On Redefining Myself

Or, "right now I'm doing things for ME... and that's okay".

Coming out of a depressive spiral is the weirdest thing. I've already posted a lot about that, but I'm not sure how to write about the last month or so because I'm not sure how it happened. There was no great reason for the fact that one morning I woke up and didn't feel the familiar crushing weight of the last eight years. It just... happened, and while that's obviously one of the best things that's ever happened to me, it does present a few problems. Like, who exactly am I now and how do I go about becoming the woman I want to be??

I guess it doesn't help that I was an awkward thirteen-year-old when the spiral started. I hadn't had time to figure out who I was before the dark clouds took my life. And now here I am, twenty-one and totally unsure of my identity and I hate being unsure of things. I like knowing where I stand in situations. It's why attraction is a weird concept for me (and we'll get to that later in this post, unfortunately that's decided to be a problem for me again) and why being around volatile people is bad for me. And why I'm now in this very weird place that, for the life of me, I cannot find any solutions to.

Thing is, I know who I want to be someday. That's progress. I have an end goal... which, because a lot of it rests on things I have absolutely no control over, will probably take years to happen. It's the waiting that kills me, the disaster of not knowing who I need to be in the meantime. If things play in my favor, I'm pretty sure of who I'll need to be in five years. Right now, on the other hand?? Not a clue.

There are good things about this place I'm in, though. One of the best ones is that at this point in my life, my great priority is myself. In the future, when I find my Person and we (hopefully) have tiny humans, that won't be an option. From what little experience I've had, the way I love is very sacrificial, and I will drop everything when given reason enough. I don't think my darling is going to know what hit them, honestly. So maybe it's good that I have this blank time, because I can do silly things for me and it's okay. I can be interested in fashion and makeup and spend a little too much money on those things now and it's okay. I'm doing it for me, because while my confidence is definitely internal, I want to be pretty. I want to be noticed and remembered. And right now, it's okay.

If anything, the fashion thing is freeing for me. I've never had any huge insecurities about my body - a miracle considering that one of the soundtracks of my teenage years was my mother's epic series of well-intentioned but doomed-from-the-start "diets" - but I definitely did not think of myself as attractive until recently. Call it a side-effect of growing up around a lot of traditionally pretty blonde chicks (and living with one, gah). I have a perfect hourglass shape and that did not register with me at all until like six months ago. Add in the fact that I'm normally very low-maintenance and... really, the fact that I'm consciously trying to develop a Look is a bit surprising. But it's happening, slowly, and I'm liking the results. After some brainstorming with one of my friends, who is very supportive of this project, I decided on "postapoc warrior fairy princess" as what I'm aiming for. It's a bit weird on paper; in reality, it's a lot of layers and neutral // earth colors and pretty basic pieces. More importantly, it reflects who I'm trying to be. I'm sick of invisibility. I want to be remembered, and this is a step forward.

I mentioned attraction a little earlier as part of this current whatever-this-is, and... yeah, that kinda happened. I'm fluttery for about the first time in a year, and without saying too much (because this hit three days ago and I am panicking and also the other person barely knows I exist soooo), it's very different from the other times I've fluttered. I don't know this one all that well - we've known each other in passing for years, as people do in small communities and smaller social circles, but I am 95% sure we've never actually talked - but I have hope. This one, from what little I know about them, is everything my little heart has ever longed for. And, more importantly at the moment, this one is getting handled differently. In the past, I've been too assertive with my affections - which was just as well, got the heartbreaks over with that much quicker, but it's still something that apparently intimidates most guys. This time, I'm trying not to go there. Getting on radar is one thing, and a few initiations are possible, but I have no expectations and no plans. There's definitely the part of my brain that kicks in at times like this and says that guys like that never notice girls like me, but exceptions happen. Human beings don't always follow the usual script. A girl can hope, and I am letting myself have this too because even if nothing comes of it, even if I am invisible once again, I am letting my heart run where it will and following my instincts where they lead me. And it's okay.

Song of the day - "Shine", Vienna Teng.

On Wanting Counterbalance

Or, "I talk a lot about relationships for someone who's never actually been in one".

One of the few good things about being single, if there even are any good things, is that it gives one a lot of time to contemplate things. That's part of why this blog happened in the first place (that and the fact that my mother was starting to get sick of listening to these rants). And one of the things I've realized more and more is that I know exactly what I need in an eventual endgame Person. Only problem is, it's not something that'll be easy to find.

Another great thing about not having my Person yet is it gives me too much time to overanalyze media. More specifically, what I'm drawn to and why. One of the things I've spent time on over about the last year is the concept of parallel girls - fictional ladies I see myself in all too well. And one of the interesting facets of that is that I seem to ship those ladies with a very specific type.

(Interlude for those of you who don't play on the fandom side of the internet: shipping = as the name suggests, liking the romantic relationship between two characters. Said characters don't have to actually have that sort of relationship in the source material, but most of the ships that have contributed to the material that follows are canon, which means that they do.)

Really, I go for this sort of thing regardless of whether or not the lady is actually a parallel girl for me. Counterbalance ships - pairings where the two characters balance each other out almost perfectly - have been my great weakness ever since I first got involved in fandoms when I was a little babybug. They're so interesting. And over the last few months, I've realized and accepted that the reason I find that dynamic so appealing in fiction is because it's what I'm aiming for in real life. And finally, finally, I am accepting that.

This, I realize now that I'm not trying to avert it, is why online dating does not work for me. Online dating, from my on-and-off experiences with it, is about matching people who have a lot in common. For me, this is a problem. I don't want to be with someone who's just like me. If anything, I want someone wildly different. I want someone who I will never fully understand and who I will always be fascinated by. And I want them to see the same in me.

In some ways, I'm pretty sure that's weird. In some ways, I'm probably making my own journey harder. But honestly, I'm not sure I care.

I want the sort of love that I idealize, quiet and passionate and sacrificial. I am at peace with the idea of often needing to reassure my Person that they are enough for me, because they will be even on the days they don't see it. I'm not expecting things to be easy - I know myself, I know that's not going to happen. But still I want, and still I wait.

Song of the day - "Everything Has Changed (featuring Ed Sheeran)", Taylor Swift.

On Being Alone & Hating It

Or, "it's the middle of December and hormones are kicking my tail and is it REALLY too much to just want someone to kiss me??".

The older I get, the more I realize that being single sucks. This might not actually be age so much as the fact that I live with a sixteen-year-old who has the body of a supermodel and knows it and is on Victim #4, but still. Even without the walking reminder of what I'm not, the fact still remains that this is the bad time of year for women like me. From now until Valentine's Day - two full months of suck - we hopelessly single twentysomethings are in hell, and this year it stings more than ever.

I guess it's one thing if you're consciously choosing not to date anyone - I have a friend who's in that category, and given her tendency to date idiots, I'm fine with her staying there for a while. And it's another thing if you're on the asexual spectrum - again, I have friends there, and this is the time of year when I get jealous of them because at least they have reasons for their status. I... don't. I am reasonably attractive and I have a decent personality and comparatively low standards. And yet... nothing.

I guess part of the problem is that I have no real ways of meeting people. Online dating did not work out for me (I am one of those rare mostly-straight girls who's immune to even the weird people, let alone anyone decent). What few friends I have do not have cute older brothers or extended family members for me to pounce on. Considering that I'm currently drifting, church isn't a concrete option, and part of the reason I left the Vortex is because there was no chance I would ever meet someone there who might even see me with kindness, let alone romantic love. What few hobbies I have do not require human interaction. I really don't leave my house except for work (no chance in hell) and little errands (to places almost exclusively frequented and worked by middle-aged women). At this point, if a decent-looking functional unattached twentysomething guy turns up in my life, I'm almost sure they will be my Person because it'd be that much of a shock if it happened!!

This gets even more sucky if you consider that I thought I'd be married by now. I really did, and if I remember correctly, so did a lot of other people. I was very against the idea in high school (mostly because little baby me hated everything), and openly stating that I was never going to get married was a nice way to tick off various Bubble types. Their most common response? Just. Wait. As far as everyone was concerned, I would be the first girl of my era to get married simply because of how unlikely it was. And, on some level, I believed them. If I were to get married at 19, it would be the perfect way to stick it to so many people.

Obviously, that did not happen.

Three girls of my era got married within the last year. One of the two who remain single is drowning alive in grad school, and the other is too busy with work and her own quiet rebellion to even think about getting fluttery for someone. I... do not have such an excuse for my status.

I could be good for someone. I'm affectionate. Guys like that, right? I haven't Done Things - my idealistic goal of at least getting kissed by the time I turned 21 has obviously not happened - but I want to. I can be domestic -- I want to be, dunno if I'd be any good at it but I learn things quickly. I'm pretty enough (not compared to some people, but I've accepted my body as it is and there's more good than bad there). And, most importantly, I'm realistic.

I'm not asking for a fairytale. That sort of thing doesn't happen to women like me, and I've accepted it. I just want someone who sees me as I am, flaws and beauty entwined, and still wants to be with me. I don't want to be idealized. I just want to be held, told I matter, and kissed a lot. And if a life develops out of that... great. But I'm not asking for much here. I know being with someone won't fix me. I don't think I need to be fixed. I just need to be loved and wanted. And oh, yeah, physical stuff would be really nice too. I'm a hormonal disaster and, because my physical and emotional wirings are so interconnected, DIY'ing it doesn't solve a damn thing.

Please, future Person, come find me. I am a risk worth taking.

Song of the day - "This Love", Taylor Swift (yes, still, I have clearly not cried enough over this song today).

On First Love

Or, "if I'm gonna set everything on fire, I might as well reveal the series of events that first pushed me in that direction".

December is one of those months for me. Y'know, that sacred time of year when absolutely nothing goes right no matter what I do, when all hell breaks loose on a regular basis and I have no control over any of it. This pattern was first established during the two years in which the holiday season was clouded by death (thankfully my birthmum's funeral wasn't until January and all of that was handled very well; my aunt, a year later... not so much). But the event that sealed December as my yearly month of horrors happened when I was seventeen. I fell in love for the first time, and four years later, I'm still not totally over it. Every year around this time, I forget that the person I generally refer to as the Vulcan isn't just a prick, he's a whole darn cactus of issues. Even though I still consciously know that. Well, hopefully writing out that story - properly, in a place and form that people who were on the fringes and can guess who he was will be able to see - will prevent that from happening this year. Fingers crossed.

I'd actually met him a year earlier than that, under interesting circumstances. I did speech and debate competitions in high school - no, scratch that, I did speech comp exclusively except for one practice tournament my junior year when my friend's brother had a scheduling conflict and she needed a debate partner and I am easily talked into things. Enter the Vulcan (it would be years before he got this codename, but let's use it from the beginning here for consistency). Our first round was against him and one of the little mouse-boys that were half of our region. Mouse-boy didn't matter, didn't do much, I can't even remember who he was anymore. The Vulcan, on the other hand... sixteen-year-old me took one look at him and decided he was going to die. I didn't even know his name at that point and I wanted to end him. The closest I got was nearly hitting him several hours later, completely by accident because badly designed hallways and I talk with my hands and he just happened to be walking by. (He thought it was intentional and spent the entire weekend wondering what he'd done to annoy me. Answer - he existed. That was enough.)

A year passed. If anything, I became a worse person over said year. But then, first tournament of senior year, I saw him again and I woke up. He was nice to me, which in hindsight was exactly how this became a problem. In general, guys were not nice to me at that point in my life - most of 'em were either terrified or just flat ignored me. This one, for some reason that I still do not understand four years later, did neither of those things. He offered advice on how to do a content warning on one of my pieces (I completely ignored this and continued to perform said piece without telling anyone in advance that it ended with me miming self-harm), he looked at me like I existed and was valid, and... I was utterly done for by the time I added him on FB two days later.

At this point, I would not have described myself as a romantic. Oh, fictional love stories were the best thing ever and I'd already done quite a bit of fluffy fanfic, but real life was a different beastie. I was pretty sure I'd never seen a functional relationship. I was even more sure that marriage and children were the exact opposite of what I wanted. (Quiet rebellion against the Bubble, in hindsight, but also where I was as a person.) I had not consciously crushed on anyone before, and my one attempt at flirting with someone had ended in me learning exactly how far and fast I could run in heels because I'd lost all ability to speak. I was not fated to fall in love. But then I did, and it remains the singular most questionable decision of my little life.

My knowledge of how attraction worked verged on the nonexistent. My mother, who I would later learn had a range of experiences to back up this belief, gave me the "girls and boys can never be just friends" and "boys will only ever take advantage of you" speeches and that was about it. I'd watched the scenario play out a year previously, when one of my least favorite people in the world had a relationship with another friend's brother, ended it suddenly and dramatically, and caused the poor darling to have what we are all still pretty sure was a minor emotional breakdown. So, being the misinformed innocent that I was, I believed that the reason the Vulcan was playing nice with me was because he wanted me. Which was admittedly confusing because he had status within our mutual circle and I didn't, but hey, sexual attraction is weird right?? It was a totally plausible explanation, and one that impacted the development of that friendship.

I fell for him. To this day, I don't know why other than that he saw me, not the little rebel girl or someone who needed to be fixed but the valid-albeit-lost young woman I was blossoming into. I don't understand that either. He had no reason to be nice to me, but he was. How was I not supposed to develop my very first fluffy feelings?

I waited and waited for months for him to say something. He had to be into me, right? There was no other reason someone would put up with all of the crazy I flung at him, and oh was there ever a lot of that -- I have a tendency to reveal way too much (this whole blog is an example of that) and I made sure that boy knew exactly what he was getting into. It didn't affect him. I would later learn this was because he has the emotional comprehension abilities of a gerbil, but at the time I thought it was cute. But on the other hand, he didn't say anything. We were both technically old enough for feelings to blossom. He lived roughly half an hour from me. So... what was the problem?

Answer - he didn't see me that way. He never had. I found that out when I finally told him where my heart was almost a year into this mess. He shot me down in the most emotionless logical fashion possible (which is where his nickname originates, if anyone hasn't figured it out). I, in turn, went into a depressive spiral, listened to too much Adele, went even deeper into the spiral, and eventually hit a point of self-destruction that even my mother couldn't ignore. I was eighteen. No one had ever taught me how to deal with this, because good Bubble girls were only ever supposed to love once. This wasn't supposed to happen. He'd been my Person, I'd been so sure of it, but... nope, I never even had a chance.

There's more to the story, of course. There were a lot of little moments that year - my second accidental near-death experience, for one - and a few things that happened after. I tried to be friends with him again, still fluttered for him, but again I was shot down - that time the day before Valentine's Day (see what I said about emotional comprehension abilities of a gerbil?) - because he had a girlfriend. (Apparently she broke his heart two months later. By that point, I couldn't have cared less.) I realised that I could, in fact, do a lot better than the golden boy who prolly just put up with me because I was everything the girls of our world were not supposed to be. And once that realisation hit, I became softer, less ambitious, less terrifying. Less like the person he thought I was and more like the person I wanted to be. For the most part, I've moved on.

But I still wonder. What if things had been different? What if he'd known the chance he had and taken it? Where might we be if my feelings had been reciprocated? I'll never know. It's been years since I've felt anything other than frustration (and not the fun kind either) towards him. We talk about every six months, which is to say that he remembers I exists and messages me and asks what I'm doing and I pretend I care. It normally happens right after I've gotten home from a wedding, though he has no way of knowing that. I passive-aggressively messaged him several bitey Taylor Swift songs about this time two years ago; he didn't react. That chapter's over. But there's still a little corner of my heart consumed by the first time I wanted someone, and sometimes that want rears its ugly head.

So, this is me saying that I am not the girl you thought I was. I am not ambitious and terrifying; I have no plans to change the world, and I'm starting to get bored with the thought of just burning it all down. I can still run in scary heels, but otherwise I am so different from who I was four years ago. I'm not happy yet, but I'm a damn lot closer than I was then. I do things for me now. I am working towards a quiet life, and someday, hopefully any day now, I will meet someone who will love me like you never could. Someday, I will look back and it won't hurt to think of you. Someday, I will be whole.

(Oh, and you mentally ruined a whole flock of fictional characters and three very good albums for me, and I'm not over it. That, I am not moving on from.)

But thank you, you hopeless idiot, for starting me on this journey. If you hadn't been such a prick, I wouldn't know that the things inside my head are bad and need to be dealt with. If you hadn't broken me without even knowing, I would still think that boys like you are the best I can do. They're not. I can do so much better and someday I will. Just watch me.

Song of the day - "Wildest Dreams", Taylor Swift.