Love to Hate Me

That pretty girl in the mirror.  Who is she?  We don’t know.  She looks like a magazine.  Magazines are fake, so she must be fake.  We don’t think for ourselves.  We take our own insecurities and paste them onto an image.  We blame the image.  Even when that image is another human being.  But we’ve lied to ourselves.  We’ve made the image, the fakeness, out to be the enemy.  All the while ignoring the fact that we are abusing another human soul.

No Excuse for Feeling Alone

When we lived in Virginia and South Carolina, I almost had an excuse for being alone.  We're in the Navy, so we just moved and it's really hard to meet people other than the people Andy works with.  We loved having people over, some people were really nice while some just embodied the annoying "gung-ho" Navy idiots who wanted nothing more than a good drink.  I told myself that I hated the Navy and was wary of the people who were in it.  Yes, there are good people in the Navy.  I have met many of them; probably more good than bad.  But it's the bad ones that change things for you.

But now I have no excuse for being alone.  I am back in my hometown.  I suppose lots of people have moved away.  Yes, most of them have.  But the one main difference is that I'm a mom now and it just doesn't work socially to hang out with old, single friends.  They're just not interested in that right now.

I need to focus on the positive, I need to get out of this fog.  I go to a MOMs 3 and under playgroup on Thursday.  This is something I've been wanting to do for a while - get together with a bunch of local, stay-at-home moms and really connect.  Just to have people who can somewhat understand what you're going through and won't freak out when you have to change a diaper while hanging out.  I'm afraid, though.  I'm afraid that all the other moms will be a lot older than I am and that they will look down on me for that.  I'm afraid that my shyness will come off as aloofness or haughtiness, as it has in the past.  I am afraid that no one will take notice of me and I'll just sit there the whole time and not really connect with anyone.  This seems to happen a lot.  At a recent semi-annual meeting we had at the ranch with a bunch of people my Dad works with, I was left alone with the girls to eat dinner.  We set up our spots at the arranged tables while everyone was in the buffet line and were therefore the last ones to go through the line.  After I arranged the girls at the table, I went to get us food, but everyone decided to go outside.  Then Andy asked if he could go sit outside because that was the whole reason we were there, was so that he could meet and talk with people.  "This is your life now," my mom says.  Screw that.  I had planned before we even heard about this thing to go to the California Science Center and have a family day.  I've been wanting to go there ever since we got there, but someone or something always gets in the way.  It makes me so mad, as if I'm not in control of my life.  Other people who don't really care about me or my talents or what other wonderful things I could be doing.
My mom later apologized for me eating alone.  She had sat at the next table along with 7-8 other guests.  The whole time I was wondering, why doesn't she invite me over?  I wasn't just going to move myself, Emma, and Lizzie in her stroller with all her food without being invited.  There was plenty of room, although in her apology today she said that there wasn't.  Never mind.  No sense being bitter.

People left that party not knowing who I was.  Isn't that someone's job to introduce me?  Or am I just the floater?  The random girl with the two cute little girls who no one really knows who she is or where her place is.  So I left.  I took the girls and we went to see the birds, pick oranges, and play in the grass.  We watched the fish in the pond and had a decent time.  The one conversation I had with someone who was not in my family lasted maybe five minutes.

It's times like these that make me feel worthless.  Why did I even get up that day?  Why did we go run errands for my mom so that we could have this "party"?  (99 cent store decorations, didn't even dust off the furniture...) Really, I could throw a much better party.  Yet, "This is my new life," as she says.  Don't I get a say in that?!

Perhaps I'm fine with throwing parties, perhaps I really like having people over, but they have to be people that I feel comfortable with and can be myself around.  The hostess finding the most controversial topics to talk about while you are confined to your singular table is not good hostessing.

Perhaps my anger is misdirected.  Perhaps I'm just mad at myself.  Perhaps I'm mad that I don't have a bubbly personality and that I feel awkward in social situations so that that is manifested towards others.  Perhaps I hate myself for that.  Perhaps all I ever wanted was to feel at ease in social situations so that I could make friends, good friends, and be perfectly happy.  Friends that loved me for who I was.  I think I have had friends like that in my life.  Too bad I wasn't strong enough to love myself for who I was and I think I pushed them away.  I think I've had friends like that.  I wonder where they are now.

After the Explosion pt. 1

This is just part of a short story I started today.  I really don't have anything planned for it, it was more a cathartic experience.  I do think that it has potential to be a story, I just don't have anything outlined.  What do you think should happen next?  I am welcome to comments.

After The Explosion Pt. 1

Time keeps barraging me at my front door.  It’s all I can do to keep going.  I need to stop.  I need time to heal.  I wish I could curl up into a ball and spin myself a cocoon.  I would stay there for days – weeks, even, until I was new.  The irony is that time just keeps keeping on in a way in which I can’t keep up.

It’s been 2 weeks since the explosion, and things are still relatively quiet.  People don’t want to talk about it.  They pretend like it isn’t there, like it never happened.  They just want to keep existing as best they can without any change, yet it’s all I want to talk about.  How can you move past something without acknowledging it?  Yet, I am alone in my endeavors.  No one notices or will even help me.  My constant yapping on the subject makes me the equivalent of the village fool.

So here, yet again, I am alone.  I was alone before the explosion, or was I?  There were friends, always friends, and then a husband, my best friend.  There were people who cared about me, all lost in the explosion, yet they could never heal me.  I suppose that has to be my own decision.  How tragic that I had to drag my loved ones through those experiences with me, all the while believing that they could fix my anger, while it was I who held the key?  And now, they are gone.  How much time had I wasted in my selfishness?

Wasted time.  That’s all my life has been thus far.  Always wishing for a miracle but unwilling to face the simple truth that I have to face my demons.  I have to forgive the people who had wronged me, even if they would not take ownership for the pain they caused me.  Even if their own self-righteousness blinded them to the fact that they had stood in my way all these years.  That they had underestimated me.  That they had stunted my growth for their own purposes.

Calm.  All I feel is a warm calm, much like the warm mist wafting from a dormant volcano.  It is easy to stay calm when you’re alone.  Perhaps that is why I enjoy solitude, yet I wouldn't consider it a survival strategy.  Any outside influence can be a trigger to my anger.  “Oh, Thyme, you left the herbs out and now they are dry,” “Oh, Thyme, you didn’t deliver that message,” “Oh, no, looks like we’re out of water again.”  Why can’t anything just go right?  It’s as if some divine influence is poking me, prodding me towards the conclusion I am unwilling to face.  It is time for work, there is no time to rest.  I know this, yet I cannot unwind myself from the past.