Everyone Else's Opinion

Why does it matter?  

Why should something someone said, a stupid catty remark, make me so angry and then cause me to spend the rest of the next day pondering it?

For the most part, I am who I am.  I have my good traits and my bad traits, just like everyone else.  My view of myself tends towards the hypercritical, like many people I know, and my flaws and faults tend to be placed under the microscope far more often than my attributes.  

However there is one flaw that I have not been able to overcome - the overwhelming desire to please others.  Often it leads me to do stupid things, little favors, minor impositions of time or money.  Many times it has led to wonderful, fun-filled outings that I wouldn't change for the world.  But then there are the times where I say "yes" when I meant "no" and then spend the rest of the evening regretting my mistake.  Or worse, the times when I do say "no" and then feel guilty for having said it.  

I am not, nor have I ever been, a huge fan of parties.  You know - the kind you have in college where masses of people show up to drink, smoke and generally stagger about making nice until the wee small hours of the following day.  I applaud all those for whom this is a past-time for having the stamina to keep up with it and if they enjoy it, then by all means - Enjoy!  That just isn't where I'm most comfortable.

Smaller gatherings with close friends and family are far more my style, or parties that take place around an event (i.e. birthdays, baseball games, camping trips ...) - by all means, sign me up!  But the larger, noisier, more crowded and intimidating events usually just have me turning into a wall-flower within the first five minutes.     

But I digress.  What all of this deep speculation is ultimately arriving at is that the normal comportment of my age-group is to "go out and party", to "socialize" and "seize the moment".  So, when I am constantly harangued and harassed after deciding that, no, I really DON'T want to go to that party just so I can come back at 6 am smelling of stale cigarettes, hash, and covered in someone else's beer after spending a few hours getting oogled, ignored or otherwise harassed by people who may or may not remember me the next day, it makes me angry.  

At this point I've reached one of two possible conclusions.  Either A) I am a completely antisocial stick-in-the-mud hermit or B) these people need to back the hell up.  Personally, I'm voting for option B since with the right people and under the right circumstances I have been known to stay awake all night long.  And the fact that these people can't take "no" gracefully is an issue that they will have to deal with by themselves at some point.  

But, none of that is as significant to me as the fact that I can't just shrug it off and let it go.  It bothers me that I can't simply make a decision and not question it.  I suppose in some ways, that could be a good thing.  Someone who is inflexible can be very hard to deal with and problems can inevitably arise.  In the same way, too much flexibility leaves you open to manipulation.

I suppose that the simple fact that I am able to say it firmly and have been able to repeat it for so long are points in my favor, but I wish I were back home now.  Nothing's perfect, but my friends from back home are at least more tolerant of my eccentricities and don't blast me with sarcasm when I make a decision and try to follow through with it.    

My Tattoo

I finally got one.

I waited 22 years to get one, always too afraid of the needles or the pain or the fact that I didn't know what I wanted to get.  After all, once you've got a tattoo it's there FOREVER (unless you're rich and then have the money to remove it at your discretion ...).  So I fought with myself and tried to convince myself I didn't want it - but I couldn't stop thinking about it for years.

Then, one day, it came to me.  Exactly what I wanted - like an image in my mind.  A blue rose surrounded by flames.  Sounds corny, huh?  Most people so far have reacted with shock, disbelief, disapproval - although a few have reacted with love, interest and curiosity.  

But, the thing is - I didn't get it for anyone else.  I got it for ME.  Just like when I got my nose pierced in Lima.  It was what I needed to do at that moment.  

What most people don't realize is that the past month has been Hell for me.  I have been dealing with a relatively serious health crisis compounded by the fact that I am very far from home.  I have no family here - I had to rely on friends to stay with me when I went in for surgery.  And it wasn't just surgery - it was a type of surgery that left me feeling incredibly vulnerable.  An infected hair follicle where the infection moved into the gland - and stayed there, located right next to the crease of the leg.  To save me, they had to remove the gland.  The infections were getting worse and antibiotics only cured the symptoms, they didn't cure the cause.  I now have a scar almost two inches long.  I think it is ugly - grotesque even.  The surgeon did a good job - but there is still a scar.  It puckers and has left me malformed.  I remember the horror of being alone in my bathroom and removing the bandages for the first time - and how I cried that night.  How I wept from the stress and the fear and the medication.  

I got the tattoo soon after I found out I was going to have surgery, with a dear friend from the US to hold my hand.  It hurt like anything to get it - and I was terrified.  Immediately after I got it, I started panicking again, wondering if I had done the right thing, for the right reasons.  No one in my family has a tattoo (that I know of) and I was always aware of a certain stigma towards tattoos.  But for me, this tattoo symbolized all that I felt, all that I'd been through.

The tattoo itself is pretty small - not much bigger than a quarter.  The colors are a dark blue, yellow, orange and red.  Some people have said that it looks fake - I think it looks the way I wanted it to.  It sits proudly on the top of my foot, the flames originating from where I'm going and stretching into where I've been.  The blue rose bud, only slightly open, is like it's owner - just starting to bloom, to discover, to live.  There are a lot of layers to this rose and only a short time to explore them.  Some roses are delicate, and need a lot of care.  Some roses are hardy and will come back year after year without fail.  I've discovered that I fall somewhere in the middle but that I live in the heat of my own fire, sometimes warming and sometimes burning.

I've spent a long time trying to make sense of everything I have seen or done or experienced and up until now I've never found a way to represent it.

A blue rosebud in flames.  

Yeah, that's it.  

     

I Hate The Darkness

It's 4 am, and I'm here again.  Here in the place I absolutely hate the most.  Feeling things I should not feel about someone who is, to be precise, 3936 miles away from me.  Why is it that I can't learn from past mistakes?  I have played this game many, many times before.  It shouldn't be so hard - I have a fling, I care more than he does, he leaves, I cry, I pine for a while, and then I go on my happy way.  He stays out of my life, eager to avoid any awkward scenes, and I - just as happily - stay away from him.  So why is it so different this time? 

The saying is 'Fool you once, shame on him.  Fool you twice, shame on you."  Well, at this point the second time came and went three or four times ago.  And yet it's his face I see at night before I go to bed.  And it's him I try to convince myself not to think of - or to hate.  My life is not a fairy tale - it's not a book where the plucky heroine gets her heart broken and runs off to perform daring deeds and defeat the dragon only to have her one true love come chasing after her on is noble steed to sweep her off her feet.  Some people have that kind of story, but I'm not one of them.  I don't know why I can't let go of him - or rather, I know all the reasons I SHOULD let go of him.  And I know that I deserve far better than he can offer.  And yet it comes down to this - I cannot seem to let him go.  I could speculate for hours on the whys, the wherefores, and the maybes.  I could talk about emotions or feelings or desires.  I could talk about all the things he did wrong - or all the things he tried to do right.  I could talk about all the ways he used me, hurt me - and I could talk about all the days he made me laugh.  I could talk about how he broke my heart - and about how I saw it coming.  I could talk about how I had the choice to stay with him or walk away - and how I chose to walk away.   And yet I return over and over again, like some junkie.  And then finally, when I think I'll finally be able to walk away, he decides he needs to talk to me.  To be in touch.  I laughed at the first attempt, resisted the second - and crumbled at the third.       

Of all the choices I've ever made, in this moment I can't remember any that I have questioned more extensively than the choices I made while with him.  And all the things I valued most - loyalty, trust, friendship, love - none of them turned out to be what I thought.  They were all twisted, distorted, changed.  I'm not really sure I recognize them anymore.  

Which leads me straight back to my present conflict.  It's almost 4:30 in the morning and I am awake, trying not to think about him and inevitably unable to avoid the thought of him.  Tomorrow I'll get up and go about my day as if none of this has happened, as if I haven't spent one more sleepless, tear-touched night thinking of the past.  And I'll regret my momentary lapse of sanity, as usual.  And once again I will decide that I've made far to great of an ass of myself in the past to risk doing it again, to risk writing yet another letter, to spill my guts one more time.  After a while the one-sided conversations get to be a little tiring, a little overwhelming.  After a while, vulnerability loses it's charm, it's old-fashioned appeal.

  

I loved and hated who I got to be when I was with him, but now I just hate who I've become. 

The Folly of Thought

I've spent the last week thinking very deep and rather stupefying thoughts about the people I love.  Not just the people I've been in relationships with but also the people who are my friends, who I care about deeply.  Over here, it never ceases to amaze me how much I both miss people and feel liberated.  What I mean by liberated, you must understand, is that I have the freedom to examine past mistakes and past behavior because not only is it in the past- it is in a past shared by people who are at least 4,000 miles away.  But that's the irony in it.  Because, while examining that past and all the things I think went "wrong" - it's those people I miss the most.  The ones who stuck around and stayed by me.  The ones who ensured my survival.  I've spent the past year in almost constant turmoil over one thing or another.  School.  Work.  Men.  Family. Money.  I've been given a life that many people would kill to have - but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.  Or at least, not the way that I have lived it.  

In the end, my thoughts always go back to him.  I ceased to love him a long, long time ago.  That much is clear.  And I am far better off without him than I would be with him - I knew that a long time ago too. 

 So why, then, would my thoughts go back to him?  

Because he represents the one thing that I have always truly wanted and have never attained.  That miracle that happens when two people realize they actually want to be together for the rest of their lives.  That one person who holds your heart in their hands, but it's ok - because you hold theirs.  Finding that one other person in the world so that you won't be alone in the dark.

It saddens me to realize that with him was the first time I felt anything akin to womanly - sexy, confident, attractive.  For a while I thought that we might actually have a chance.  For the first time, I almost felt like I would get to live a 'happily ever after'.  

It's not that I don't believe that I'll ever find it - it's just hard to walk alone right now.  

So, in the process of saying a final and thorough 'Goodbye' to him, I think instead of my family and my friends - and how much I need them right now.               

"The Holiday"

Because I am a COMPLETE & TOTAL Romantic Comedy junkie and the dialogue from 'The Holiday' is some of the best I've heard in a long time ...  And rings so very true right about now!

"I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. 

And how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you.

And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of Chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends ...

You still go to bed every night going over ever detail and wonder what you did wrong, or how you could have misunderstood, and how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy.

And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. 

And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new, and you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again, and little pieces of your soul will finally come back.

And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade."

- Iris

"I've found almost everything ever written about love to be true.  Shakespeare said 'Journeys end in lovers meeting.'  What an extraordinary though.  Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to that, but I am more than willing to believe Shakespeare had.  I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should.  I am constantly amazed by it's sheer power to alter and define our lives.  It was Shakespeare who also said 'love is blind.'  Now that is something I know to be true.  For some quite inexplicably, love fades; for others love is simply lost.  But then of course love can also be found, even if just for the night.  And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind.  The one that almost kills it's victims.  It's called unrequited love.  Of that I am an expert.  Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other.  But what about the rest of us?  What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone?  We are the victims of the one sided affair.  We are the cursed of the loved ones.  We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded.  The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space!  Yes, you are looking at one such individual.  And I have willingly loved that man for over three miserable years!  The absolute worst years of my life!  The worst Christmas', the worst Birthdays, New Years Eve's brought in by tears and valium.  These years that I have been in love with him have been the darkest days of my life.  All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back." 

- Iris