My Slumbering Heart

I'm sitting in my very large leather chair in my missed-match and messy room listening to Voxtrot's Warmest Part of Winter. I'm staring at a syllabus, chapstick, and a phone.

I just wrote a long and super complainy paragraph but decided to delete it and replace it with this much more tame sentence.

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion."
C. P. Snow

This was one of Yesterday's Quotes on the Quotation's Page. Point of my quote placement is that my complainy paragraph had a lot to do with this.

If I broke my life down into flashback and dream sequence I think many of my acquaintances and long time friends would be surprised at what they see. Every new friend, every few years, I somehow change in such a way that makes people only see one dimension of the person I am.

I think of all the things I am, the person I see when I look in the mirror does not match the person I see in my own head. I have friends who try to compartmentalize me. Put me in a category. In high school I was numerous things: rebel, punk, loser, mute, poser, girl with 20 earrings, cutter, emo, ugly girl, nerd, geek, weirdo, girl who talked about video games and anime all the time, girl with spikes around her neck, girl with the short and hot friend. In college: mute, girl who swears within her academic speaking, writer, girl who shakes when she talks. Significantly less, yes. Significantly less provocative, yes. Significantly less embarrassing, yes.

But still, all these things, they were compartments in the head of the people who looked at me.

I try so hard to not judge, to think about the whole person. To think about how they have so many aspects. So many beautiful flaws, so many beautiful words to describe them. But along with all my flaws, my words, one is there that I am not proud of: a certain callousness. Call it want you want: bitter, envy, disillusioned. Sometimes I feel like no one can give themselves the benefit of the doubt that we each are whole people, we are each a member of people as a group, as a whole. Who are we to box each other?

You cannot box me up and put a ribbon on me. No matter how much paper you wrap around me I will never be a pretty present. I tried very hard before high school to be one thing. To be the pretty girl, to be the nice girl, to be the girl that does well. I never actually became that box person.

I read my entire classic's section in my public library in a year and a half. I wrote upwards of 600 poems at least half I would still consider not complete crap. But I still I failed at everything academically. I went into library bathrooms and let my friend use her other friends-uncle's-cousin's ear piercing gun in my ears. I drew on myself, wrote hopeful quotes under my clothes to help get me through the day, I washed my hands an even 20 times. I had rituals. I had an obsession with symmetry. I was afraid of sex. I was afraid of men. I was afraid of being touched or held. When anyone came an inch too close to my face I would start shaking violently and cry. Needless to say my intimacy issues were their own hurdle I had to climb over.

In college I thought I had my life drawn out. I was 19, I would envision my future and saw only good things. Saw a photography job. Saw a photojournalism career. Saw kids, family. Then in and instant at almost 21 I lost all of that. Suddenly. I also went from weighing 170 to 120 in a 2 week time span. Then my 120 self went back to school...new, fresh, alone. I met people whom became some of the best friends in a little college bar.

After 22 I started to feel new: my life seemed to have changed completely. But it hadn't really. The fragments of the past just built into a picture that is barely recognizable. There is a whole person being built from every change, every event and if you look close enough you'll see it all.

Yes, these things, they are the past. Some hurdles in which I have over come and over powered and some things that I just grew out of. But these things, they are pieces. They are all things that make me the person I am today. I am no different than that high school girl reading 700 page novels and letting her friend pierce her a dirty bathroom. I am no different than the college girl who gained a bunch of weight inexplicably and lost it in 2 weeks after a binge drinking and non-eating, crying and pity fest - only to realize afterward that my life had just begun.

Summaries are for sparknotes. People are lengthy novels made of words, motifs, themes, layers of tattered pages and broken binding. They are beautiful and deserve to be read.