Michelle's House of Horrors

 

The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself…That is the moment, you might be starting to get it right.
–Neil Gaiman

 

I have never known how to stop. I read until it’s pitch dark and my eyes hurt. I eat until I feel sick. I drink more than is perhaps strictly necessary. I watch either no television at all or binge on Real Housewives of New Jersey and True Blood. Left to my own devices, I would live entirely inside my own head and barely talk to anyone– when I’m not oversharing on social media, that is. I spent several years in the 90’s worried vaguely about how many days would go by before my body was found if I died when I got home from work (the answer was 4–that’s how many days until I had to be back at work). For a long time I had more imaginary friends than real ones.  I  think I’m smarter than most people while simultaneously calling myself a dumbass. I think about shit like this all the fucking time, and then when I’m not thinking about it I’m writing about it. Dude. You should see the stuff that I delete. It would curl your hair. Right now I’m thinking about how what I’m writing doesn’t even match the quote I opened with and that it’s a good thing I don’t have anything real to worry about because I don’t have time for real worries.

 

I’m too busy talking about myself to have serious concerns about much.

What we have here is a failure to establish balance.

Shit. It’s that word again.

Why is Balance such a hard idea for me to wrap my brain around? Other people seem to do alright with it. Or do they? I suspect that all of the people who seem to have their shit totally together have secret issues. They are insomniacs, secret drunks, cut themselves, abuse their children or have anxiety disorders, but they look great in their yoga pants while buying organic produce and demonstrating for world peace. I wear my imbalances on the outside.

 

Does that mean I win?

 

Is there a better or worse way to have disordered qi? What about if you don’t believe in qi?

 

Is it snobby to spell it qi instead of chi? Or should I go with ki?

Is it weirder that I know so many ways of spelling it, or that now I’m thinking of Les Nessman talking about Chi Chi Rodriguez instead of thinking about how to tell when I’ve gone overboard with something?

 

The good news is that I realize that I’m doing it right now.

The bad news is that I’m not going to go back to the point at which this whole post derailed and fix it.

 

Is that cheating or being honest?

I couldn’t even begin to tell you.

 

 

 

 

Yes I know there ain’t no finish line, I know this never ends
But I’m just learning how to fall, climb back up again
I know there is nothing perfect, I know there is nothing new
–Everclear/Learning How To Smile

 

Once upon a time, there was a girl. Eventually that girl turned into me. Or maybe she still is in the process of becoming me, I’m not sure.

I was always a smart girl, even before I started school. In High School, I turned into a Smart Girl. Not a Hot Girl, though I was pretty. Not a Funny Girl, though I’m told I was funny. Not a Sporty Girl, although…OK. I wasn’t a bit athletic. They got that one right. I was just a Smart Girl and a Shy Girl. To some, probably a Smart Girl and a Snobby Girl. It’s totally fine to be a Smart Girl when you’re in Elementary school, and a wonderful thing to be as an adult, but it is not a way to have a lot of fun in High School unless you’re a lot more well adjusted and socially inclined than I was.

And isn’t fun what High Schools is mostly about? Not learning?

I mean, sure, there’s learning that goes on. Scholastic learning. Life lesson learning. Sexual learning. But it’s all encircled with stuff that’s supposed to be fun. And for a lot of us, it just wasn’t. I kind of glossed over the sexual learning part. Close your eyes, Mom. That part was fun. Even for a Smart Girl. If only there had been more learning opportunities for a Smart Girl in that part of the curriculum.

As an adult, I find that my friends are divided into two groups when it comes to High School: the ones who thought it was the best time of their life, and the ones who couldn’t wait for it to be behind them. I fall into the “hated it” camp. Firmly. I was an emotional and hormonal basket case from age 15 on. I disliked myself and I didn’t have a particularly high opinion of anyone else either. I was very open to absorbing anyone’s negative opinion of me. High school enhanced every one of my negative tendencies, and didn’t create any good new ones that I can think of. When I talk about those days with friends now, it sounds like I had a better time than I thought I did. It also seems like I had a lot more boyfriends than I thought I did. Maybe it’s just that only one or two were important.

But what did I actually learn in High School? Sure I learned Spanish and French, but the thing that stuck with me the longest is how I learned to dislike myself. I learned how to pretend to be happy almost well enough to fool myself but probably not well enough to fool anyone else. I learned that I didn’t have to work as hard as most people to get better grades than they did. I learned to fake things both emotionally and intellectually. That lesson probably took the longest of anything to unlearn. I’m still trying to unlearn it completely. In retrospect, it seems like a lot of the things I learned in High School had to be unlearned.

Wasn’t there anything good about High School? The one good thing about it turned out to be the people, though I didn’t realize it then. I had a few very good friends then, but I also met a lot of really great people who I only learned to appreciate and love later on. You know who you are, too, because although I didn’t learn much in High School, life did eventually teach me to look for the good in people and to tell people when I love them.

 

If you’ve made it this far, it’s quite possible you’re one of them.