Obligatory Birthday Post
Midnight now, so I suppose I am officially one year older. *looks at her hands* Wow, they look different.
Okay, so technically that's because I spent a good hour with my punching bag. There's nothing like jazz and a punching bag to make you feel both rhythmic and deadly. *g*
On Birthdays, and River Accidents
I had the hardest time coming up with things for people to give me this year. At first I thought I was just lazy, then too busy, then just guilty about asking my busy friends and family to give me things. Finally, it dawned on me:
I'm content.
Wild, eh?
It's no wonder that this took me so long to figure out, actually. I've spent my life running from crisis to crisis, always in motion because if I stopped, if I ever stopped reading/writing/helping/singing/coding, if I was ever alone with myself... I felt like I would shatter. So I read four books a day, so I wrote fanfiction, so I plunged happily into the damaged lives of a hundred hurting friends and held them while they put themselves back together. For so long, I was just a ball of pain and need, wanting everything because I thought I had nothing in myself.
And now? Well, somehow, without my realizing it, pain and anxiety has become the occasional shrill note, not the back beat. So perhaps the best epitath for this year is what I told my friends when we had paused in our walk to sit on a rock overlooking the river. We were all discussing what we hoped for our futures, and I was searching inside myself for that sourness, that taint that comes with any choice because for me, all any choice has ever been is a negation of other possibilities. Choosing is unbearable, because failure is inevitable.
"I could come and paint this river every day for the rest of my life," I said, "and be a waitress or work at Walmart, and it would be all right."
"What?" Jess said.
"It's inside me now, I think." I said, totally confusing them as well as myself. I tried to explain, "I can eat at least some of the foods I enjoy without going into shock, everything in the world is beautiful, I barely ever have inexplicable crying fits anymore, and I smile at myself when I catch my eye in reflective surfaces. I think this is being happy. I think I'm happy."
"Wait," Jess said. "What do you mean you barely ever have crying fits?"
It took ten minutes for us to sort that one out, and slightly less time for Heather to fall into the river. That was a good day. Nearly all of my days are good days now, regardless of what happens.
So, to quote Tom Lehrer, that was the year that was. Happy in spite of myself.
I wonder what this year will be? *g*
And, because I hate to make a post without any fandom content whatever, a picture of Dark Harry and Draco, his Red Right Hand, as they might appear in one of the darkest of the possible 'good' futures:
I blame addictedkitten for this, and thank her for it.
Okay, so technically that's because I spent a good hour with my punching bag. There's nothing like jazz and a punching bag to make you feel both rhythmic and deadly. *g*
On Birthdays, and River Accidents
I had the hardest time coming up with things for people to give me this year. At first I thought I was just lazy, then too busy, then just guilty about asking my busy friends and family to give me things. Finally, it dawned on me:
I'm content.
Wild, eh?
It's no wonder that this took me so long to figure out, actually. I've spent my life running from crisis to crisis, always in motion because if I stopped, if I ever stopped reading/writing/helping/singing/coding, if I was ever alone with myself... I felt like I would shatter. So I read four books a day, so I wrote fanfiction, so I plunged happily into the damaged lives of a hundred hurting friends and held them while they put themselves back together. For so long, I was just a ball of pain and need, wanting everything because I thought I had nothing in myself.
And now? Well, somehow, without my realizing it, pain and anxiety has become the occasional shrill note, not the back beat. So perhaps the best epitath for this year is what I told my friends when we had paused in our walk to sit on a rock overlooking the river. We were all discussing what we hoped for our futures, and I was searching inside myself for that sourness, that taint that comes with any choice because for me, all any choice has ever been is a negation of other possibilities. Choosing is unbearable, because failure is inevitable.
"I could come and paint this river every day for the rest of my life," I said, "and be a waitress or work at Walmart, and it would be all right."
"What?" Jess said.
"It's inside me now, I think." I said, totally confusing them as well as myself. I tried to explain, "I can eat at least some of the foods I enjoy without going into shock, everything in the world is beautiful, I barely ever have inexplicable crying fits anymore, and I smile at myself when I catch my eye in reflective surfaces. I think this is being happy. I think I'm happy."
"Wait," Jess said. "What do you mean you barely ever have crying fits?"
It took ten minutes for us to sort that one out, and slightly less time for Heather to fall into the river. That was a good day. Nearly all of my days are good days now, regardless of what happens.
So, to quote Tom Lehrer, that was the year that was. Happy in spite of myself.
I wonder what this year will be? *g*
And, because I hate to make a post without any fandom content whatever, a picture of Dark Harry and Draco, his Red Right Hand, as they might appear in one of the darkest of the possible 'good' futures:
I blame addictedkitten for this, and thank her for it.