To whom it may concern,
I would just like to preface by explaining precisely why I chose to revise this particular blog. You may have picked up on the fact that it started out as a private letter which is why I did not care to edit rather intimate confessions. But upon its completion I became rather pleased with myself and my finished work. Has that ever happened to you? You get an assigned prompt and suddenly a light bulb goes off in your mind and you feel this adrenaline rush when riding your train of thought. And after you’re done you hold your pretty creation in your hands with sheer glee as you can hardly contain your excitement to turn it in for grading. Well, that’s how I felt. There was so much of me in this letter; so much raw, real and ugly emotion in all its helplessly varying stages.
But this letter is an old assignment and old assignments often lose their past adoration. I have other works, and works in the making that I am equally and perhaps more proud of. So seeing as how my zeal has past, I think it best to keep some of these opinions some-what hidden. As I don’t enjoy pointlessly insulting others and I certainly don’t like what doing so says about my character. For this particular piece of writing, I did make an exception and I’m sure that there will be other exceptions in the future. But until support and candor is cultivated within my community, I wish to coexist with my peers as peacefully and respectfully as possible.
I hope to someday be an earnest and frank artist who finds pride in her precision and not in the appeal of her creative lies. As power is not my goal in life, authenticity is. So in the situation described below, I have no problem admitting that the level and open display of anguish is rather pathetic. I’ve forgiven my silly silly self in the name of my artistic voice. But it is not my intention and I think it unfair to spite those who got caught in the cross-fire of my decisions. Guilt and innocence are only judgments of which I find deceitful to matter-of-factly pass.
Though I sincerely don’t want to hurt anybody, I won’t say that I will never cross this boundary. At the end of the day, my work is my self-perpetuation and it is where my loyalty must currently and primarily lie. Once again:
I can totally relate to feeling uprooted, I understand. It’s not easy to be far away from what you know and love, whatever that may be. It can definitely make one lose their mind. For whatever its worth, I want you to know I think your discomfort is justified.
As for the whole boy thing, if it makes you feel any better, with all the “experience” that I have, I still don’t know what the *** I’m doing. I mean, it’s not really hard for me to talk to boys, unless I perceive them as having superior magnificence in some way. But even then I remind myself “Ok, Sam, they’re people too, they have childhood pains, they have dorky obsessions, and they’re self conscious…” It’s just when I like a boy, I get a lot more awkward. I think about what to say, I contemplate what to do, I don’t want to scare him away, but I don’t want to appear week… I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think relationships are just one of those things… Seriously, everyone seems to suck at them. Or maybe I just like to believe that because it makes me feel better about myself. Regardless, I have come to this conclusion. “I am going to unswervingly stay true to who I am and how I feel and hopefully somebody [with a lot more mental stability] will have the patience to take that on.”
I guess somewhere along the line I just got sick of fucking myself over looking for satisfaction only externally. I learned pleasure cannot come from only reaching out to others, and life-fulfilling satisfaction cannot come from only pleasure. I don’t know if those life lessons pertain to your particular struggle but I’m trying to tell you that the grass isn’t any greener on this side. I hope that it helps to hear that.
Boys… man, they can really, really, make you feel good… But rrrrrrrr are they infuriating.
As for the boy who was recently in my life, he was not the one from my RED essay. He was not a boyfriend either. We were friends in college. He’s on my floor and I had/still sort of have a crush on him. He was completely involved in his work, perhaps you know the type? A total head case; a tortured soul- I find that so incredibly sexy. I know it’s not uncommon for girls to seek power personalities- and that’s exactly what he was; your run-of-the-mill emotionally-unavailable white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, male (with pretty blue eyes). I would say in terms of intellectual maturity he was way ahead of the rest of us, as for social maturity- I’d give him about eleven, maybe twelve years old. I found that endearing. So this is how the storey goes…
We hung out a lot. Ok, I basically forced myself on top of him a lot. But he didn’t seem to mind all that often… We had some fun: Shared a few laughs, a few moments, a few arguments, and a few good conversations. I felt the occasional spark but that could have just been me. I’m turned on by tension, which occurred often as I happen to embody every over-emotional, undisciplined, irrational, abrasive characteristic he detests in girls. I toyed with telling him I liked him but I decided against it for several reasons.
The first was that it took me a while to warm up to him. Like I said, his obvious judgment kind of turned me on but it also made me feel wildly insecure. And then, though it wasn’t that long ago, I still thought it was possible for a person to have it all figured out. I still toyed with the idea that everything I believed could be wrong. My emphasis on creative expression, compassion, sincerity, interpersonal connectedness, spirituality…- yeah I thought my “progressive” outlook on life could have possibly held no bases in reality. And I thought that if I were to be proven wrong he would be the one to do it- the atheist, science-obsessed, brilliant, workaholic. So I guess I was scared that I actually was inferior… But I got over it pretty fast.
As I listened to him speak I learned that his arguments were no more well-founded than my own. We were just on opposite sides of the spectrum. And the “correct” outlook probably lies somewhere between our two extremes; the ones of rigid pursuit of purpose and thoughtless pleasure over-indulgence. I never really let him know that I was considering his life-style and I seldom let him see me doubt my own. I remained cautiously true to my then state of mind because authenticity is still what’s most important to me. The hard part is discovering, defining and maintaining a healthy state of mind.
But a while back I reached this point in my life where I refused to be accepted for anything more or less than who I believe myself to be. I know that the intellectual me- in all my quirks and meaningless obsessions- is worthy of affection. That doesn’t mean I think everyone should like me. But with time and patience, I know I can connect to most people. I think most people would connect to most people if we didn’t live behind such stifling social barriers. But that is neither here nor there. The point I’m getting at has to do with why I would not “make the first move” and tell this boy that I liked him (hehehe). And the second reason was as simple as this: I wanted him to do it. I wanted the validation that he was interested in me. I decided that, no matter how much I liked him, any type of relationship wouldn’t be worth it unless it was mutually desired.
The third reason was because I didn’t want to scare him away. I said to myself “If this is going to happen, it’s going to happen right.” I didn’t want to suck his face when I had the liquid confidence. I wanted this to happen when we both felt comfortable; when I felt secure enough to be myself and when he had the confidence to hit on me. I thought I made his job pretty easy, if you only saw me, I was pretty fucking transparent.But like I said, I have no idea what the *** I’m doing. I caught myself at times when I would find him forward and I would pull back like a little girl. It was interesting how vulnerable I felt when I wasn’t taking control and how much courage I had to muster to take control with him. The challenge was exhilarating and sadly a very unnecessary distraction as I was not exactly mentally healthy at the time. My goals, my future… that stuff was hardly in the cards. I was doing very little to secure any type of role in greater society and I really had no intention of being a student.
Looking back I can’t believe how hopeless I felt. But I think through all the self destruction of senior year, I forgot to value my potential as a person. I stopped believing I was worthy of a future and hard; intellectual, time-consuming, school-work hardly seemed to carry any relevance. I wanted to go back to New York, be a yoga teacher, and continue to starve myself. That part is really pathetic and I can write about my late eating disorder for hours, but I’ll spare you. The bottom line is that it was one of the many self-destructive coping mechanisms I fashioned and one I had a particularly hard time letting go of. It was very, very hard for me to check myself out of the eating disorder mentality as I got very, very high from having power over sustenance.
I’m not so lost anymore. I believe in myself once again. I’m excited to do my school work, to test my potential, to learn, to broaden my horizons, to express myself intellectually, creatively, and all that jazz… but I really had to take some time off from school to treat my long-running existential crisis. As I realized I could no longer afford to conceal it behind habitual self-destruction. I was beginning to get there. I began to feel passionate about my artistic voice, I was beginning to crave calculus, and I started to find pride in some of my assignments. But it was too late in the game and I couldn’t bear the burden of under-achievement with the still self-esteem depreciated body I contained. When this book thing came along; the tour and the publicity. It took me back to a time when I believed that the power of my brain would deliver me to purpose. “Finding Myself in Utah,” ironically, became my life raft once again. RED was my excuse to ditch this ship wreck, and I milked it for everything it was worth. I think leaving was so good for me you have no idea.
“And this is the simple truth- that to live is to feel oneself lost- he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked.”-José Ortega y Gasset
Before I officially made my decision to embark on new recovery, I was still trying unsuccessfully to get my *** together. I wanted to talk about it but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I just, I didn’t think he’d get it. Or I didn’t think he’d want to hear me go on and on about why I’m not mentally stable enough for college. That’s the kind of bullshit I know he can’t stand. G-d, thinking about it now- my seventeen and two thirds years old (As I am now two weeks from my 18th birthday) mentality feels light years away. But I was in funk- the semester had passed the half way mark and my hope for grade redemption was fading… I was irritable, depressed, and I had a slew of reasons to feel like an intellectual failure (This boy was generous enough to name a few in his ritual art school bashings. I was never offended by them though; I always found the fact that I was being mocked for not being a complete nerd so laughably ironic). I didn’t feel like I could talk to him about these feelings because I didn’t think he’d care. I feared his reaction would somehow lead me to the inconvenient truth- that I put this on myself. When I realized I was letting my interest in him distract me from the mess I had to clean up, I only further resented myself. This whole thing- every immature means I used to deny my responsibilities in life as I refused to know it- just further took a toll on my self-worth.
This brings me to my last reason for not “making a move.” At a certain point I didn’t think I could handle a relationship with him and I didn’t think I could handle the rejection if he didn’t want one. It was one of those, O-so-sucky, lose- lose situations. In fact, passing up the chance to revel in the RED fruits of my labor, to get 3 c’s and watch my self- esteem issues manifest themselves, was beginning to look like a very unwise decision. It was clear to me that I needed a little recovery time and going on this book tour seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. I needed to rebuild some self-respect, I needed to rediscover value in achieving, I needed to better prepare myself for the self- sustainment involved in being a college student. And the truth is. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work to find that. Yes, there is room for improvement. No, I am not perfect. But I have confidence, I believe in myself, I like myself, and I’m proud of myself. And that is what I need for now to march on like a soldier. Not to say the journey is over. I know now that all this self-acceptance stuff only exists in pursuit. Believe me, I’ve learned the hard way that to care about oneself, one must care for themselves and remind themselves encouragingly each day as to why. It’s not easy, but I believe now that it is 100 percent worth it. Life’s too short, you know?
But back to the original topic of this extremely tangential letter- the boy. Ahh, yes. I told him I was leaving and at first he seemed totally supportive. He really heard me out when I explained my logic. I knew it was in his nature to view my surrender as week or at least I had prepared myself for that reaction- but he was really sweet. Awwwwww. And just like that, my circumstances had gone from rather grim to really hopeful……Well I guess you can’t win’ em all.
Sometime later in the week, days before I was scheduled to leave. One of our mutual friends expressed concern that I was leaving because of him. How the conversation went exactly, I have no fucking clue. All I know is that he, being the genius that he is, figured out that I had feelings for him- all by himself. And when he asked this mutual friend, she confirmed and expressed concern that he was the reason I was taking my little sabbatical. And being the genius that he is- he believed that to be true.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. I already knew he didn’t think very highly of the rational of girls. But what still leaves me dumbfounded was that he reacted with anger. Upon retrospection (I’m such a fan of big words these days) I realized he was very mean to me that night. But don’t worry, I fought back. I got drunk and acted like a ***. I am very good at getting drunk and acting like a ***. So we had a fiery debate that night- what was is about again?- O yeah; affirmative action. I guess at that point he knew that the action I was trying to promote was not limited to just the affirmative… Never the less the damage was done. The tension could not be resolved that night as I was still in the dark about its true origins.
This storey is unnecessarily lengthy and I haven’t even gotten to the letters. But don’t worry- this is precisely where they come in. I found out why he was being a meany and I felt like ***. How the *** was I supposed to hold his attention long enough for me to explain all this to him? I couldn’t even hold his attention when he wasn’t mad at me. And how the *** was I supposed to feel comfortable doing so when I could hardly open up to him at all? It was so awkward. Not only did I have face up to the boy I liked, but I had to face up to the boy I liked who thought I was mentally deranged and obsessed with him. “O ***.” How am I going to charm my way out of this one?
Alright, to be fair, I was too attached. I did think about him a lot, and I did value his opinion too much. I’m not sure that I’m so far from the level of mental-disturbia that he was passively accusing me of. But in my defense- I know I’m crazy and I’m pretty weary of it. After careful self-assessment, I determined that my attraction to him extended beyond my own lust for self-indulgence. But really, who knows?
Anyway- time goes by- I’m still in the dark- it’s the day before I’m leaving and I’m hurt. I like him, I told him, and he won’t help ease the angst. I can’t exactly pin point why I was so hurt then because I don’t feel that way now. But I guess I took it all very personally- I started toying with ideas like “if only I was a c-cup, he would work this out with me.” I felt very weak and very vulnerable, so I did what I always do to make sense of situations; I wrote. I wrote hoping I could intellectually regain my dignity and strength.
The letters I wrote were at best, somewhat reasonable. But the majority were provocative and distastefully condescending. Tell me, what was I thinking? I mean, it doesn’t surprise me that I wrote them. It surprises me that I had the intention of sending them thinking they would negate his belief that I was insane. I have very backwards logic, don’t you think? Thank g-d I had enough sense at the time to with-hold at least some of my self-expression and therefore maintain the little dignity I had left.
I wrote this one letter that nearly left me in tears- that’s how pathetic I am. I don’t know. I know it’s stupid and completely ridiculous of me to believe I understand and truly care about a boy I’ve known for all of 3 months. But I analyze and empathize with people- always- I do it unconsciously sometimes. Part of it is a reflex; it’s how I protect myself from feeling inferior. I remind myself that everyone’s human and has unique and intricate character lies. But part of it is also real empathy I feel. I know how crazy and painful it can be sometimes to exist at all. I often want to alleviate that pain both out of compassion and because connecting on that deep human level seems to alleviate my own. But I can’t always do that for people- especially him as I have come to understand people like him.
Though I do find those letters bizarrely eloquent and amusing, I have decided against leaving them up on my blog. I’m glad I made that decision. It’s not fair to him to overwhelm him with my very intimate inner-quarrels. And it’s not fair to me to publicly (or privately if I can help it) submit so much power to one person.
I did see him when I went back to school for that week (he is after all on my floor). We shared one accidental and uncomfortable encounter and as much as I thought I was passed it all- I missed him again. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t hurt- I just missed hanging out with him. I wanted to try and reconcile but I knew better. As sweet and special as I know he is deep down, our pursuits and perceptions are just too different. I can’t single handedly try to make a friendship/ relationship/ camaraderie/ whatever; work. Especially with someone who has such different ideas of what those things entail. (That’s a sugar coated way of saying he mostly-likely doesn’t want one and if he did, I most- likely wouldn’t find it satisfactory) So what I did instead was realize that it could never-ever work and that it is more his loss than mine. Because the truth of the matter is that I may be a little crazier than most- but that part [thank G-d] is compensated by a relatively hot body and pretty keen insight. I’m a good person, for the most part, and I’m in pursuit of the whole glorious spectrum of life-fulfillment. Someday someone with comparable desires will spare their precious time long enough to appreciate that.
Until then, I am content to stand as “that crazy *** who was once my friend” in his mind. The reason being, for the most part, because I have no other choice. I walk away with only mild bruising to my ego; as I think it will always sting a little that he could turn his back on me so easily. I refuse to pretend that I don’t still care. I refuse to pretend that I’m not grateful for the unique perspective that he shared with me. He inspired me to reevaluate my own cosmic significance in his sacrificial commitment to higher purpose. He’s a good person too. We all are, in some ways. And we all fall victim to the defense mechanisms we fashion. But for me, I refuse to walk through life in ignorance of my inner child. After all it was her infantile perceptions that defined significance for the first time.
So as I accept responsibility to my society and self and move toward unearthing my potential. I will not forget the little girl who urges me to play, to pick flowers, to pet kitties, to smile, to laugh, and to grow. She can’t help but feel an abundance of compassion, as she used to kiss every single one of her teddies goodnight hoping to foster equality in her imaginary community. She can’t help but believe that there is a G-d as she was once sure her own personal thoughts were provoked by him. And ever since she could remember she believed that she was special- she believed that her little girly self was capable and worthy of greatness. I trust her instincts. And I know now that she is the origin for which too look in pursuit of self perpetuation. Her wants are my emotional needs and she had zero tolerance for meanies.