hi. as you can see from my title i am feeling very creative and deep. ha. not quite. i realized though that i had not blogged about cutting all of my hair off which i did a few weeks or maybe even a month ago. it is funny how changes on the outside can make you feel changed on the inside. really funny bc in recovery i have been very inwardly focused--in terms of change and then i go and cut my hair and realize that the outside might just count for something too. i know, i know. why does it have to be one or the other? it doesnt, but my brain sometimes does that--just becomes sort of black and white. not often but sometimes i do this and definitely as it relates to ideas about appearances. when i was drinking and in nyc i was so appearance oriented--had lint brushes, shoe polish, mints, lip liner all in my desk just to make sure i was always delinted, shiny, looked just right. i feel i put all the emphasis on my outside bc my inside was all confused and jumbled up. i vividly remember looking in the mirror at some chic club and determining i needed a few pills to perk myself up before i went back out there. just downright weirdo thinking. it never occured to me to maybe, go home, or sleep, or eat--it was just drink soemthing, take something, or change outfits. i lived that way for a while, wearing black, shining my shoes, feeling hollow.
then i met (or really bumped into) an old friend--someone who was different then all of that. he was not perfect, but he was real. i mean i think what was important to him, what he was good at, what he was about had way less to do with what he looked like then most people i knew at the time. i guess i sort of fell in love with that. fell in love with what i felt was something substantial. soemthing solid. something more about what he thought, then what he wore. my love for this person was a crazy mess. mostly because i somehow would learn to divorce this persons treatment of me from who this person was. so i could love the person and not like our relationship and still call it love.
i dont get confused about much these days but that mess still confuses me. hits a nerve. still hurts to think about in a dull quiet way that i have come to realize may never actually go away but has faded. i know that what hurts about that mess was my own culpability. i was sort of the accomplice in a crime against me. that hurts. it hurts to know that i picked a person who i would allow to treat me sort of carelessly and that i called that feeling love. that i thought it was then i guess is a testament to the place i lived in when i was drinking. a place where i didnt know who i was and didnt think i deserved what i wanted.
in anycase, i ended up here in vt and alone determined to make myself into who i wanted to be. i will say that so far this project has been fairly successful. i am actually becoming the person that back then i only hoped i'd be. but perhaps there is room in my new self for some attention to the outside too. maybe taking care of yourself, paying attention to the outside soemtimes too, is really healthy as long as it is tempered with self awareness, humility, and some sense of humor. i dont know. this blog is all over the place from my hair to a little of my history. i guess i had some demons kicking around in there that needed some air. as i read this though i am proud of myself, of where i am, of what i have, and also of what i've left behind.xx
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