Do We Ever Figure Ourselves Out?

This is something I wrote quite a while ago now and never posted. I'm feeling uninspired today, so here you go, I'm gonna let it rip.

In many ways, I come with a lot of baggage. But at the same time, I am very much a person who will put that baggage down and give a new destination a shot. I really will, until you do something that is reminiscent of past disappointments. Then, I might have a harder time staying on the route. But even then, I will try (and I bet sometimes people don't even deserve that).

In the past, I have utterly given myself over to other people. It's a terrible way to be. I've been that way for a long time, my identity all wrapped up in some guy, avoidance of myself maybe?

My marriage was like that. I lived in a way that was absolutely not true to myself, trying to be a better person through this person I interpreted to be better than me and oh absolutely he was in all those socially acceptable ways that everyone seems to place full value on. Like some crazy salvation shit and the desire to be something that would be perfectly, calmly, socially acceptable. ACCEPTABLE. except it went very wrong. How could it not?

Now I take full responsibility for that fiasco, I really do. I mean, you don't even need to know all the details, let's just say it culminated in my cheating. I cracked, I really and truly did and selfishness took over and I remember feeling like I was going to EXPLODE. And yeah THAT is about as low as it gets. So in retrospect, I probably karmically deserve all this universal payback I've gotten over the years, well, at least if you believe in karma. No excuse for what I did, I mean, there are reasons of course, lots of reasons that seemed really valid at the time, but no excuse. But like I said, I cracked and that's that, it's easy to be selfish when we are hurting.

I suppose in a way I've never really known how to be me, all the carefree that I have inside just can't seem to ever get past the door, I mean, what would people think? And inside, I DON'T care what people would think, but my brain, my brain has been taught to care, that it matters so very, very much, and you should always try to be just so, SO....

I've always had expectations placed on me. Expectations to behave in a certain way, care about certain things, PRESSURE, fucking pressure, even with my marriage dissolving and the ensuing divorce, even my family treated me as the BAD GUY and let me know in no uncertain terms and WOW how do you even process that stuff, like suddenly everybody thinks YOU have no feelings about anything and sure, you did do something terrible but you AREN'T a monster you are a human being who has struggled for a long time with various messed up situations that got beyond your control at ages you couldn't even begin to work through them properly. At this point though, nobody could ever criticize me or make me feel worse than I do myself.

Anyway, now at 42 I am FINALLY realizing that at some point long ago, I needed to stop letting everyone else dictate my direction. Because those road maps? They've gotten me nowhere. Stalled in the fucking driveway. Dead engine and no mechanical skills.

God, my lamest attempts to break out as a teenager embarrass me now. I still had no real sense of ME. My personality is weak and retiring in actuality, I'm timid and easily overwhelmed and was always scared of living and probably still am in some ways and fuck FUCK I hate that. I guess it's part of what makes me want to get away from everything, from everyone even sometimes, I am not very social and prefer to have just a few meaningful people around me, mental case I guess.

And so the anger boils around inside of me when I see other people getting what they want by being FUCKING BOSSY A-HOLES and I don't want to be that, don't get me wrong, but why does that WIN? Why the fuck is that a memorable way to be? No, you know what? It's not.

I wish I found it easy to change things for myself, make plans and decisions and then go with them, GOD I know some people find it incredibly easy and they cannot begin to understand why for some it's just not that way, that it's a struggle to communicate effectively with people and play that game and make good decisions and whatever. I suppose we continually learn through life and one of those lessons is to actually step back and REALLY learn, and stop dwelling on our mistakes and move beyond them and feel free to be who we want and need to be and hopefully that will lead us to be a good person. It's a hard one.

I would say my best attributes are holding stuff in and presenting a calm face. I don't think these are good attributes and in fact will probably make me very sick someday, but the world in general seems to appreciate them.

sorry if you wanted or needed photos for this story, fuck that.