Happiness, fleeting

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. And you are so obsessed by your coming necessity to be independent, to face the great huge man-eating world, that you are paralyzed; your whole body and spirit revolt against having to commit yourself to a particular role, to a particular life which Might Not bring out the Best you have in you. Living takes a very different set of responses and attitudes from this academic hedony...and you have to be able to make a creative life for Yourself, before you can expect anyone Else to provide one ready-made for you."

- Sylvia Plath


I take myself apart piece by piece until there is absolutely nothing left to dissect. I've gotten down to my cellular level and I can't seem to understand me.

I don't understand how I am having this argument with myself in my head in the bread aisle about honey wheat or whole wheat and I just can't stand the way I feel within my own skin. Like, is this what it comes to? I don't think I'm good enough. I keep thinking about my list of happiness. And I go through my list and mark things off, like, if I do this, then I'll be happy. This will make me happy. I'll find happiness through This...then This...and THIS.

I feel like I look old. As though personal happiness, youth, is translated through smiles that I cannot seem to bring to my lips. So I can't do this, this smile bit, and I look old.

I daydream of the pretty girls. Their pretty smiles and pretty dresses and their pretty parties. I'm barefoot in the loo at the school dance. I'm always two years behind them, trailing along, cleaning up their confetti.

Maybe if I was blonde...maybe if I could change the color of my eyes...if I could be just a couple of inches taller...chasing after the love of your life only to find out he is so wholly uninterested when you have gone to your own personal lengths to make yourself seen and the sweet sound of his voice makes you think you have a chance.

I feel old like Death and Worms are feeding on my Source, energy that keeps them motivated for their next attack. I just fix me, daily, covering holes with plaster, paper mache, quick fixes that allows watery tears to seep through because, let's be honest, I'm just not quite strong enough to mend me permanently.

I have a cute little message posted on my mirror that taunts me with words like 'passionate' and 'vision' and 'determined'. Yes, well, little message, I hate you today. I have no passion; I have no vision; I have no determined. I can't see beyond everything that I hate so clearly. And, because of my own fault of self-loathing, I hate me. I wondered this morning, staring at a computer screen and not reading words, I wonder why I dream.

I think about circles. I tell you that I want to be kept in circles. I want this safety and security and I'm sure it's absolutely suffocating me. Staring at bread is safe, and it's suffocating me. My heart breaking over strawberries...suffocating. My little angry world reaching up and putting it's weak little paper mache hands around my neck and strangling me.

I want one rejection letter. I want to finish one goddamn story. I want to be rejected because then I'll know that I'm capable of accomplishing one goddamn thing in being rejected. I want this one pristine, impeccable rejection so that I might move on to the next rejection, followed by a later rejection. I want to be an absolute failure of a writer because at least, then, I'll know I'm writing. And then I won't be happy with that because I'll be a failure of a writer and that isn't going to be good enough. I'll be seeking my one, lonely acceptance into a meager journal or magazine that sells for $1.50 off of the stand, which is about the price of a diet coke, so I hope my one meager store sells for as much as a soda.

I want a soda story.

I want to have the time to write my soda story so that I might experience the heartbreaking letdown of a rejection letter. I want to have enough self-motivation to stop self-loathing long enough to put my arrogance aside so I can hear my soda story. I want to be able to squeeze all of the poison out of my world, put on some work gloves and repair my holes permanently. A house of brick.

I want my heart to break less. I wanna be stronger and be able to hold this emotion steady. I want to FEEL, god knows I feel, but I want to keep it HERE. I keep looking to the sky for answers, looking past the clouds and the entrapping atmosphere wrapped around this little planet to see what can communicate. It hurts when I try not to cry. It hurts my chest and it hurts in my cheeks and in my hands. It hurts like me suffocating myself in my own closed safety.

Masochist. I said maybe one day you'll see what you're doing to yourself.