Mirrors
File under – Girl… You shouldda stayed your ass in bed today; back here I had thoughts about how my life had turned out. One drifts in and out of these thoughts sometimes when we take a step back and look at the things around us. I’ve developed a belief about what I read on the internet, and for all practical purposes what I’m about to say could apply to me as well - I guess you’ll just have to trust your own instincts, or maybe not. Maybe it really doesn’t matter what you choose to believe or not to believe about me or my life. Maybe all this really is in the end is entertainment for the masses. But I’ve come to believe that most of what I read isn’t true, or can’t possibly be true, or shouldn’t be true – that no one should ever live a life like what I’m reading about.
And then I remember what a cold and cruel place the world can be and I get sad. Not so much sad for myself, just sad about the human condition in general.
It started this morning with an email, and then one from someone else, and then a phone call or two to my husband, some more emails to a couple of different people and soon a picture began to form – a picture of a lie hidden within a secret wrapped within something else, and I wasn’t, and still am not sure what that something else is either — But it’s ugly — It’s the very worst of what we’re capable of and it is humanity at it’s frailest and weakest point – yet we all watch wide eyed at the spectacle and we sit around our kitchens and living rooms or our computers in the office and we vicariously bathe ourselves in such naked narcissism as the fifteen seconds of someone else’s infamy ticks by and we wonder… am I missing something? Has life passed me by? Would I trade this… for that?
Then I read another post on another blog I follow where the author questioned the vagaries of her different selves – this I could understand, tho I had no real answers to the questions offered; nothing which would make much sense anyway.
The intellectual in me wraps all of these things with names like ‘ideas’ and ‘beliefs’ and logically understands these things and is capable of rationalizing each and every one of them – but the other part of me, the part which feels – that part struggles with all of this, and that part is sometimes afraid – of what she sees, of what she knows. All of it. And I’m not sure what to do about that. Tho one thing is certain - we often romanticize what we don’t understand… or have never experienced for ourselves. And sometimes… maybe more often than developing romantic notions about our own unknown… we ridicule it instead. It’s safer that way. Much safer than admitting that maybe you aren’t all that you’d hoped you would be.
A while ago – maybe a little more than a year ago now – one of the rumors which was being whispered around cyberia about me, within my own social circle no less, was that how could anything I wrote possibly be true because I never wrote about the bad stuff – meaning that how could someone write about being happy and having a good life or even a good sex life if they also didn’t write about every other speck of dirt which goes along with being in a marriage or any other relationship.
I suppose the easiest answer to that question is that my husband doesn’t beat me, he isn’t fucking the girl in his office and that I got lucky – but my life is far from perfect; tho I suppose it’s pretty typical when you get right down to it. I live in suburbia, I have “enough”, I’m educated and am employed and I don’t have a secret internet lover, nor do I need one, and on most days I’m pretty satisfied with the cards life has dealt me. Tho getting to where I am now was hardly easy either - I just have made the decision that that period of my life isn’t where I want to focus my energy simply because it’s much too painful to examine the past and it isn’t usually an area which I feel the need to explore.
I used to laugh at these assumptions and notions about me and dismissed the gossips as simply jealous or catty. Now today I understand why those whispers were made in the first place - how could they understand something that they don’t have? And I think, all things being equal, that if I kept the kinds of secrets and lived the sort of double or even triple lives which they do? I’d hate my boring normal ass too.
Not too long ago I wrote my six word memoir here – and my memoir was:
“A little girl and her crayons”
Suddenly today I feel very small, very much like that little girl, but still very lucky.
Innocence is something to treasure – not something to carelessly cast away.
I think it is something everyone needs!
“how could anything I wrote possibly be true because I never wrote about the bad stuff”
Okay Nina,
This one has hit too close to home! That is the only real crap that I have heard about our blog. For me I have said to the masses that I share what I want to & what I feel to “ME” is worth sharing, Daddy & I disagree just like any body else but those times are few & far between, and we don’t dwell on the negative so when it’s over it’s over! Why continue to give life to it by writing about it, telling people (that it doesn’t make or break one way or the other) about it & stir it back up when for us it’s a dead issue? So if people think I’m not telling the truth because I don’t give them a blow by blow account of every lil tiff daddy & I have so be it! My question is Who do they think they are that they feel entitled to such information? Our families don’t even know our business so why the hell would I go & pour it all out for a bunch of nameless faceless strangers? They don’t pay not a single bill in my house! & We know we are Blessed, Fortunte, Lucky, whatever you want to call it to have each other & the life we have built, fought for & worked for, I’m thankful for every bit of it! Just because I don’t report everytime I whipe my ass that doesn’t mean that I don’t use the bathroom! “Misery Loves Company” & that’s just not the kind of company I care to keep! People read two paragraphs of your life that deosn’t even equal 5 minutes in real time & think the know something about you! Okay I’m done!
Sorry for the ramble,
Keep Your Head Up!
Huggs, Love, & Smooches
Neaya