I think there are only two kinds of people in this world.
One sort gets up in the morning and knows they’re doing the right thing. They turn off the alarm, stretch, and then go about their day with one step in front of the other, one moment to the next, sure that each decision they make, each minute choice will taken them one step closer to the right thing for them …
The other sort, the sort that I seem to fit into, is the sort who can’t figure out how to do anything right. I’m not even sure I know my right from my left. How can every move I make feel like the wrong move. I’m intelligent and I think things through… I make decisions based on the best of my knowledge, I add my heart into the mix …. and every. single. thing. I. do. is wrong.
How did I get here?
Where was the me that was once the first sort of person… maybe a little carefree. Maybe a little obnoxious. But ultimately not concerned, or worried, that my next move might be the wrong move. It was just _a_ move and a move always had to be taken, so let’s take this one next…….
At what point did this calculating, self-doubting, self-criticizing me that I am today … when did she get behind the wheel and start driving?
All the flotsam and decay of my life… which bump in the road knocked me off kilter to such a degree that I truly think I am doing the wrong thing, no matter what I do?
I don’t like the way this me looks at me in the mirror. The way she lets light pass over the contours of my face and never quite pauses to see the me that is behind the eyes…. the scared, anxious, nervous, worrisome, critical me.
Am I the worst parts of my parents? Am I the worst parts of my classmates? Am I simply all that’s left after the joy was surgically removed (by me, and placed in a glass jar and tucked somewhere safe so that no one could steal it, because I treasured it, and I could see that the path I was taking could only lead to heart-ache, so I best squirrel it away for a rainy day)….
But I’m crying and I’m crying and I can’t stop crying — if you’re waiting for rain, it’s falling down my face in a torrential downpour.
When I’m alone, and no one is there to tell me what to think or what to say or how to act, or which piece of etiquette I ought to take down and shine today….. I don’t think I like who I’ve become. But I don’t know how to be the other sort of me ……….
10:33pm June 9, 2016
