New title. Different, right?
When I started this blog, I had no idea what to name it. I decided on Life, As I Like It because of the play my name came from...but I didn't ever really think of that as the name of my blog.
Unmasked is the name I couldn't think of.
High school builds up a lot of walls for some people. They hide behind status, or pretending to be what people expect. But high school didn't build walls around me. It tore them down.
I remembered what honesty feels like.
The wisest woman I ever met told me, "Rosalind, just be." When I don't know what I am, and I don't know what I would do, I remember to shut up and stop self-analyzing. I remember I don't have to calculate every move I make. I remember that I can do what I need to do and stop worrying about why I do it and how it reflects on my personality. I remember I don't need to choose actions in order to reflect who I am...who I am will come naturally through whatever action I want.
It's a complicated piece of advice, and it's hard to understand. It sounds simple if you don't get it. But for a teenage girl who was always trying to show her character traits through what she did, it was a revelation--I can say something mean when I'm angry, and it doesn't mean that I am a vicious person. I can tear my room apart and throw everything out the window, and it doesn't mean I'm a messy person. Minutes don't define me. And I don't have to discover me. I AM me. So whatever I feel like doing, that is me in that moment....and I don't have to worry about if I am being real or fake, because at that time, that is REAL for me.
I didn't want to over-explain, but I did want to write it so you understand what being is. ...but I guess some people will identify with it, and others won't. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered.
Anyway, my journey to being is incomplete, because it takes every day releasing analysis and accepting myself as real, so it won't ever really be over.
I chose unmasked not because I wore a mask only to others, though that is true, but because I found myself. I found myself in NOT finding myself. I stopped looking. I started existing...or acknowledging my existence. I wonder how many people try to find themselves, when what they should be doing is sitting still and feeling their heart beat and their skin tingle--that is real.
Trying to define ourselves with character traits and hobbies is like trying to shove a batch of cookie dough into a little spoon. It is impossible to capture the vibrancy and elasticity of our humanity. And expecting someone to always act a certain way, defined by their characteristics, is unrealistic. Kind people can be cruel. Optimists can lose hope. That doesn't mean they are kind or cruel, optimistic or pessimistic. The truth is, traits are stupid. I'm not kind. I'm not mean. I'm just me, and different situations will reveal different aspects of me, but that shouldn't make me two-dimensional.
Stop trying to put a name on yourself. The only name you really need is the one on your birth certificate. Stop trying to do what people expect you to do. And by people, I mean you. Stop being a backseat driver, and get in the drivers seat. Live your life, without the constant commentary and analysis.
...advice I can give, but can barely take. Still, what can we do but try? Unmasking is painful. The other word I considered for my blog was bare. Because that is what unmasked is--bare, simple, and there.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Pillow Talk
Sometimes you wake up and everything is just still. You have to work out what's real and what is just you complicating your life. You remember what happened and what was just a dream.
Other days it's not that simple. And it takes hours or maybe even the whole day to get to the point that you realize what is real and what is just your mind messing with you. But its painful...because dreams become so vivid that when you come back to reality, you've lost something...you have to realize those experiences didn't happen, those emotions weren't real. You wake up battered and exhausted from the dragons you've fought and the bridges you couldn't stop from burning, and reality smashes in and tells you you still have to get up and do what needs to be done.
Sometimes I think dreams are worse than reality. Then I wake up and remember who I am.
Sometimes I know it's a dream because it seems so normal, so simple....and my life isn't like that.
Sometimes I think what happens in a dream isn't out of my control...and I am responsible for my actions in them. It is so real, so emotional, and so gut-wrenching. I feel utterly aware of my circumstances...and the choices I make.
I don't know if I prefer my dreams to reality, or if it's a relief to wake up and know it didn't happen. I think I expend so much strength in my dreams that knowing it was for nothing is frustrating. I wish I got some credit for the mountains I climb in my dreams.
Then again, sometimes I wake up and want to be sick until the only thing left in my stomach is guilt from all the horrible things I did... even though it was a dream. I still did it.
It's fascinating. I don't know if I dread sleep or secretly crave it. It's seductive. Sometimes I wake up from a horrible dream and I can't help but go back to sleep...to find out if I really am that person in my dream, to see what I do....to judge.
I remember my past dreams while I spin new ones. Relationships grow. Scenery comes back from past dreams. They aren't disjointed. They are just a different level of reality.
A level that somehow works for me.
Because in my mind, the world is what I need it to be. It might be harsh. Even cruel. Or sometimes too good to be true. Usually it is two extremes mixed together. But that's something I understand. It isn't foreign to me. I know to expect the worst or the best.
Maybe I'm overwhelmed trying to find balance in reality when I am such an alien to it. Maybe my dreams are an escape, where things make sense, and I can be god and devil and somehow it works.
Who am I in real life? How am I supposed to decide that? Who can decide what traits are inherent, when every feasible characteristic ebbs and flows with time... and who I am and what I do in the moment is never consistent.
At least in my nightmares, I don't have to decide. I can be extreme and insane, and no one thinks it is strange, because that is the world I dream in.
Other days it's not that simple. And it takes hours or maybe even the whole day to get to the point that you realize what is real and what is just your mind messing with you. But its painful...because dreams become so vivid that when you come back to reality, you've lost something...you have to realize those experiences didn't happen, those emotions weren't real. You wake up battered and exhausted from the dragons you've fought and the bridges you couldn't stop from burning, and reality smashes in and tells you you still have to get up and do what needs to be done.
Sometimes I think dreams are worse than reality. Then I wake up and remember who I am.
Sometimes I know it's a dream because it seems so normal, so simple....and my life isn't like that.
Sometimes I think what happens in a dream isn't out of my control...and I am responsible for my actions in them. It is so real, so emotional, and so gut-wrenching. I feel utterly aware of my circumstances...and the choices I make.
I don't know if I prefer my dreams to reality, or if it's a relief to wake up and know it didn't happen. I think I expend so much strength in my dreams that knowing it was for nothing is frustrating. I wish I got some credit for the mountains I climb in my dreams.
Then again, sometimes I wake up and want to be sick until the only thing left in my stomach is guilt from all the horrible things I did... even though it was a dream. I still did it.
It's fascinating. I don't know if I dread sleep or secretly crave it. It's seductive. Sometimes I wake up from a horrible dream and I can't help but go back to sleep...to find out if I really am that person in my dream, to see what I do....to judge.
I remember my past dreams while I spin new ones. Relationships grow. Scenery comes back from past dreams. They aren't disjointed. They are just a different level of reality.
A level that somehow works for me.
Because in my mind, the world is what I need it to be. It might be harsh. Even cruel. Or sometimes too good to be true. Usually it is two extremes mixed together. But that's something I understand. It isn't foreign to me. I know to expect the worst or the best.
Maybe I'm overwhelmed trying to find balance in reality when I am such an alien to it. Maybe my dreams are an escape, where things make sense, and I can be god and devil and somehow it works.
Who am I in real life? How am I supposed to decide that? Who can decide what traits are inherent, when every feasible characteristic ebbs and flows with time... and who I am and what I do in the moment is never consistent.
At least in my nightmares, I don't have to decide. I can be extreme and insane, and no one thinks it is strange, because that is the world I dream in.
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