anna begins

A hundred and thirty two times I have written and posted. Poems and rants and rambles, pictures and stories and narratives. I love this. I love this freedom. I love the power. I love the control. I love the words.

I went back to theater recently. It is going to be just a short fling, for old times' sake; old love, mad love, hard love. Familiarity is a wonderful old shoe. I am an actress. I am a ham. I am a performer. What is the most derogatory way you can say it?

It was surreal, how easily it all came back. How it all made sense. How it made you want to tear out your hair at the roots and run around wherever you were, screaming I want to be real! I want to be real!

It's a fine line, the one I seem to have drawn for myself. On the one side there is that intense desire to know self, true self, real self; and on the other is a desire for that perfect flawless façade. Lord knows I would like to know which one I would prefer, really, in those fabled recesses of my heart and mind. As with all really selfish people, I want it all. I want to eat my cake, and I want to have it too (it always made more sense that way, like socks-n-shoes instead of shoes-n-socks, nit-pick nit-pick i wouldn't change that one for anything in the world). I want to know, just for myself, who I really am. And I want to know how to be the person I want to be seen as, for everyone else. Everyone's happy, yes? Only no. Where's the line between reality and fantasy then? Already it blurs, already my imagination gets me into trouble that I can't get out of without pain and heartbreak. Already I retreat into a wonderful painless perfect world of my own creation whenever anything goes wrong. And it’s getting worse. The world I’m creating fits on all points with the one I inhabit in my waking dream more and more, and that’s the danger zone.

hmmhmmhmmhmmm.

Let me go. The imagination is not a dog on a leash or a bird in a cage. This mess I have to accept as part of who I am. I am not changing it. Yes, stubborn I am. Yes yes yes resistant to change, wise man. In this instance, though, I will fight you to the death to defend my right to insanity.

how to save a life

There's so much I want to tell them, both of them and each of them. But as always, I worry that whatever I think today won't be what I think tomorrow. That is the biggest reason I don't talk about my feelings about people. I never know how I will feel about someone the next day. I seem to treat all people the same. Exactly the same. That is morbid.

I can safely say I love them. I can say that, can't I?
I'm not ashamed to say it, am I?
No, on the whole, I think not. I love them. I want them to know that, too. That's a step in the right direction. The willingness to give someone my heart.

It is excruciating to see how slowly I grow up. It is also frustrating at how easily I'm swayed by an idea. Someone says this is how you are, and immediately, I see their point, and I agree; and then I take a minute to analyze, and I find a million points on which they missed the point, and a million things about me they don't know that would change their judgement. That's why I reserve judgement always. I can't make up my mind if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Is it good to always want to understand everyone's motives for everything? I don't mean second guessing them, I only mean understanding the underlying motive. Finding out what makes a person tick. How their mind works. Who they are.

And then there's my goddamn ego. The more a person thinks of me, the more I think of them. I realized when I first discovered this tendency that it sounds suspiciously like Atlas Shrugged, but it wasn't intentional, oh god I hope not.

Here is the situation, then.
Someone
tells me nice things about me
and I promptly fall in love with them
and I anticipate painful endings
and when the ending gets there I congratulate myself that at least, oh at least, I didn't get as hurt as I could have
that is pretty much the general scenario

A pretty picture, that. Now, whenever I meet anyone new, male or female, I wait to see what they think of me, and I cover all bases to make sure they think I think less of them than I do, just so that I have an ace up my sleeve. It would be better if I knew what exactly I thought of people. Wait, scratch that. What I feel for people. Because in my most honest moments, I have to admit that I love almost everyone I know. And I love nobody. And if everyone I cared about were to suddenly to drop stone cold dead, I wouldn't mourn them very long in my secret heart. There is no one indispensable to my life. Not even her, though she comes oh, close so close, closer than he did even.

So here's what I think. I think there is a plan. I think I'm changing. Slowly slowly oh very very slowly, but it's happening. It is.
So I will wait it out.

I wonder why people don't realize how much it takes to make a person. Well, maybe they do realize it, maybe they're just not really listening. Empathy empathy. I should be on the stage.

on a roll

Another thing is my choice of friends. More than friends. It's that stupid hero-worship thing. I can't compute it. WTF, I ask you. What the hell is the need to only hang on to those few people whom you know are going to beat the shit out of your self-confidence? Whom you know are just going to end up letting you down? Tell me, you dumb fat pig.
Hmmm. Abusing self feels good. You must be careful to do it as external wiser and better version, or you'll end up depressing yourself. Which one you are at the end of a rant is important. The failure, sunk in the despondence of her depravity? The nagging shrew with the shrill screaming?
What delightful choices, to be sure.
This is what I mean.
Stupid stupid man.
I hate him. I HATE HIM.

hmmm. did it work?
a little.
well.
congratulations, manipulator of minds.


:D happiness is convincing yourself that you are the best thing that ever happened to you.

forgiveness is giving up my right to hate you for hurting me.

so why can't i listen???

birthing pains

I dunno what the title is supposed to signify. I just know that I'm growing up. Slowly but surely. Inexorably. What a wonderful language it is.
Here's what it is about me. I am what I want you to see me as. I will go to any lengths necessary to preserve the facade of the person I believe I should be. Now it's gotten so I really have no idea who I really am. Thief of love! Just kidding.
I do nothing that is not calculated. The things I do that are not calculated, are all, almost without exception, silly and childish and immature. Which leads me to argue that growing up is just the process of creating that perfect fake persona. Or multiple personas. And the better you are at it, the better pleased you'll be.
Oh what rot.
I try very hard to be good. To be unselfish. I really do. I'm almost at the point where it comes easily to put some people's feelings above mine. (easily, yet not naturally. semantics are cruel but true)
But at the end of the day, I am as self-involved as ever. It is aggravating, to say the least, when the sum-total of my self-actualization lies in the realization that I'm a fucking selfish, self-centered, manipulative, cold-hearted bitch. Yay, me!

fuck fuck fuck



i don't want to be me anymore.

whining

That old slap of exclusion. The constant need for attention palls on one after a while. The bitter rank taste of jealousy is so familiar I rarely have to think before I thrust it out of my head.
I'm always on the outside. Outside, outside, outside. And I can't take it. Why can't I take it?
I have tried unsuccessfully to figure out what lies behind it, but I cannot for the life of me pin it down. Why must I always be the special one, the loved one, the one at the centre of my universe? Why do I need that validation? And why can I never get it? I find it so hard to tell someone that I need them. It's like giving them a loaded gun and then pointing it at my chest. And I'm afraid. I'm afraid to give people the power to hurt me. The funny thing is, I wouldn't mind if they figured it out for themselves. Can you figure out just how much you mean to me? Can you? God. Such a stupid contrary creature. First I won't tell, then I expect them all to know anyway. And to give me that attention. When I think about it, though, it isn't the attention. It's just love. I need to be loved. All the time. I need to know every minute of the day that there is someone to whom I mean something. Someone who needs me. See? And it isn't enough for me to feel like they love me. I've found it so easy to convince myself of things that I tend to take everything I see with a generous helping of salt.
She says I have eyes from which no one would ever want to take away that shine. He says it, too. And still I don't believe, not really.
I wonder, I really do. Sometimes I feel so old and jaded. And alone. Always I feel alone. I tell myself and tell myself. Whole conversations are spent trying to convince me that I will be fine, that everything will work out. That there will be a day when I will feel just as special as I want to feel. When I will be loved as I deserve to be loved.
And another whole set of conversations that tell me that I will be fine on my own. That I have all I need. I almost listen to that voice, most of the time. I almost believe it. I almost do.

What gets to me is my constant CRAVING. I hate it. The addiction to attention. I want so much to be thought of. If I know that someone has thought of me, I am the happiest person in the world. And when someone seems to ignore me I fall into the depths of despair.

Stupid spoilt baby.

how can you stand it

Three.

Now they're all D-E-A-D dead
I wonder if it is worse when you didn't know them that well?
You don't feel the pain of loss
You feel the pain of waste

sometimes the bitterness of pointlessness is harder to bear.