Line in the Sand

Thank God I went to college.

I'm not grateful primarily for the education I got (which was adequate) or the people I met (who were significantly more important) or for all the fun I had (which was a lot, amongst the stress). I am grateful for how fucking unbelievably miserable I was. Thank you for the nights I spent lying in bed unable to sleep because I couldn't see how it was possible to get all my work done. Thank you for my freshman year mantra, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Thank you for Foster's horrible food, which made me physically nauseous by the end of my first year. Thank you for roommates I couldn't stand, for a study abroad that stressed me out every day, for never having a moment to breathe, for crying without knowing why, for an all-nighter, for D's, for late papers and academic guilt, for feeling less human because I couldn't get my shit together and turn in a damn thing on time that was of any quality, for books I pretended to read, for seasonal affected disorder, for a twenty-minute walk through the snow and ice and sludge uphill both ways. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

When I dropped out of college in my second semester, I went back because my parents scared me into it with the health insurance boogeyman. Now, I know that, whether I have insurance or not at any point, I will never let fear of "what might happen" scare me unthinking into a decision about insurance. I know that I can handle years of misery, in unchanging gray skies and a spirit-draining snow-slush-ice-snow-slush cycle, overworked, underfed, underslept, and certainly undersexed and undertraveled. I can endure anything.

But even better than that...I drew a line in the sand and swore to myself I would never do anything like that to myself again. No more school. No more compromises. No more deadlines. No more sludging through misery because it's what I'm supposed to do. Never. That was the moment (in my junior year, sometime in March or February) when everything great in my life that I have now became inevitable, the moment from which the rest of my life will lead triumphantly onward, knowing it has already won.

If you're urging me to go back to school and finish my degree, then it's time you faced exactly what you're telling me you want me to do: you want me to quit pretending I'm God incarnate and act like everyone else, because that's just what people do. Put another way: you're asking me to betray the oath to myself that is the basis for all my self-respect.

And that is the one thing I will never do. I am God incarnate, and I have had enough of the things that other people like to do in order to go along to get along. I don't have any Joneses to keep up with.

All I have is me. Isn't that enough for you?

Return of the Queen

I feel I need some kind of explanation for why I left this blog so many months ago and have now returned to it. I started This Car Is My Pants with Steve as part of a half-baked plan to win a year-long job blogging on a beach in Australia. (Literally, this was the job.) Obviously, we did not get to Australia, but the blog became something that we shared during our relationship, even though the updates were as sporadic as ever. I liked the thoughts I expressed there, and still do, and I feel that I grew during that time. However, now that we've broken up it seems wrong to continue writing in that blog. It was something we did together, not something that either of us could just pick up and continue separately. So here I am again, on my own personal blog, which is an appropriate analogy to the way I'm taking back my own life. I never realized how much of it I had given to the relationship, how much I wanted to let my self dissolve into that couple-closeness. I don't think I'll do that again -- well, at the very least next time I'll know better what I'm getting into and be prepared to watch myself against it. I'm developing a much better idea now of who it is that I really am, under all this bullshit and fear and the layers of social conditioning. I am really, really cool. Under all this, I am fearless and invulnerable and supremely loving. I worry a little about all the changes I'm putting myself through and whether some of them might not turn out for the worse, because I can't see all the effects at this single pinprick in time. I know they are though. I just ask the little bastard voice in my heart (the one that always tells the truth) and he cackles and says, "Yes, of course they are! Are you a moron?"

Well, yes, sometimes I am. I am starting to become okay with that. Of course I'm a moron. Would I ever be perfect? Someone once said that the quest for perfection in art was the greatest protection against creating good art. I am starting to really identify with that sentiment. I am amazing; why would I wish to become perfect? It's also helped me to stress out less at work. Last night I broke a whole tray full of dishes and nearly had a coronary. But thinking calmly, what is the point of that coronary? They were just dishes. We have plenty. Nothing is truly hurt.

I came back to this blog because I'm sick of starting new ones, thinking that each one will be my iconic blog, the one where I finally begin exploring deep truths and funny topics and get lots of followers and generally starting giving a shit about making a good blog. That blog will never happen. It certainly will not happen now, no matter what format or forum I use, because I am just not that dedicated to blogging. I hardly ever sit around and think, "Hey, that would make a great blog post!" It is just not in my head.

What is in my head is who I am, who I have been, who I can be in the future, where that person is going, what I can do now to help her get there, what frailties I exhibit that I've never given dignity to before, what strengths I have always taken for granted. I cannot honestly explore these in a blank slate, a brand-new blog with no past to reference, no frailties of its own, designed to cover up the moron I have been all my life. That's disingenuous. I came back to this blog, to Wandering Slade, because here I have been a moron. I have an even more moronic Livejournal that I am still ashamed of, which I will have to address at some point. But this blog is the height of the stupidity and foolishness that I can look at and recognize as me. This is where/when I started to grow. I feel comfortable here. So I came back, gave her a new paint job, and here we are.

Let's roll.