This Sharp Dichotomy

I feel like you get here and everyone’s lives and pasts are so intertwined, so tied up together, that you start to feel like this is it, that this is the whole world. And you end up believing that you have to be whoever everyone else tells you to be, have to fit into whatever stupid role they shove you into, and we forget that it’s not true. There are other places, this isn’t it.

That’s what I said last night, after me and Meg spend the evening hanging out together – wandering the mall buying ourselves new iPods (hers black, mine red), taking pictures, and generally just being happy in a way that neither of us has been in a really long time. On the way back into town we’ve been talking about friends and boys and life and the histories we have with people.

And she helps me realize something, probably without even knowing.

I don’t know what the exact words were that suddenly made me realize this, what she said that made something click in my brain (seriously, so many things clicked last night it’s unreal), but I suddenly saw a sharp contrast between who I am now and who I was when I came here.

When I came here I was scared. I was lost, I was confused, and I was so unsure of myself.

Now I’m strong. I’m not scared anymore, I can find my way, my confusion is minimal. And I’m definitely sure of myself.

The girl I was then would have settled for anything. She did not have the strength of spirit to stand up for herself, and she had no idea that she was better than some things or people or situations. It makes me so sad now to know that she was me. Or I was her. Or something like that.

The words Elphaba sings in Defying Gravity (haha, Wicked, I love it!) tells the dichotomy I see in better words than I could ever write:

Something has changed within me,
something is not the same.
I’m through with playing by
the rules of someone else’s game.
Too late for second-guessing,
too late to go back to sleep.
It’s time to trust my instincts,
close my eyes,
and leap…

It effects everything, this shift in myself. It changes how I see myself, how I see others, and where I see myself as being. I no longer feel like I have to settle for whatever comes my way, or that I have to fit into the role I get pushed into. I realize I have the power to be strong for myself, and that I have to be or somewhere down the line I’ll end up regretting it.

(Oh, and another note? This song is the most perfect thing ever right now. Yes, I realize it’s by Mark Chesnutt and a million years old. So what?)

Tip #468

Note to Self,

I know you have this habit of wanting to know everything right away, and I know now that your life is going good you want to know if it’s going to keep going this way. You want to know what’s going to happen, when, who, how, etc. 

But you need to calm down. Just breathe. Be content with knowing that right now, this moment, is pretty good.

Love, me.

Wish You Were Here!

A few postsecrets, related to the things on my mind right now.

 

I have always thought this was true and I wish more people believed it like I do.

When I first saw this postcard it freaked me out because I thought I had sent it, even though I've never sent anything in. Then I realized the math didn't add up; my parents have only been married 24 years.

Definitely. Looking at this postcard tonight i know that it's finally, finally true for me, in so many ways. And I love it.

No comment, but this is another one I could have sent in.

 

One year? Try three and a half, but who cares? The important thing is it happened.

Confession: When I move away from here (which will eventually happen) one of the things I will miss the most is the local Starbucks.

I want this in spite of the fact that I'm entirely unphotogenic.

 

I was going to do a real post tonight, but then I started looking through the postsecrets I have saved on my computer and did this instead.

Abercrombie Story

WORD TO THE WISE: THIS IS A LONG POST. YEAH.

———————-

The stairs don’t seem all that grand now, not like I imagined it in my memory. Not scary and intimidating and fancified. Just a staircase, leading from the first floor of the mall to the second floor. But I walk to it from across from The Cheesecake Factory, the same path we took that night, and it’s not as easy as it looks. The staircase is smaller, sure, and the star I remembered being on the floor is just a typical tile decoration. But still.

I walk by myself tonight, wearing a green sweater and carrying my schoolbag. I am under no delusion that I look good, having drove here without doing so much as putting some lip gloss on after school, but I am braver now. There is nobody watching me, judging me. Or if there is I don’t notice. It is dark, like it was then, and that adds to the feeling of what I am doing.

The staircase, like I said, is smaller than I remember. Less full of grandeur, but it still makes me shake a little. It is the same steps I walked up years ago with thirteen girls who came to be the embodiment of what I was not, who had what I was lacking. I remember things as I climb the staircase. Things like who walked with who, the inside jokes I didn’t get, the words of Ashlee Simpson’s L.O.V.E. they sung the whole night. The ones I thought I might become friends with, whose subgroups I wanted to join. The way I felt a paradox as we walked: I was invisible, but I could feel their eyes on me, could hear the whispers, feel all the million ways I was different. Not them.

I make it to the top of the staircase and look down. It is not that big and it is not that grand and it is not that scary after all. It is just steps, and I have just came up them without caring who was looking or what they were thinking or saying. I had conquered so far, but I was just beginning.

That night so long ago made me feel worthless. Ugly, weird, freakish, many other undesirable adjectives. I am determined that taking the same path at the mall tonight won’t, so I keep going. 

Everything looks pretty much the same. There is the same wow-people-are-way-too-materialistic thought in my head as I pass all the stores, the same feeling that I don’t quite understand what is going on here, what the appeal is of all these stores, so many of them lined with expensive handbags or shoes that, I’m sorry, just don’t seem worth the money to me. But what there’s not is the fear that I need to assimilate, that everyone is scorning me, that they are all in on something great and I don’t want to be left out. I still feel apart from this place, but it doesn’t bother me. In a very freeing way, I don’t care about fitting.

Then there is only one place left.

The Holy Grail. The store I saw a sweatshirt in for $130 and then was scared to touch anything else. The store the other girls flitted around, happy and carefree. The place that, more than anything else at the mall, made me acutely aware of what was wrong with me. That I was too quiet and plain, that my clothes were too boring, that I was ugly and not-quite-right. The place that made me feel like nothing.

Abercrombie.

I will go inside, I tell myself as I approach it. It’s just a store. 

But I don’t go inside. I can’t. I get close and can smell the purfume and hear the music and see the perfect little CrombieZombies in there, and I just can’t. I’m too scared. I keep walking, right past the entrance.

Then I stop myself. What? I can’t go in? That’s crazy; of course I can. Because things are different now. I’m different now: stronger, braver, confident again. So I walk back and come at it again, this time succeeding. I’m inside.

I’m inside and everything is rushing back at me. Not the particular words and events so much as the feelings they produced. Everything I felt that night, in one fell swoop as I walk around. But I have to do it. I have to prove to myself that I really am stronger, prove to my previous self that she can be more than she was. It’s hard. Make no mistake about that. Everyone else in the store looks like they belong: the right clothes, the right facial expressions, the right attitude. I have none of that.

It makes me weak, this feeling, and overwhelms me.

I am standing in an Abercrombie store and I feel like I might cry. Why? Because it’s hard being here. Because it’s hard proving that I’m strong enough. Because I feel so small, so insignificant here, and I know the fifteen year old me felt that ten times worse. Maybe we don’t grow into “grown ups,” but just into progressive versions of ourselves. And it’s scary; I can’t describe how, but it is. When I look at myself in the mirror, the girl staring back is asking me why I forced her back in here, forced her to remember all of this, to practically relive it.

And yet I survive. I do not break down in Abercrombie, I don’t even have a panic attack. I take a purfume sample and then leave, calmly.

Outside, I stand still and compose my emotions.. I look back at the store and it is still looming, huge, a symbol of everything that went wrong with that night and the subsequent years. Everything I wasn’t, everything I thought I had to be. All the ways I felt inconsequential and squashed.

There is something else though, a reality that overshadows how difficult it is to retrace those steps. And the reality is this: I am better than that. I am really, truly better than that. Everything I thought I had to be, everything I saw those other girls as being… nothing. Of no consequence whatsoever, only I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that they were pretty and giggly and I was plain and quiet. That they seemed to click together, sharing histories and jokes and a million little things that make up a clique, and I wasn’t right with them; I was strange, a little bit off. And I remember thinking that I could make myself right, make myself less strange, more like them.

I couldn’t though, and I’m glad.

Because now I am coming around. Coming full circle. Moving beyond things that have tugged at me for way too long. Finding my peace. Being happy with who I am and who I was and who I am becoming. I know I’ve been saying it a lot lately, but I’m okay. And it makes me delirious with happiness. I don’t even care about how long it’s taken me, or that I still have some way to go, because I think it takes longer than people realize, longer than the deadlines we, and others, impose. I don’t care because it doesn’t matter.

All that matters tonight is that I walked the same steps I walked years ago at fifteen, and I saw how much I have grown since then, and I am okay. Amazingly, amazingly okay.

Me.

It is easy for me to say I have been hurt. Because I have, I have been hurt. I’m not sure if people realize that, if they see that I am not bulletproof, or if they just look at my smiling face, my demeanor, and think I am one of the “perfect” ones, the ones who have it so easy, who never have to struggle, who don’t know what hurt is.

I’m not.

I know what hurt is. I know what lost is. I know what broken is.

It’s leaning against your door, crying and saying it’s over something stupid, when really you know it is something else altogether: this huge, looming grey cloud over your head.

It’s going through your closet to find something to wear and looking at every piece of clothing with disdain. They aren’t good enough. You aren’t good enough.

It’s comparing yourself to the other girls, the ones who talk and giggle and look like women while you are still such a child, and find yourself falling short of the mark. So short of the mark you may as well not even be there.

It’s picking up the phone to call someone because you know you need to talk – and realizing there’s nobody that will listen.

It’s figuring out who everyone else wants you to be, and becoming that person only after you have hidden your own identity. And doing this not because you want to be better, but because you feel it is the only way to make people notice you.

It’s thinking, I will be better than them. I will be prettier than them – then they’ll see, but then trying it and finding out you’re incapable of being prettier than them. You fail.

It’s talking to an old friend who asks you, “why don’t you have any friends? maybe if you weren’t so quiet,” and then crying to yourself because there are a lot of Maybe Ifs you can come up with. Maybe if I were prettier. Maybe if I weren’t so serious. Maybe if I listened to the same music as them. Maybe if…

It’s finding someone who you think might actually like you and then finding out… they don’t, not like that, and watching things fall apart from there.

It’s the crushing feeling of rejection, of jealousy, of feeling like nothing next to the girl they DO like, and not wanting to admit that because you’re not that girl. You’re not petty, you don’t envy! (But obviously you do.)

It’s realizing you care about people who don’t reciprocate – and learning to be okay with that, to not get bitter.

It’s confusion about who you are versus who everyone expects you to be.

It’s rejection from people you’d wanted to become friends with.

It’s heartbreak that crushes you.

It’s falling down so many times you really don’t want to get back up.

I wore this dress tonight. Black, frilly, straps instead of sleeves. I wore makeup; my hair looked nice. Outwardly I was the picture version of who I should have been at the start, of who I think still could have been accepted if only I had been her three and a half years ago.

But I wasn’t.

And I’m not.

And I’m okay with that. I realize this, as I am driving home tonight, that I like who I am. I’m okay with myself and it has taken a long time to get here, but I finally am. I’m not lost anymore, my wounds are healing. I don’t understand what it is about me that makes others NOT want to get to know me, but it is kind of okay. I mean, I hate it, but I think I’m finally – FINALLY – starting to accept that IT’S NOT MY FAULT. I’m the sort of person who’s always taking responsibility for things, but maybe this is something that I can’t keep blaming myself for. Because you know what?

I’m nice.

I’m smart.

I’m funny.

I’m pretty, kind of, sometimes.

I’m kind.

I care, sometimes too much.

I smile. I laugh.

I’m lovely inside. My parents continually tell me this, but I’m still working on believing them.

So this is it. I’ve been hurt and lost and broken, and those are things I still carry with me, but the load is getting lighter. I am slowly taking the blame off of myself, ridding myself of that guilt. I need to make friends, yes, but I don’t need to feel like a piece of crap about myself in the process.

I’m feeling whole again. Full. Happy. 

I know who I am, I like who I am, and though I am not perfect I’m okay.

———————————-

PS. I gave you all your letters in the comments section of my last post.

Today’s Post Is Brought To You By the Letter ‘T’ and the Number ‘10′

Okay, I’ve had this meme for a while and been saving it… the idea is to comment on THIS POST and get a letter, then list ten things you LOVE that begin with that letter.

Proof that my brain is to fuzzled to write anything awesome today. I hope I don’t get the flu. I’ve been feeling like I might and I REALLY REALLY don’t want to. Add ‘go to dr’s and get flu shot’ to my ever-growing list of things to do.

But back to the post.

I got the letter T…

I’m going to give you a T, both for Thursday and for Twenty-Something Bloggers because I see a lot of 20sb blog pals of mine in your blogroll and that group is awesome!

So…

1. Taylor the Lovely, of course. Right now she is asleep on the couch. I think she fell asleep watching Friends DVDs last night. 
2. Twitter, which I am still using. What’s the point? I don’t know; it drastically cuts down on the number of notes I write to myself in my phone for one.
3. Taylor Swift. I bought her new CD Fearless and omg yes it is wonderful, I love it.
4. Texting. For instance yesterday Madi stole her mom’s phone and sent me a message that said, ‘SUP.’ Because she is fun like that.
5. Tire swings. Specifically the one in my grandparents’ back yard. (I can’t spell today… I just typed “grandparents” as “gardpaents” and “yard” as “year,” then “yeard,” and “just” as “jsut.” Help me, somebody, please. Just typed “somebody” as “smoeobdy.” I think I need some serious medical attention here. (Thank gosh I spelled all the words correctly in THAT sentence. Finally!)
6. Tunage. Tunage, as in music. You all know that word, right? The word “tunage”? (There I go with the british punctuation again… or at least I think it’s British. Eventually I’ll have to be American about where I put the end-sentence punctuation when it comes to quotation marks, but not today.) (I really cannot type today. again = aign, punctuation = pucntuation.)
7. Tomatoes. Yummy. Ooh, tomatoes and avocados with lemon juice… mmmm.
8. Twilight. I’m writing this list in order of when I think of them, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of Twilight until item eight! If you haven’t read it yet: do. Don’t go see the movie and then act like you know the book, please, that is so annoying. (Yes, I’m one of THOSE people endlessly talking about how the movie was too different from the book. Which is why I’m a bit peeved at myself that I still haven’t read Wicked. But that was a play! And I will read it, I swear! Soon!)
9. Thesaurus. Because I’m cool.
10. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, as in not the literal tomorrow, but the tomorrow known as “the future.” True, it would have been easier to just write “the future” but future starts with an F, if you hadn’t noticed.

If there are any typing atrocities I’ve forgotten, forgive me as my brain is obviously on the fritz.

Oh and PS. if you want to comment on this post and have me give you a letter for your own meme, feel free.

Emily

Kindergarten. Her name is Emily and she is little and cute, like so many of us are when we’re five years old. She has an old Minnie Mouse backpack and I have a new red backpack that is the envy of the entire class for some reason I can’t fathom. (I mean it’s nice, but not THAT nice.)

We are best friends.

I don’t know how this happens exactly except that I know we sit next to each other on the Magic Rug and we play together at recess and she comes to my house once and meets my little sister and I think maybe we jump on the trampoline. We trade backpacks for a day. I miss her Special Day, but only because my heart goes berserk so you really can’t blame me; I would have stayed if I didn’t think I was going to die.

In first grade we are in different classes, but we are still friends. We hang out at recess. First grade is the year that everyone plays Chase – the boys running at the girls, the girls shrieking and laughing and running away. I never play this game: it seems so pointless and besides that I can’t really run and besides that nobody really wants to chase me anyways.

But then one day me and Emily are standing against the brick wall and Aaron and Nathan come up and say they are going to chase us. And I start crying, because I am in first grade and that is what you do when you are in first grade and everyone keeps telling you you can’t run and then here comes some boys you hate and you have to run. 

So Emily yells at them. I don’t know WHAT she yells exactly, because in the last twelve years my memory has fuzzed a little, but I know she scares them off. Like, they really look scared. They run away.

In second grade I move to Texas for a year and when I come back – third grade, things are different. I am in a class with Kelsey again, but Emily isn’t there again and when I see her at recess she has new friends and her hair is shiny and she has that tinkering little laugh that both annoys and attacts people. She’s one of THOSE girls, and she has THOSE friends who seem to think they’re better than everyone else, and one day I see her and her friends in the bathroom at recess. They’re standing by one of the sinks and I’m standing by one of the sinks and they are laughing and giggling and jabbering on and I catch Emily’s eye but she ignores me. Like she doesn’t know me. Like she never knew me.

So I don’t say hi. I don’t say, “hey, I”m back,” because she doesn’t see me anymore. She doesn’t know me anymore, and her friends are looking at me like I am just nothing, so I bow out and I guess our friendship wasn’t that special after all; it was just two kindergartners who sat next to each other on the Magic Rug. Nothing big, nothing splendid.

We never talk again. We don’t hate each other, we aren’t fighting, it’s not even really big enough to mention; it’s just the way our relationship evolves, going from the giddy childishness of playground best friends to strangers in junior high. 

She becomes one of the quasi-popular girls and she’s just the right mix of pretty and annoying and seemingly brainless so that the people in my sphere sneer at her and her friends the same way they point their noses up at us. But still, all through school I never think she’s so annoying, what a spoiled little princess; I just think how strange it is that we don’t even nod at each other when we pass in the halls, when really she was the first person who showed me what a real friend is supposed to be; she was the one who yelled at the boys who made me cry.

And that’s important, right? To have a best friend who will yell at the boy who makes you cry? Who will scare him off? Who will be strong for you when you can’t be strong for yourself?

Items of Note

I have no great awesome idea for a post tonight, but I haven’t written in a while, so here I am. 

And here are some things Of Note.

1. I saw Wicked. Yes, it was brilliant. Yes, I loved it. I never though I would actually LIKE the Wicked Witch of the West, but OMG SHE’S AWESOME. Seriously, if you’ve seen it, plan to see it, or if they ever make it into a movie someday (and they better) or if you’ve read the book (it’s next on my reading list) you’ll definitely agree. Unless you’re Taylor the Lovely and you just can’t get past the fact that she’s, umm, green. But Elphaba and Galinda/Glinda (“It’s Gah-linda, with a GAH.”) are possibly the greatest duo ever. Also, Fiyero. He is amazing. And who knew these characters from The Wizard of Oz had such awesome names?
2. Yesterday I was at work and a guy I work with reminded me VERY DISTINCTLY OF BRAD. I can’t do the conversation or scene justice, but it got me thinking… a lot of people remind me of other people, and I’ve always wondered how many other “Jordyns” there are out there, wandering around, being weird like me.
3. Regarding the last episode of The Office, if Jim and Pam break up I will cry for reals like really, be prepared. And does anyone else get the feeling that the writers are sort of grooming the show to end this season? NO NO NO NO NO NO NO !!!!
4. My head hurts. My throat hurts. My eye sockets hurt; did you know that’s possible? WELL IT IS.
5. Daylight Savings Time is throwing me all off. Did you know it’s now dark at FIVE O’CLOCK? No? Well. It is. And it’s annoying. I hate it. It’s not even eight o’clock tonight and it feels like ten. Or midnight.
6. I have a bazillion pictures from our little weekend trip up to see Wicked to download onto my computer (or is it upload? I don’t know…) and hopefully some of them are good. There’s not many of me seeing as how, umm, I was the one TAKING THE PICTURES and pictures of me never turn out too great anyways.
7. I’m still keeping up with My Super Hopeless Romance. Are you? If you are, are you Team Chris or Team Seth? Leave your answer in the comments. (Also: if you’re Team Chris I don’t even know if I want to talk to you anymore, seriously, Chris is just a plot device to distract everyone from Seth.)
8. If you’re all confuzzled by the above item, don’t fret. It’s okay.
9. I have yet to read Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. DON’T FREAK OUT ON ME, OKAY? I WILL READ THEM, I JUST HATE BUYING HARDCOVER UNLESS IT’S NECESSARY LIKE I REALLY REALLY REALLY AM CRAZY IN LOVE WITH THE BOOK OR SOMETHING.
10. And while we’re on the topic… I still don’t like Edward. Jacob is better than him. Fiyero is better than him. Jim is better than him. (Oh yes, I just mixed Twilight, Wicked, and The Office all together. Yay me.)

Hopefully I’ll do a real post sooner rather than later. I’m just having a bit of blogger’s block.

New York Girl

I will always come home
because that is where
I get my start.

Heartbeat, pg. 5

I love that quote.

I got my start in Radiator Springs. I got my start next to my grandparents’ house, across from the woods, on a bumpy dirt road. I got my start in a lovely school (whose sports teams I will always root for) in a sheltered town. I got my start there, and it will always be my starting place.

But it is not my ending place, not where I want my life to be.

There is nothing wrong, in my small opinion, with living in the same place forever. I see nothing stupid in choosing that life, and I suspect if it hadn’t been for the famous/infamous move, I maybe would have chosen it myself. But I have left there, and I have grown. I have seen new people, new ways, new paths. I have been published, I have been befriended, I have been ignored and pushed aside, I have been struggling, I have been growing. And now I see myself as this: a girl whose dreams and goals and future are too big to be contained in her birthplace.

Is California my home? 

Yes.

And no.

It is not my starting place, it is not my ending place, but it is my growing place. A place I was reluctant about coming to, a place I continued to be wary of. A foreign place, one I did not know and still, to a large degree, don’t know. But it has surprised me.

It has shoved me into the spotlight of my own life. When you are in a comfortable spot, in your starting place, you feel peaceful because you know things and you know people and you are a native, you are AWESOME. But then when you leave and face something different you aren’t comfortable; you don’t know things, you don’t know people, you are new. And it is SCARY.

Sometimes you fall.

I fell. A lot. I fell and tried to get back up and I fell again and got up again and fell again and said, Oh screw this! I’ll just stay down here then. But I didn’t. Even when I tell myself I want to give up I can’t really do it.

So I got up again and fell again and got up again and here I am, and I can look back at the last few years (three and a half, more or less), and see things.

I grew. A lot. I am still the girl I was, but I am stronger now. More sure of myself, and less because of comfort but more because of struggle and fighting for that confidence.

Struggle is good, I think. I have a theory about it. I think people who struggle are admirable in many cases; I think they must be strong to struggle, they must care, because it is so much easier to give up.

(Has this post deteriorated? Oops.)

As I was saying.

California is a transition place for me. A growing place. And it is hard, I think, to ever feel completely at home in a place like that, because its purpose is specifically not to be a home, but to help you become the person you will eventually be.

But I have a history here now. A short one, but a history nonetheless. And there is a part of me in this place, I have given a lot of time and emotion and thoughts to California and that means that it is, in a way, a sort of home to me. It may be a home that makes me feel uneasy, that holds some not-so-pleasant memories, and I think there’s a good chance when I leave here that I will breathe a sigh of relief. I will feel free being out.

Why?

Maybe because this was never my home, my real home. Maybe because it holds too much confusion and heartache and tears for me. Maybe because on more than one occasion I have thought that I really truly absolutely hate it.

But I don’t absolutely hate it, though there are moments when I want to.

I’m thankful though, that we moved here. I know it’s crazy to say, because such a large part of me can’t wait to get out, but…

I grew here. My childhood didn’t belong to this place, and my adulthood won’t either, but my angsty in-between years did and do, and I’m glad of that. A lot of my experiences here haven’t been pleasant and happy and OMG RAINBOWS, UNICORNS, FAIRIES!!!, but they’ve added to me. They’ve helped me. They’ve shown me who I am, who others are, who I want to be around and who I don’t want to be around. Who I want to be and who I don’t want to be.

Radiator Springs was my starting place.

California is my transition place.

My future place(s) are yet to be determined, but I am excited about them. I am excited about finding a place I feel I belong, a place I am full in. A place where I’m not me because it’s comfortable and cozy, and I don’t feel like I’m fighting tooth and nail to be me, but some balance of the two. Something beyond this, beyond who I am now.

This is who I want to be:

I want to be the girl I was in New York, on my short trip there. I want to not be shy in front of new people. I want to sit at tables with ones I’ve just met and find a common bond. I want to navigate life the way I navigated the subways – confidently, with my quiet gusto. I want to experience life, and experience it fully. I want to feel alive the way I did when I was there, more alive than I’ve ever felt before or since. I want to take that experience, the girl I was in New York, and stretch it out and grow into that person and be her in my everyday life. I want this so much, so badly, that my anticipation for it makes me antsy, awake when I should be sleeping, devastated in the moments I think it may not happen.

Tell me: do you think I can do it? Do you think I can become her, have that life, or is it impossible?

My Genius Post

Sorry guys,

I can’t even write what I want right now because every time I go to type out what I need to type out I realize it doesn’t actually matter. Writing it out won’t actually do anything because this isn’t like a logic problem where if you think about it long enough you can solve it.