Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I've not been able to write for a while. Every now and then I need to live in my head for a while - to let the ideas and thoughts just formulate and percolate for a bit before turning them into something real and tangible by writing them down. I love writing for that reason, it helps me understand myself and others much better than just letting the thoughts occur and then allowing them to float away - but once there's evidence that those thoughts existed I have to accept the reality and face up to the consequences. Reality is not my friend. Reality is my older sister that I begrudgingly put up with because I have to, not because I want to (even if she always is fucking right about fucking everything. Bitch).

The thoughts I've been having for a long time just constituted pain. Pain for the things I'd been through and the things I would never have. Pain for what I'd gained and lost and pain for the things in me that had changed. Something I read somewhere in the last fw days resonated extremely deeply with me but I can't remember where I read it or by whom but it was this: it wouldn't be change if it didn't fucking hurt. Word. A thousand times word. Change hurts and it aches and it needs to do those things because if it doesn't then it's not change. It might be something that looks like change but if you can free yourself of a situation or a feeling with no battle scars then all you've done is change the screensaver, not the laptop. It's not real change.

I do find it interesting that I find it most hard to write when I'm not ready to face certain realities. Even when the things that occur to me to write about aren't even connected to whatever I'm denying. Like, if life is going swell and everything is hunky dory then seeing a Doctor Who-a-like at a wedding do a power slide to Enter Sandman would get reams and reams of blogspace. A meeting with gay ex's current beau would lead to a shit load of verbs and nouns and adjectives all poured into something that resembled a witty bon mot. Learning that aforementioned current beau knew that gay ex was my 'favourite failed relationship' (his, rather presumptuous, but similarly true summation of my feelings for him) and his reaction had been revulsion that gay ex had 'ever been anywhere near a vagina' (direct quote) would get at least a paragraph or two within the confines of these webpages. But I can't write a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g because I'm scared and unwilling and unable to write about the one thing that's on my mind the most - the journey of getting over 'him'.

'Him'? Who he? you may well ask. 'Him' is an idea, a person, a future, a past, and one of the very very few that I ever let get close enough to actually hurt me. I have spent the last few years either locking myself away in a tall tower with no ladders or stairs growing my hair and waiting for my prince to come, or going out and being a bitch to men that I (honestly deep down kind of believe even if I don't really want to) think deserve it purely for the fact that they are male, or running away from any situation in which it looked like I might get hurt. Don't put yourself out there. Hide it all inside. The minute there's a problem just move on. Rather that then make yourself vulnerable and have all your fears about what that could mean confirmed. Better to be safe than ripped apart and let down and shit on. Like 'him' did.

The thing is though, all that pain was a fucking doddle compared to what came next as, when the pain started to fade, the thoughts and the feeling stuck around. Constantly. They've just been there. Sometimes slightly out of my field of vision but always ready to pounce back into view the minute I would let my mind wander. I've just been bored by them in recent weeks. Like, 'I'm still having the same conversations in my head? I'm still feeling worthless because of him? His name is STILL twirling constantly round my head 24/7? WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END?!' and I admitted shit like that to my friends and every single one of them went 'just get over him' and when I asked them how they said 'by just... doing it'. And I got what they were saying, and knew they were right, but getting and knowing doesn't always translate into doing. I'm ill equipped for this stuff. I'm supposed to be the one that walks away with nought but a scratch upon her. I'm supposed to be made of teflon. But then, if it doesn't hurt then it's not change. You've just changed the screensaver. The view may be different but everything else remains the same. I figure, maybe this time, going through the hurt, getting the scratches, letting it all stick, maybe that's what I need. I don't think it'll make me stronger or better - I think it just might let me be more me than I was before.

And this is the interesting thing about change - it allows you to accept all the sides of yourself - the good, the bad and the ugly. Honesty will set you free. Honesty about whether you fancy boys or girls the most means you can go out and be more you than you were before. Honesty about the secrets you hold so dearly, that you think will fuck everything up, when they're given light rather than kept in the dark, more often than not you realise how much bigger they were when you couldn't see them properly - when the shadows were exaggerating their size and their effect. Honesty about who you are, what you feel, whether it's good stuff or bad stuff or ugly stuff. When you absorb it back into yourself rather than la-la-la-ing that it doesn't exist - it gives you freedom. You can be more of you than you ever were before. And that I think is the point. We all just want to be ourselves, we spend a long time going off on adventures and searching for who we are in foreign climes, piles of drugs, gallons of alcohol. Turns out we were there all along, watching, judging, thinking, but never really able to fully exist. To fully exist you need to accept everything and accepting everything means being honest and being honest means change and change fucking hurts. Which is why I still have a part of me wishing it all away. Wishing I'd never met him. Wishing he hadn't made me into such a fucking lame-ass girl. Wishing I could take back all the good and all the bad and be left with nothing. Nothing is better than all the somethings I've been dealing with. But the wishes are subsiding. Now I'm turning towards reality. I'm looking at what new laptop to buy. I'm not just changing the screensaver and thinking that'll do the trick just as well.

So this is the process. I mean, I've written about this shit before. I think I'm 'there' and then something happens and I realise I was nowhere near 'there' (note to self: snuggling with guy you're trying to get over while he reveals deeply personal things about himself and then going home and listening to the songs that played at the time again and again will NOT help you get over said guy) but when I think about 'him' now I also remind myself of the things, the people, the routines, that do make me happy. 'Him', on average, definately does not. I'm making conscious efforts to take each day as it comes and asking God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage the change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. It's not easy. In fact it's really fucking hard but if it wasn't, it wouldn't be change. But at least I know what I can change now. God granted me the serentity to see it - it's me. I can change me.