Pieces Of Me...

I came to a recent realization.  With the final milestone of acceptance about what happened to me as a child, things started to come into stark contrast to how I used to view them.  Life choices began making more sense with that added piece of the puzzle…

The nights spent so drunk that friends had to find me a ride home, laughing about how it was just the way I was.  The birthday where I spent a majority of it sleeping on a bed made of bar stools.  The countless one night stands and meaningless sex that had been happening for over a decade. 

It all came to me like the lightbulb to Edison (and probably took as many tries to perfect and fully understand its value): I had chosen years ago to not value myself and so I hid myself away behind a façade of someone who was not only willing but happy to oblige…always. 

With this realization, certain encounters began to come into an almost scary focus.  The time when I was basically passed out drunk and woke up in the middle of an encounter with a man and was so startled by what was happening that I ran out of the apartment so fast, I actually left my underwear behind.  The period of time when I would spend every weekend drunk with a friend and when his friends showed up, it was like I became the bottle they could pass around on a nightly basis.  The time that I was so drunk after a few whiskeys that I laid down on the sidewalk and had to get put into a cab to get home, had to basically be carried inside and woke up in a heap of blankets on the floor with no recollection how I got there, only to later realize that someone at the bar had roofied my drink.  Feeling trapped because I knew no-one would believe that I was roofied because I already had the label of “drunk party girl” permanently tattooed on my person.  The conversation with a “friend” after the fact when she told me, “It doesn’t matter how it happened, you ruined so-in-so’s perfect day.” 

All of these are situations where someone had chosen to take advantage of me.  All of these situations are moments in time that I am blamed for.  All of these stem from one simple idea: victim shaming.  In all of these scenarios, I was a victim.  I was not someone who should be judged, but treated with the same respect and dignity that is afforded to all people.  This is, however, not always the case, especially when, “she should know better”.  The worst thing about these situations (and these are only a very few examples of things that happened in the last 10 years), is that I carry these moments with me and feel guilty about the way people see me because of them.  It hurts to the core of my being that there are people in this world who see me as a piece of meat.  That see me as some trashy slutty party girl who will never grow up.  Who see me as a perpetual hurricane that just needs to be ridden out. 

And in these situations, it’s not just the fact that people see me as some sort of constant natural disaster of epic proportions.  It is also the fact that for brief moments in many, not all, of these encounters when I felt like perhaps this person was willing to take on the task of caring about me for who I am.  Of, maybe, just maybe, loving such a damaged and tumultuous being.  Even for a brief moment, the hope was more intoxicating than any alcohol or drug.  The hope that someone would possibly choose me, and love me, just because I exist as I do and not in spite of it.

So I write today to say no more.  I will no longer be the missing piece in whatever puzzle you have created for yourself.  I will not be the one to silently fill your void unless you are someone who is willing to fill mine.  It is not selfish.  It is self-preservation.  I cannot continue to feel guilty because I was not enough. 

I was enough.  I will always be enough.  I will always be a sum of parts that doesn’t always fully add up to 100%.  I will constantly be a basketball player that will be good but will never be legendary, despite their best effort.  I will be the person who seems to live with perpetual nightmares and seems to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, but I will not bow, I will not bend, I will not break. 

I will no longer go quietly into the night, spending hours or days or weeks or months or maybe even years feeling guilty about how you see me.  I will no longer try to help you fill the voids that your own life and your own damage have given you while you completely choose to ignore the choices I have made with my life and why.  If you choose not to really see, that is your prerogative.  Mine will be to continue to carry that weight and to walk through life like the champion I am, and never, like a victim again.

The Bubble

There is a saying.  Maybe not a saying.  Maybe it's just become a crazy internet meme (which to my generation is just as good as a saying).  True friendship is one that can have no contact for excessive amounts of time but when you do see each other, it's like you never left each other.  I have been lucky enough to have witnessed this in my life.

It was a Sunday afternoon when I picked him up from the train station.  We had made the decision to take an impulsive and impromptu road trip during the summer because we both had time off and a couple of bucks saved up.  So after 2 years of not seeing each other, and only the rare and unexpected phone calls or text messages, we set sail, so to speak.

To preface this story, I have become a loner in the last few years.  I have gotten very comfortable with my life at home, and have been in the same place for years now.  Over the past year, I have settled down with my roommates and I have been very content with how my life has ended up.  There are moments of emptiness and difficulty, there can be no other way in a life like mine, but I have surrounded myself with a group of people who are so absolutely spectacular that I have convinced myself that I am happy here.  If I am not in immediate peril, I am always content.

So, used to my solitude, I agreed to a road trip with one of my best friends.  We have been through a lot together.  I have seen him through his struggles and he has always been kind and supportive through mine so I could only assume that a road trip together would be epic.  I was not wrong.

In true impulsive fashion, we left like thieves in the night at one o'clock in the morning.  He turned to me and said, "Are we doing this?!" and my only thought as to a response was, "Hell yes!"  So we left, filled the tank and were headed south in my small hatchback.  I was in a trance for the first leg of the journey and when we finally realized how long we'd been in the car, we were in New Jersey.  I looked at him from the driver's seat and said, "We could always turn around...this seems like a really stupid idea now..."  He insisted that we needed this.  I believed him and he was in no way wrong...

So we continued.  I took pictures all the way down (one in particular will always be my my favorite of me flipping off a "Virginia is for Lovers" sign) and we ventured like no one else ventured before.  We got caught in rainstorms that I could have only fathomed without witnessing it, we got caught in traffic as a reaction to the worst car crash we have ever seen.  We saw giant lifted southern trucks and the funniest bumper stickers we've ever witnessed.  He had the bladder of a tiny child and constantly had to pee, so our final stop on the way was at a truck stop off of 59 in Mississippi where he told me he had the most scenic and wonderful pee of his life.  While I was in the car, however, there was the a truck creeping up to the driver's side of the car and I immediately swapped seats and shouted for him to get in the damn car.

So regardless of our delightful drive down, we finally got down to New Orleans.  We're driving over bridges bigger than I've ever seen in my entire life.  We're driving by palm trees (PALM TREES!) which for a kid from Massachusetts is something entirely new.  We finally get into New Orleans and each of us washes the road off (and trust me, it was some nasty stuff).  We go out and grab a drink, because New Orleans is supposed to be a constant party.  The whole plan was about going to New Orleans.  It was all about going to the birthplace of some of the best music in the country.  It was all about getting some serious creole food.

The trip became something wholeheartedly different during our time.  There was a moment on this trip.  A moment that I'm not even sure that I am willing to be honest about right at this moment.  There are very few people in this world who I love unconditionally.  There are very few people that I trust completely with my life and my soul and my person.  He is one of them.  It was a complicated realization to come to.  I am not sure how it actually happened.  We went out drinking for a night and I don't remember the last time I felt so completely connected to another person.  I know that it was a whiskey fueled night, but I genuinely can't remember feeling so deeply for another person and genuinely trusting them with me.  I trust very rarely.  This was a feat.

And then we were back on the road.  We made awesome time and I was in full road-trip beast mode.  I hurried back, probably because I was scared and I had every right to be.  I am back in my bubble right now, and I am miserable.  I spent 7 whole days with another person, non-stop, without apology.  I was myself, I was not putting on a front as I so often do.  I spent 7 days being myself and being with this person.  Now, as I sit in my self-prescribed isolation, I find myself so lost.  I find myself listening to music we heard on the trip and bringing myself back to Virginia.  I find myself listening to podcasts that were suggested by him.  I find myself not sure what to do with my days now that we are not visiting shady, creepy gas stations selling ninja stars.  I find myself suddenly not enthused by my sheltered little bubble.  I wish so desperately that I was back on the road.  I wish we were witnessing box-men.  I wish we were dancing in the car, completely damaged.  I would even wish to be a sloth over this uneventful sadness.

I am now sitting in my bubble realizing that somehow I may have acquiesced to mediocrity.  I spent 7 days with another person and loved them more for it.  This is something that I was not sure if I was capable of doing.  This has rocked me to my core because I have spent years just assuming that I am incapable of being around another human being for an extended period of time.  I assumed that apparently because of who I am and what I've gone through, I will die alone.  I have joked about it since I was young (see Recluses, Eccentrics, and Babies) but I started to genuinely believe it as time has gone by.  I don't necessary think I am the kind of person who will ever be, just happy.  I will never be, just happy.

I also have very little patience for other people.  I find myself back in my bubble trying to make lists of things that pissed me off about him, but it doesn't help.  It was the first time that in spite of his flaws, in spite of his problems, I was just happy to be near him.  I was happy to have someone with me who I knew loved me as I am.

This road trip gave me a few things.  It gave me the hope that someday, I can actually be a fully functioning person again.  It also gave me the realization that I am in it for the story and I will always be an exploratory person who is so willing and excited to do as much stupid stuff as is possible before I die.  It also reminded me of the kinds of friends I deserve.  I deserve a person who loves me as much as I know he does.  I deserve friends who will love me because of my flaws and not in spite of them,  Because, what New Orleans and this road trip taught me, I'm pretty fucking awesome.