This Is (Actually) Why I Can't Have Nice Things

Caveat: there is a 100% chance I am writing this from a place of depression.

I didn't go to practice again tonite. It's the off season, and I don't have to go, but I should. Healthy-me knows that I like roller derby, and that roller derby makes me feel good, even when it's hard, and so, I should go.

Healthy-me is not home right now.

Needs-otters-me is in that place where practice is far, so I should stay home. Practice is independent study, and I don't do well on my own, so I should stay home. It's mostly been A team skaters showing up, and I am not A team, so I should stay home. Roller derby is for people who are capable of doing good things, for people who want things more than I do, who are better than I am, and so, clearly, I should stay home, because trying is hard and failing is easy and why leave the house when I can be the architect of my own disappointment from right here in this spot?

Thank you to ThePhotoForum user Overread for taking a bunch of really incredible pictures of really sad looking otters.

And, hey, since I stayed home, thus satisfying my terrible proof of only good people go to practice, I did not go to practice, I am not a good person, how about I just spend the rest of the night self-flagellating? That seems like a good idea, right? Of course it does.

I have a tendency (it's not a tendency, tendency implies that it only happens sometimes, this is a course of thought that I have roughly 100% of always) to believe that I am not worthy of good things. "Good things" is a catch-all term, but it often includes things like a base level of happiness, proper nutrition, and access to healthcare/medication. Without even looking at what wider circles of that clearly flawed logic include, it causes me to exist in cycles where I deny myself access to things that I should not be denying myself - my anxiety meds, decent meals, anything one could deem a "luxury" - in an effort to satisfy the part of my lizard brain that is more concerned with being right than being healthy. (My lizard brain is a jackass.) (I almost said dick, but I am making a concerned effort to remove gendered insults from my lexicon. Note to self, keep working on that.)

Which brings me to the point of why I opened my computer - I don't want to keep satisfying my lizard brain. Because it is a jackass. I want to figure out how to keep myself in check, to hold myself outside of that base instinct that I do not deserve nice things (kind things, healthy things, things that make my life more tolerable), and to not fall in to its clutches. I want to take my anxiety meds, even if I don't feel like I need them, because they don't just stop my anxiety after it ramps up, they are useful in preventing those feels in the first place. I want to go to practice, even if it's hard and I suck and I'm still afraid that I won't make Brawlers again, because I like roller derby. And because two shitty hours on the track are still better than two shitty hours sitting at home feeling shitty about myself. Because I understand that while the act of denial is in itself a trigger for the pleasure center, it is a terrible one, and there have got to be better ways of indulging those synapses.

I made a Facebook post vaguely about this last week, in an effort to hold myself accountable and not do the thing I just did all over again (skip practice and feel shitty about it.) Will writing a blog post about it help? Probably not. But writing out why I do these things to myself at least sucks a little bit of how terrible I feel about myself out of my insides, and that's helpful. Sort of. Take your meds, Marissa.

11 Things I Need Less of in 2011

Prompt #11 – 11 Things
What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)

11 things my life doesn't need? Seriously? Where to start.

1. People who suck.
I put a lot in to my relationships, and something I'm working on jettisoning is people who can't be the sort of friend that I need them to be. Not that everyone I know needs to be a total rockstar to me 24/7, or that I'm God's gift to healthy relationships (far from it) but I'm letting go (that's another post) of emotional leeches and people who can't or won't reciprocate what I give to them.

2. Clutter
If I end up like Hoarders, so help me God, I'm taking a blowtorch to it all. Next year I'm going to work on letting go on all of the grad school crap I've accumulated that I don't actually need for research. Any article can be re-printed, any book ordered on inter-library loan. Get out of my filing system. (And by filing system, yes, I totally mean floor.)

3. Distance
I love my friends here in Boulder, but I hate how removed it makes me from everyone I love, everywhere else. New plan of attack: short of teleporting, I'd like to do what I can to minimize the effect of the distance on my relationships. I'd also like to badger more people to come out here to visit. 2009 was pretty good at that. 2010 has fallen a bit short. I'd like to get the numbers back up in 2011.

4. Bamboo
The curtain rods are dead. Long live the new curtain rods. Also, panda bears.

5. Social anxiety
Does me no favors. None whatsoever. Has lots of silly payoff, like not knowing when to hug or when to fistbump, or how to have a good time at parties instead of having a panic attack, but I'd love to trade some of that in for something vaguely resembling normal human interaction.

6. Self deprecation
Don't worry, kids, I'm not going to get rid of it - I just want to modify it. I want it to be something that I love about myself rather than something that I use to hide parts of me that are lovable. I'm aiming for change, not auto-lobotomy.

7. Graduate school
Let's hurry up and graduate, M'ris. This sooner you get this shit over with, the sooner you can stop stressing about it and get on with the Rest of Your Life (tm). Figure out a gameplan, figure out an exit plan, and make it happen. You're too smart to be stuck in academia.

8. Fear
I don't want a No Fear shirt (let's leave the 90's where they belong - fashionably dead), I want to shed this cloak of terror that wraps me up every time I'm faced with a decision or change. I've been working on it all year in therapy, and I hope to continue making progress with it next year. Some day, I want to be able to walk through a metaphorical doorway without it slamming shut behind me and locking me in a box of predetermined, miserable future.

9. Dust, see also, dry skin.
Why it's taken me 3 years to buy a humidifier, I have no idea. I can adjust to lots of things, but this lack of humidity is not one of them.

10. Cold showers, see also, backbone
I don't know if you've heard, but I'm getting a new hot water heater! I'm beyond stoked for this, since I'm hoping it'll mean that I can take a shower that's longer than 5 minutes, and maybe even a real live bath! The other part of the story is that it's taken me this long because I haven't been particularly good about confronting my landlord about my shitty hot water heater, even though it's been getting worse and worse since I moved in. My landlord is also the nicest, most attentive landlord I've ever had (and probably ever will have) - so I should really use this as an opportunity to put my neuroses and terrible landlord experiences from West Philly behind me, grow a spine, and not be afraid to complain to him about things that tenants are supposed to complain to their landlords about.

11. This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Don't Tell Me Present Me is a Shitty Writer.

Prompt #2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

Most of my writing these days is, or should be, academic.

Things that inhibit my academic progress include, but certainly aren't limited to:
- A preemptive fear of failure
- Impostor syndrome (for those not mired in the hell of academia, Impostor Syndrome is a sinking feeling that one gets when they're immersed in higher education, and are convinced, on a personal, usually baseless level, that they're not actually smart enough or qualified enough to be there or to participate in the academic dialogue. It's fairly common, usually ridiculous, and utterly stupid. Incapacitating nonetheless.)
- A lack of sleep, and consequently motivation
- And, going back to Emerging, my inability to concentrate on one single thing for any length of time.

I'm working on all of these things, but none of them are easily remedied.

Things that inhibit my other writing include
- All of the above
- I just don't wanna.

I tend to sound like a whiny, cranky child when I talk about my writing. I've heard, for years, since elementary school, really, that I'm a great writer, that if I could only adhere to deadlines or some other goal that isn't mine, I'd be a great writer, I could really make something of myself doing it.

The thing is, I've never wanted to make anything of myself with my writing. Or, if I have, it's been lost in the years and years of people telling me that re: writing, I wasn't living up to my potential.

I always figured that writing was a difficult enough profession to break in to (for so many reasons), that it was best left to people that do have that drive, that want to, need to write, to be writers. I've never had that. Writing has always just been a thing that comes out of me, no more or less than anything else I do. I've never needed it to define me, to push me, or whatever it is that "real" writers feel when they're cranking out words.

It's such a crapshoot anyway, and there are so many people who want it more than I do, what's the point in trying to break in to that ratrace? I'd rather pursue the things I care about - even if I feel like I'm no good at them. At least I'm passionate. (Note to self, future post about what happens if it turns out that the last 10 years of studying media theory/communications have been a bust, and I'm actually a shitty market analyst out in the real world.)

Besides, I've never received criticism that, "oh, this is good enough as is, you're good now", it's always been "Future you could do so much better than present you!"

Well, guess what. Future Me doesn't give a shit. (I'll save talking about my construct of Future Me for another post.)

What generally prevents me from writing, now, is the idea that it's not good enough. It's good, but if only I were better, if I paid more attention, if something about Present Me were different, somehow meeting everyone else's expectations and goals would make it all better, would validate what's coming out of me now.

Which makes writing anything of substance, for anyone but myself, painfully difficult - because I don't believe it's good enough.

It's not that I'm afraid of the editing process (I do, however, have a strong aversion to it), I just don't believe that anything I put out is worth anyone else's time. I just don't have that drive.

And it's frustrating - I think, for the most part, that Present Me is isn't a half bad writer. I write like I speak, for the most part, and generally, that gets a pretty good response. I see the schlock that everyone else puts out, and often think "well, fuck that, I could do better." (There's a story there about coming from a family of journalists and Pulitzer winners, but again, I digress)

But then I remember that critical response is always "Not good enough, not good enough, not good enough."

I don't know what I need to eliminate that mental block - I've never been driven to write a novel or to be published, so it's not like that sort of validation is first and foremost in my process. I do have a few ideas that I'd like to see become part of the public dialogue, but I don't know how to get them there.

I guess that's part of why I'm Reverbing, publishing these words in a public forum for the first time in nearly 10 years. Throw it out into the ether and see what happens.