Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Fear.

"Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life."

- Donald Miller

On a daily basis, I'm faced with fear. I'm a naturally anxious person, though I hide it well under a facade of "I don't give a fuck." Cool as a cucumber, my mom would say. I remember joking with one of my best friends about how ordinary people can go outside to the mailbox at 10 o'clock at night and enjoy the cool breeze, the crunch of the grass under their feet.... while I wait for the serial killer to jump out from behind the bush and slit my throat.

Sounds crazy, but it's true.


I'm the product of my environment. My mother is a natural worrier. For instance, when I moved into my very first apartment by myself, the first thing she did was make me check all the windows so I didn't get raped. I mean it. Raped. I'm a young, 20-something and the first thought she seeps into my new place is the possibility of sexual assault.

No wonder I'm a wack-job.


But, while I agree that fear is the reason most people live such boring lives, it's also pushed me in some interesting directions. Fear is the reason I write. Fear is the reason I do roller derby. Fear is what makes me a great parent. Fear can be a motivator just as surely as it can be an anchor holding you back. It's all in how you look at it.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Thoughfulness.

"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."

- Dorothy Nevill

All my life, I have been the "say it like it is" woman. I joke, mostly in an uncomfortable way, about how I have no filter between my brain and my mouth. Things just come out - good things and bad things - with usually no immediate regard for the feelings of the person that I'm talking with.

I used to think that was a good thing, that I was the person least likely to lie. It's recently become more apparent, as I begin to approach 30, that perhaps I need to adjust the way that I choose to express myself.


I always think that I want people to be bluntly honest with me, to tell me what I need to hear and not what they think I need to hear. Yet, when something hurtful comes out of their mouths, I bristle. My feelings get hurt (although I would never admit to that or show any weakness in the moment). I want to be coddled a bit.


Perhaps other people want the same thing. Sometimes I feel like an emotional robot, painting by the numbers. I follow the flow chart of behavior - if A than B, followed by C or D as the situation dictates. It's often hard for me to wrap my brain around actual human emotion. I never had the chance to feel those things as a child due to my childhood experiences and sometimes I feel like I'm never going to keep up.


This has been one hell of a year for personal revelations.

 

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Change.

"I must learn to love the fool in me... the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries."


- Theodore Isaac Rubin


After having a very in-depth, raw and honest conversation with a new friend last night (who had spend hours reading one of my previous blogs - terrifying though), it occurred to me that the amazingness other people see in me is something I may never be able to see in myself.


It's easy to look at someone, especially someone new, and see their potential. Their light. Their beauty, intelligence, artfulness, etc. I fall in love with each new person in my life quickly and continue to be in awe of them for months.


But I can't fathom someone feeling that about me. I would point out every flaw to you if I felt there was enough room on this page.


I need to embrace my qualities that make me ME, end of story. I put myself out there, day after day, sometimes being genuine and sometimes faking it until I make it, with absolutely no respect for the unique human being I am.


That's gotta change.

Friday, August 27, 2010

The rest...

"Just write about what bites you and damn the rest."

- Jonathan Carroll

This blog is the last in a long history of blogs for me. I started out writing a little blog called Pixie Has Fight a little over six years ago. In starting out a new, fresh and shiny blog, I decided to go back through all the other public diaries I've had to suss out where I was and who I've become.

Let me tell you, it's been an eye opener.

Nearly six years ago, I wrote this:

"Hands in the air. I'm tired of having to defend my own opinions and being told their wrong. You're pro-life. Fine. But don't you dare fucking tell me how to live MY life. Don't get an abortion. But stay the HELL out of my uterus. Don't tell me I'm a hypocrite because I'm for animal rights, and a vegetarian, but want choice. Fuck you."

Wow. Let's dissect, shall we? I am absolutely still pro-choice. Strongly. Unwaveringly. But I wouldn't chose to express myself like that now. I've simmered like a fine wine and now I'm able to stop, think and pick my words wisely. I may still fillet you like that, but it'll be subtle. I've come a long way.

After that blog, I wrote one called Sexual Anarchism. I was living in an off again/on again BDSM with my ex-fiance and we wrote about day to day life. I won't share anything from that blog, as it's pretty graphic and also very personal (not to mention I don't have his permission to share it), but that was a whole other side of me that I don't act on much these days either. Reading through the archives, I found it difficult to even get in that head space. Who was I? Why did I think that way? What made me crave those things? I can't understand 22 year old Melle any more than I can understand 28 year old Melle. I guess some things don't change.

Decorus Poena came next, a place I stayed for nearly three years. It was my slow slide out of BDSM and into me, writing about what turned me on and who I was at the same time. It's still online but, I will warn you, there are some explicit pictures. If you don't want to know me that well, I strongly recommend you not looking it up. *laugh*

I wrote a bit more in a blog called Irrational Beauty, but it dropped off after that. Myspace posts, journaling on my own. I was burnt out from the constant pressure of having to produce, having people read every word I say and criticize and judge me. It was hard to be in the public eye, so I chose not to.

But now, I think I'm ready again. I'm settled, grounded. Happy. I have so much going on that's good in my life that I need the outlet to vent. I'm ready to open my miraculous cabinet and let the contents settle where they will.

And, to quote the amazing Carroll, I'm going to write about what bites me and damn the rest. 

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Quotes.



"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself."


-Marlene Dietrich


I should start by explain that I'm kind of a quote slut. I can liken everything to some obscure quotation I heard when I was 7 years old or a paragraph from that dog-eared Winterson novel I keep in the glove compartment of my car and have read nearly one hundred times. My brain is like an intellectual fly trap - the things that matter go in on ear and out the other but the other things, song lyrics and quotations, are there for the ride.

It's just that quotes say so much about a moment in time. Quotes, to me, are like hearing that song from 7th grade that just takes you back. I can remember where I was when I read it, what I was feeling and how it hit me. 

Some days, though, I feel like a hack using other people's words to describe my feelings. I'm a creature of sensation and I get really wrapped up in feeling what's going on, letting it wash over me like waves in the ocean, and I can't.... quite... place the feeling into words. It's there, it is, and only later do I find that specific formation of words from someone else's lips that *BAM* hits me in the gut.

Forming my own voice, trusting my own take on the subject, is far more difficult for me. I've dropped off writing lately, as it's been overwhelmed by the mundane and far less satisfactory parts of life. But I'm back now and hoping to develop my own quotations, my own style, my own expression. 

It's an exciting and terrifying undertaking. 

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Welcome.

"Your head's like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of the oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune's all we are."


- Grant Morrison