Me and My Bundle

You know when your double standards come back and bite you in the ass? I wrote this in an attempt to make some sense out of what seems endlessly confusing, but I still have no answers.

November 2006

I hate technology. It frazzles me. I read once that people being interrupted by emails and phone calls while taking an IQ test do worse than people who are stoned while taking it. That pretty much explains my constant state of distraction and restlessness. Even my sentences have become shorter. See?

I am suddenly a bundle of contradictions. Or maybe I’ve always been this complicated. I used to think that high school drama, with all its apparent life-ending crises and time-standing-still, would end with high school. But somehow it hasn’t. Is that my fault or just the way my life has ended up?

I have no idea which direction I should be walking, and yet I am somehow determined to get there. I can’t tell if it’s the place I’m living, which everyone seems to agree is not for me, or if I am actually destined to never feel settled. Left chasing the idea of home but never being satisfied with what is in front of and comforting to me.

My greatest fear is being excluded, but I often crave silence. It doesn’t make sense that I should have to choose between the two. There’s got to be some way for me to know exactly how everyone feels about me at all times and also feel safe being by myself. Maybe it’s called trust. I’m still hoping people will prove themselves to me in some absolute way…but they can’t do that if they know nothing they do will prove anything to me. Or that what I’m really doing is expecting them to fuck up and break my trust.

I don’t know how to, once and for all, drop my walls. I need to stop setting myself up for failure. I want to escape. Cut ties. I used to have friends I had no baggage with. Now all my relationships are complicated and intertwined. And I swear it’s not my fault. I stayed silent for years because I never wanted to be in the middle of anything. It sucks that when I finally began speaking my mind, it inevitably involved becoming emotionally involved.

When do relationships stop being productive? When do you stop learning from them? When do roles suddenly become so stagnant that they feel less like choices and natures and more like traps and assumptions? Is this why people get divorced? Move? Get pregnant? To literally change who they are in the world?

I can’t blame any of this on my age anymore. Or maybe I can, but only partly. At a certain point, that is just an excuse. And scrutiny of the choices you’re making and situation you are actually in is required. Everyone needs to jump off the “Graduation Funk” bandwagon. That’s a huge cop out.

Someone tried to convince me once that being an old cat lady was only seen as sad and pathetic because we are a society bent on socialization and not because it’s actually a particularly unattractive way to live, but there is very little denying that in a city that never sleeps, coming home after work and watching hours of reality TV isn’t much to jump up and down about. Especially since I’m actually not an old lady. Although I do have more gray hairs and wrinkles than I care to acknowledge.

I bounce between just rolling and feeling so restless my legs actually itch. I can’t imagine living this life for another 2 years. And I also can’t really fathom how overwhelmed I would be if I had to move again so soon. That seems to be the Catch-22 of my decision-making lately. Either way, neither choice seems quite right. Can’t someone else make the decisions for me? Then I can blame him when my life is still unsatisfactory.

Why is it always so much work? Or maybe that’s just me. I just need to figure out what I’m looking for.

I hope I know it when I see it…Otherwise, all of this will remain just speculation.

Unfinished.