Friday, April 18, 2008

In the thick of it.

It's been a hard day. One of those where I cannot wait to get out of work, but feel guilty leaving. I don't want to compare myself to one more person and fail miserably at being as good, as beneficial, as competent as the other. I have to get over that mess, I know it. But, damn it is so difficult for me. Sometimes everything about me stinks. I mean I feel like I am waving a flag that says loser sometimes. And yet, here's my reality...I prefer the losers. The folks who seem to have it together give me the heebie jeebies. Unfortunately I work with most of that population. And I fall short, not literally because at 5'11", I am as tall as most and taller than some. I fall short in the have it together, I'm so smart, pretty, engaging, fluttery, and mysterious categories of existence. And I hate feeling that way.

The second thing I hate is writing this. I'd rather write about the things that I am thankful for...but some days, I just feel like I want to claw the walls down to escape EVERYTHING. My own skin. As invested as I can feel in that emotion, not once have I been able to part the seams and be gone. I guess that's the afterlife. But, damned if sometimes I have no idea how to get there. I am stuck in this figurethisshitout life and just plain raw with it sometimes.

I think that I forget how to be in my own realm sometimes. That probably sounds crazy, but it's the best way that I can explain it. I just move forward on automachine a lot of the time...because frankly, I can often barely stand to be in the middle of everything. And my job is the middle of everything. So, I zone out and I do it. But, somewhere in that process I lose myself completely. And it's almost like I wake up scared and wired wondering where I have gotten to and why there are all these people around me.

I don't know. I'm good at it. Good at doing what I have to do. Good at denying my internal dialogue and joining the crowd when necessary. I think I just take it too far, stay at it too long or something. I'm so different from the people around me. I know that we all are, but some of us are better at faking it.

And unlike Sally in her fateful scene across from Mr. Crystal...today was not my best performance.

2 comments:

8 said...

I have often felt that everyone else on Earth was given scripts-stage directions, entrances, exits, lines to say, ways to be and think. I spend my time frantically improvisating, trying to figure out what the name of the play is and who the villains are.

Other days, it feels like all the above is true, except I'm also naked, and all the lines are in Serbo-Croatian.

I try to convince myself that everyone else feels this way, too, but it's hard to believe.

k said...

Well, there you go again...describing it perfectly, making me feel much less strange than everyone around me. If nothing more, there are two of us lost in translation.