thimbleFULL

It does seem unfair, right? The way that being smart hurts. The way that knowing too much-- it's heavy, right? It takes up a lot of space. We think of ways to express wealth, success, power, imagination. The big one, one of the biggest ones is space. Who's house is bigger. Who has the more elaborate vision. Who is the loudest.

I was thinking that I ought to make a list of Things I Am Tired Of:

• Playing shows to empty rooms
• Screwing up my courage
• Not being taken seriously
• Never getting paid
• Feeling stressed out
• Being a fuck-up
• Not being talented
• Settling
• Being resented
• Being complimented, always snidely
• Basically... everything

I do definitely feel like there's this thing that happens, where it's like... people I don't know feel like they need to take me down a couple of pegs. It's totally this thing, this paranoid fantasy of how I think people secretly think I'm really lame. But like, this has always been a constant in my life, even before I started talking about myself (or anything) online. I'm older than the internet. I've always been secretly afraid that the kids I think are cool secretly talk shit about me. And you know what I've always been right. Why would I think they are cool? Their art sucks, they are mean, and most importantly they don't want to be my friends. I think maybe I need to have my values a little bit clarified. 

Fuck being cool. Fuck being mean and fuck being cool. Fuck uniqueness. Fuck being discerning. Fuck making decisions. Fuck paying attention. Fuck being smart. I hate this. I get so exhausted. All I wanted to do all weekend was sleep and so that's pretty much mostly just what I did. I don't want to talk to anybody. I have been holding my breath and waiting for something to change. I guess for me to change. For me to feel different. One idea I had was that I was not going to make anything say anything or write anything because as soon as I do I feel like I've lost it, and that's really just the worst (I thought). The worst, I thought, was feeling ripped off, was feeling like my ideas, thoughts, feelings, words, actions, were stolen, co-opted from me. I thought the worst thing that could happen would be to put myself out there and find myself degraded, taken away, stolen, killed. Now I know that there are worse things. 

I guess the point is, y'know, that despite everything, my impatience, my seething, object-less anger. The point is that, you know, I did perform. I got up on stage, and sang and danced to an empty room, and I did have fun. I might have just enough. Here, this thimbleful, right? This is enough. I am okay. 

I mean, I know how it looks, I know how it sounds. I know what it's like, for you. But you don't know what it's like for me. There's a kind of secrecy at work here. A psychoanalytic butt pleasure, a holding back. It is unfair and it is pretty, too, the way that asymmetry always is. 

Honey there will be a man for you who finds your particular scars the most beautiful. The odds are he is out there some where. Always.