The Daily Durvy

Sometimes, usually when I start to think about my impending graduation from college or my preferred life path that leads me to teaching a screaming room of 6th graders how to read critically, I want to be a professional blogger/writer/published author/badass.

I mostly aspire to the badass part of that profession.

The problem is that I don’t think I have the chops to make it in such a competitve industry, and the first thing a life coach will tell you is that you have to believe in yourself. So really, I have fucked myself before I have even started.

It’s not that I am trying to sabotage myself per se, it’s more that I just have a negative self image of myself. And by negative I mean like horrible, bad, Hitler-negative. I mean, it a combination of not knowing what I want out of life and not seeing a therapist. I also stopped taking my meds, a decision that has been both fantastic and wonderful and horrible and insane. I’m not sure if I’m feeling better, but I don’t feel numb anymore either. I hated not feeling – I couldn’t feel when people physically touched me, and I couldn’t feel when I was sad or happy or alone. This is better in some ways, but unbearable in others.

I want to write here, in this imagined space – I love writing and I love people reading my thoughts, but I feel so horribly inadequate at the same time. I feel like my thoughts aren’t worth the time of day for the people who know me best – so why would anyone (strangers no less) want to read about them? Why do my thoughts and observations deserve an audience?

So for now, I’m not going to answer that question. I’m not going to feel bad if I don’t want to write here one day, because this is for me and no one else at this point. If that is different in the future, than my desire to write here will also change. Right now I’m going to let this be a space where I work through what I am thinking about – even if what I’m thinking about isn’t funny or witty or lovely or politically correct. I don’t have to write poetry and high prose to be a writer. And even though my self-image is shit, that doesn’t mean my writing is. My writing is what it is, independent of what other people (including myself) think about it. Regardless of my audience size or quality I am going to write. I am going to write about what I’m thinking about, without the strain of trying to impress or measure up.

I spend all of my time and energy trying to get people to like me, and I try to meet to a standard set so high that I crash and burn every time I reach for that perfection that I demand of myself. Maybe, just fucking maybe, I don’t need to set the bar so high for this one little area. I don’t need to impress anyone because no one is listening right now anyway. I can still try (and fail) to be perfect in other areas of my life, but I don’t need to be perfect here. At least for now, I can free myself from the constraints of perfection in my written life and let myself cry metaphorically, and save my anguish for my failed attempts at physical and spiritual perfection in my “real” life.

I can let my apartment stay messy, I can hate my hair for not staying perfectly poufed and teased, I can loathe my waist for not being 28 inches around and I can black out my mirrors in mourning when I don’t learn a new skill on they first try, but I’m going to let my writing suck. I’m going to be okay with the fact that I don’t write on my blog every day, like I wanted. Just this once, I’m not going to beat myself up for my utter lack of perfection in this one area. Just this once.