Dreams

I had a dream last night that I found a review of my website in a book. It called my blog innovative, honest, funny, and a worthy read. I know there are no books that review blogs but it was a dream, several other things happened in it that weren’t real. In my dream, I was so elated.  I tried to explain to someone last night why blogging is more than pure narcissism and that it actually means something.  I know some people will never understand why this site means to me and why I am so willing to give up so much privacy to the mass world of the interwebz.

I spent so much of my early life trying to hide so much of myself. I was so closed off. I felt like I was too different to be anything of any worth. I was just too much and at the same time distinctly not enough. I always put too much pressure on myself to be something different or better than what I was. (I still do this.) I tried changing myself to fit everyone else and failed miserably. I couldn’t even fake being like other people, so I developed a coping mechanism in which I would find the part of my personality that was the most acceptable in that social situation and only show that side. I was completely myself with very few people because I felt I had to be careful what everyone saw of me. High school was a bitch and sometimes I feel like I actually started in college.

In college, I started to relax this but it took a long time. I faked it a lot at first. I decided before the first day of class I was going to talk to everyone and start over from who I was in high school and become who I wanted to be. Ironically, I met one of my best friends on that first day of college in front of our Art Survey class, we just didn’t know we were going to be best friends until a few years later. By the the last time I left college I think I was pretty good at being me. I still freak out about not doing enough or being good enough but I think that is just a core part of who I am.

I still had the tendency to be very controlling about how I showed myself. I know this part of the grown up world. I know everyone worries about appearance and presentation. I hate it. Sometimes I can manipulate parts of my personality to fit what the situation needs but I really hate it. I hate the feeling that I am going to stumble and my real personality is going to burst through. I am no good at containing what I naturally am, as a matter of fact, it makes me miserable. People tell me that not being careful about what I show or write will make my life more difficult. Trust me I know. I spent many years of my life trying to be more normal, more quiet, less reading and more sports, more make-up and high heels and less flip-flops and stupid skirts. I tried. I can’t do it. This is what  I am and trying to be anything different leads to failure.

This does relate to the the beginning, I promise. Why this blog is so important to me is because it is so very part of me. This is my place to get over those last bits of not good enough or too freaking weird. This is my place to test myself against my fear of vulnerability. This is were I learned that I am strange but I am so a like so many people. This is the one place I get to write straight out.

I have been sluggish on my book. I wrote the first twenty-five pages like I had demons in  my fingers. Lately, I have been using every excuse in the book not to write or when I do write it is forced and uncomfortable.  I think it is because I have been writing with my brain so much lately. I have been writing my blog with my brain and the book is all about the brain. I think I needed to write straight out. I needed to write something that wasn’t so controlled by my brain. I need to write on occasion without thinking about the purpose or the structure or the readability. I think I get like a balloon full of pudding. I get so strained from thinking and trying to produce and be and say and do the right thing that I feel like if I hit a corner too hard I am going to pop.

This place means so much to me and my friends who read this mean more to me because they provide me with a place to be everything I am unrestrained and uncensored. Rarely when I write here do I feel not enough or that I need to be different. Here I feel the most like I am the me that my closest friends see. I think every once in awhile the balloon needs to pop. Sometimes my heart needs to take over so I can get back to reveling in the joy of pure creativity and writing with my brain.

My life is a constant struggle for balance, like everyone one else, but I even have to do that different.