Not Just Another Bloody Mary

"Sea of Thoughts" -- Lindsay Rapp

Why do I do this -- forget about regularly hashing out my thoughts and recording my life in a format more substantial than a tweet or a Facebook status update? It's my knee-jerk reaction to say I've just gotten too lazy about my personal writing, but there are other times where I'm aware that maybe I just don't "need" journaling to the same extent I used to. I may finally be growing up in a way I once thought I never could or would. A possibility that is both wonderful and sad all at the same time.

Since I last updated this past March, my life has continued along the same path for better or worse. Things are still very much the same with my mother, her health, and her apparent lack of desire to regain her independence. That depresses me deeply, if I'm going to be very honest. So many people would have loved to receive the second chance she got, but will never get it. Meanwhile, she's just wasting hers. Growing fatter, lazier, and more complacent by the day. No effort made to repair anything in her life, including all of her broken relationships.

I'm still working very hard to be different from that. When I was a little girl, I used to look forward to summer vacations just like every other kid. However, I loved spending mine improving myself for some reason. Summers were a time for me to see how many books I could read, draw all the pictures I could, learn new symphonies on the piano, and undertake all sorts of fun little personal writing projects. Lately, I feel like I'm that little girl again, only all of the time, as opposed to just over the summers. I'm voraciously hungry for self-improvement again, and I am loving every second of it. Especially since I can finally tackle all these little challenges I set for myself with the focus of a 40-something. It's a really interesting combination of energies and one that is very new to me.

"I'll See You Again in 25 Years..."

Romy and Michelle were my spirit animals back then.

My 25-year high school reunion is apparently coming up. How that could be, I don't know. On the one hand, high school really does feel like a lifetime ago, but on the other, I truly don't feel like it's a literal quarter-century in the past. Part of me wishes I could say that I'm going, but I'm pretty realistic with myself and with others these days as far as what can be expected of me socially.

Years ago, after I'd graduated but while high school was still really fresh in my mind, I used to fantasize about going to one of these damned things at some point and just blowing everyone right the fuck away. (Think Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, but without the best friend.) But then my 10-year rolled around at a point where, much like Romy or Michelle, I was really worried about how my life might look from the outside looking in. I looked really good and I wasn't saddled with a million kids the way so many other people from my graduating class were, but I was still working retail -- something I was very ashamed of at the time, especially considering how smart I was always considered to be. Plus I was still married to Greg, not to mention profoundly unhappy with the marriage by 2004 or so. The person that he was embarrassed me deeply, and I was ashamed of myself for settling for a relationship that didn't meet a single one of my personal needs.

I didn't want to have to face these people and tell them that. That the smart, creative "whiz kid" everyone thought was going places ultimately wound up selling shoes at Macy's and was married to some weird, boring man who was old enough to be her father. Not only did I skip the reunion entirely because of those things, but I remember living in constant fear of running into people I used to know around town, because I didn't want them to see how my life had turned out.

The Good and the Bad of Being 40-Something

I don't know if this is just part of what comes with being in my 40's now or what, but I'm morphing into one hell of a fucking grouch as I age. I've never been much of a social animal, but I'm becoming ever more reclusive and antisocial by the day, it seems. I really fucking hate people anymore, and I don't feel like I have the emotional bandwidth to deal with anyone else's bullshit at this phase in my life. It's showing in some of the decisions I've been making about my social media presence lately.

To name just one example, I just got done fiddling with my settings here to reflect my increasingly shitty attitude toward humanity in general and discarded people from my past in particular. Although I still am allowing this blog to be listed in Blogger's databases, I've decided I no longer wish to allow the search engines to index it. I've also locked down the Facebook settings on my link section -- the only place online I even list this blog -- so only non-family acquaintances and friends can even access it in the first place. 

It just occurs to me that the only people out there actively Googling for blogs I might be writing these days are people that already know damn well I want nothing to do with them. I still don't care to go back to keeping a completely locked blog like I used to on LiveJournal, as I like having something personal that Facebook friends can check out if they're interested in getting to know me better. I still don't ultimately care if any of the sad-ass stalkers I have actually find or read any of my writings here, but I figure there's no need to make it easy on them.