I think I've got gomething

Last post was July 2014.  I was six weeks post-partum. the tagline at the top was, "An external monologue of a baby mama, the little lady, and the girl next door.  Sometimes we even fit into the same body."

I was diving head first into a role I was creating by the moment clinging to every fiber of my grip on the world. Creating it by modeling what I figured was expected, right, rational, necessary, attractive... based on generations past, other mothers, role models, the movies. Culture. All those things that informed me of what my life should look like even before it happened. 

Looking back I'm only able now in June 2022, eight years later, to see that I made my life what it was and didn't know that I could have just let it unfold naturally.

What would that have looked like? How different would it have been? I now see that I didn't begin this as an adult (whatever that is, whenever that started) but I have always lived by taking conscious and decisive measures to be and do what was expected of me.  What I expected everyone expected of me. 

What a paradox it is, living a life trying to be authentic and right, rational, necessary, attractive based on what isn't real or important.  

Other people's opinions are not real or important. Not in the tangible sense, they don't carry any weight that should count towards my own self-values. What do I want? What do I think? 

If all I am is based on a construct, then am I real?

The answer is no. The answer is I can be.  The answer is of course, always. 

It's so easy now to look back and see why I've been so angry.  All the time. Angry. You can't ever be enough if your self-value is based on a construct that isn't measured or real or tethered to reality. Everything that I've been trying to satisfy and obtain approval from was based on a voracious construct that was incapable of satiation. 

Never enough... And I brainwashed myself so well into thinking that if I lived the way other people lived, had that life that looked good in pictures and post text that I was then happy, right, rational, necessary, attractive. The scary question is, what if I never wanted any of this?

What if I look up at all I have accomplished and earned and built and delivered and committed to, that I see someone else's life? An amalgam of fulfilled expectations, a video montage that other people edited and directed?

What have I done?

Living like this is exhausting and never peaceful. There is no peace when you're never at rest. Looking the part, acting the part, achieving the part, accepting the part, diets, family life, work successes, status climbs, the house, there is always something that needs your attention. A hamster on a wheel constantly answering to new requirements and goals and none of it is what you decided you wanted.

Looking back I think that's why I drank. Grey area drinking. Not bad. Not alcoholism. But not good. Drinking to hide or to bury my rage and insecurity. Few here, few there, Sunday fundays, family parties, thirsty Thursdays (always so thirsty), the weekEND. Always a good reason for a glass. Not real reasons of course. It was simply that I had no idea who I was. And when you don't know who you are you in turn socially lack any discernable clue about who you need to be to maintain a dialogue. 

I enjoyed cocktails to bury feelings. So many feelings. Feelings are frowned upon in my world. They are inconvenient and messy, wrong, irrational, unproductive, and ugly. Especially mine. No one wanted to see them, least of all me, because from my perspective the only parts of me worth revealing were the impressive ones.

Don't show anyone the song you're working on until it's perfect. Don't wear the bathing suit until the body in it takes up as less space as possible, take on as much as possible without any real idea of how you're going to do it. Don't bother to even consider if you want to do it. Please don't consider that. The implications are wild.

Just fake it til you make it. At this rate I'll never make it.

It'll never be enough. I will need to cling to control and order and the path and never let go, just keep going til I die. White knuckle through my life mad at all the beauty. Mad with beauty. Mad. 

Beauty.

I see it in my restrictive eating, obsessed with my appearance. Vanity one may presume, but I always felt that vantiy was based on loving oneself. It was more the leverage I gained that fueled my obsession with my weight. I was always able to shrink myself to get what I wanted. The smaller I was the more desirable I was. Boys loved me. Girls always wanted to know what I was doing to stay in such shape. I knew what I had to do. Maybe that was exercise bulemia. Maybe that was caloric restriction. Whatever worked for me to be in control of the madness. So many eyes on me. I know what they want. I'm in control.

Just be small and impressive, expected, right, rational, necessary, attractive. The hunger is just a sign that you're doing it right. The emptiness is what fills you up don't you see? Just believe. Here, drink. Numb it. Carbonated cocktails got me through college. Bubbles made me less hungry and the booze made my feelings go away.

It worked. Until it didn't. Diets stop working when your body has for so long been in famine mode that it gains weight to survive.

Drinking stops making you forget. That hole I was trying to fill by drinking grew with each little glass. I'm going to take it easy tonight. But yes, I'll take another. Fill 'er up.

Drinking was the first thing to go.

Then the dieting.

Now the social media. Everything I want to put out in the world will be here right now. Based on what I need to say not what I think people want to see.

I'm stripping myself of all of it. For the first time, meeting myself. Looking in. Feeling my rage and insecurity and letting it envelop me like a weighted blanket. I'm laying on the ground held there by everything I averted my eyes from. It's there with soft eyes and forgiveness.

Turns out I misread my rage and insecurity. I was so afraid of the very instincts that have all this time just been trying to tell me that I was doing it wrong.