The Slayer's Not In Order
It's only day 2 of Holidailies, and I'm already behind. It's that kind of end-of-semester madness that makes me wonder how I can survive, whether there's a chance everything won't go up in flames, and consider the possibility of escaping to a yurt in a remote location (but not so remote I can't get Thai delivery and wireless, because why else would life be worth living?).
I originally thought I would be all clever and get ahead of myself by writing a Thanksgiving entry a few days ago, but didn't manage to finish it. I suspect there will be several of those. I also suspect it's for the best, because I had a couple of holiday beers and was going for radical candor, which is probably best to warm up to.
I've said before that I wanted to push some boundaries, but I never seem to push it very far. As I was saying to some out-of-town friends who visited over the past weekend, I seem to have only two settings: very high boundaries, to the point where people think I'm some combination of stand-offish and/or stuck-up and/or shy and/or mysterious (the more uncharitable version of the latter label being "self-involved drama queen"), or no boundaries at all, where I will overshare out the wazoo and no topic is off limits. I've mostly tended to the former end of the spectrum in this journal--and in life, with few exceptions--but as I get older I do seem to have fewer inihibitions about, well, pretty much everything. I'm far more adventurous and experimental than I ever was when I was young. I suppose that makes me a late bloomer. Or maybe just in such severe denial about aging that I'm actually regressing.
Regardless, one thing I've learned over the past year or so that hiding behind a façade is fucking exhausting, and serves very little purpose. People are going to judge you (the generalized you) no matter what, especially if you're a woman, so why not at least be judged for who you really are rather than based on some failed attempt to live up to perceived expectations, right? This is obviously not rocket science, but it's taken me a few decades to finally internalize. The tattoo I couldn't shut up about a few months ago* (notice I've been posting occasional non-Holidailies entries for the first time in years) is in part a symbol of that realization, and my most recent entry also fits into the mold of laying it all out there with very little retraint. (Although, boy, if you knew the parts I held back, you'd realize that I'm still not exactly going full-transparency.)
I'm a little surprised at how unperturbed I am at this level of disclosure. I mean, what will become of my carefully crafted International Woman of Mystery image?
I suspect I'll finally have to come to terms with the fact that it was all in my head. Time to confront the messy, chaotic, deeply flawed, mistake-making reality of me, and the realization that people have been onto me for a long time.
All that effort trying so hard to be perfect, or imperfect in socially acceptable, relatable ways, utterly wasted.
Who knows what's coming up over the next few weeks, or how often I'll be able to post. I might still post that TMI Thanksgiving gratitude list at some point, or talk more openly about some stuff going on in my life than I normally do. Or I might just post a lot of breathless accounts of how overwhelmed I am with work and pictures of my cat, with the occasional overwritten Very Special Entry about some episode from my distant past, the way I usually do. I'm leaving the field wide open.
*For those who haven't already seen a million photos of it that I plastered all over the Internetz back in August, here's how it looks now. One more appointment to go for blending and drop shadows... and then I can start thinking about the next one. (I lie. I already know what and where the next one will be.)
