that sounds like I pulled a Britney Spears, but in all honesty it was a long time coming. I've always liked this particular hairstyle, it was just a matter of me gathering cajones in hand and taking the plunge. It took a really long time for me to do because in the world of a southern, modest, classic woman, appearance comes first. Self expression can be stirred in at your leisure as long as it stays within the confines of approved whimsy...but if you take it too far, you become trailer trash. Even if you were born into the top 2%. I was and am terrified of judgement, like most other social primates, but I finally realized what my future would really look like if I continued to hide myself and justify my conformity. It was fucking bleak. I realized that all of those small-ish decisions, like the decision to have long, prom-queen curls, and the decision to remove my tattoos, and to buy sweatpants from Victoria's Secret that had "PINK" emblazoned across my backside...they all add up. And suddenly without even realizing it, those tiny, seemingly insignificant deaths of self add up to me on my death bed without anything particularly interesting to show for it. I'm not a Christian. This life is the only shot I have. I don't want to waste it cowering in my immaculate brick home with my pie-making neighbors who all talk shit about each other at bridge once a month. So I pretended like I wasn't afraid, and I marched over to my local salon and watched calmly as he sawed off 1/3 of my hair. It looks weird. And I am so, so happy. Does it make me look more attractive than I was before? No. But it makes me look more like ME. And that, from what I've noticed thus far, is priceless. Am I still afraid to walk into class on Monday and hear whispers of "what the hell did she do? She was so pretty before..."? Hell yeah, I am. But doing this was more important than that fear. All of the good stuff usually is.
In other, other news, I am still single. Two years doesn't seem like an insane amount of time to be single, but according to everyone I'm talking to these days, it is. Twice in one week I've fielded questions as to why I think it is that I've been boyfriend-less for so long. The best part is that people usually ask me that question while eyeballing me up and down, as if trying to assess whether this single disease came about because I have seven toes on one foot or some sort of fungal infection hidden beneath my clothes. Usually I can't make up my mind as to whether or not I think their questions are funny or offensive. I guess the two aren't mutually exclusive. In all honesty, I've been single for two years because I haven't met anyone particularly stimulating. I've been busy working on my own heart and mind, as well. I'll admit that it does get lonely, and everyone I know seems to be getting married, but neither of those facts seem to be a good enough reason to just hitch myself to any old Tom, Dick or Harry and be content with it. I'm not patient enough for that nonsense. I have papers to write.
