Some Days are a Waste of Eyeliner

Today is one such day. Oh I could traipse about London I suppose. I've been doing plenty of that lately and I do always find something new to make me smile or to fascinate me. But some days you just don't have the energy to put on a brave face - that brave face that you use to tell the world that it's your choice to be wandering the city alone. Your preference. As if there were any number of other options. And as if anyone is fooled.

I'm an actress. Brilliantly trained since long before the Playhouse days - and a well-trained actress knows when her audience is unconvinced.

And how could they be anything but? I'm all cracked veneer these days and nothing much else. Everything I feel - most of which I either haven't felt in a long time or haven't felt before at all - is at the surface, ready and waiting for the dam to burst. (Maybe I should just let it?)

I can still play any part - the bitch, the victim, the little girl, the friend, the slut, the virgin. And I can still play the part I play best of all - the roll I was born to play:

The witty, vivacious, flirtatious, brilliant, charming, effervescent ingenue. The sophisticate with the dirty mouth but epic vocabulary. The exotic girl nextdoor. The paradox. The vulnerably strong, the righteous defender. Scarlett O'Hara at the barbecue at Twelve Oaks, sufficed to say. And I can play that part with anyone from parents to professors, from boys to men, from friend to foe.

I can play this part, these parts. But now...
Now it's for less and less time, with less and less effectiveness, and with a greater toll taken.

I do think some of those traits are organic to me - my brain, my love of laughter, possibly my curiosity. But since the others exhaust me, I can only assume them to be inauthentic traits that I acquired from somewhere and kept because of positive response to them.

And the saddest thing of all, are the things I truly valued (or truly thought I did) don't seem to apply to me at all after all: being the stalwart protector, and also the doer of things that are right in spite of their discomfort...'and I, I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference." That kind of shit which is wise and right and true and which looking back makes me feel a fraud to have ever tucked such quotes into my heart as if they applied to me. Other ones:

"Welcome O Life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

"Brilliant souls have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

So many more as well - and I loved and cherished all of them and I never lived up to ANY of them.

I guess it comes down to the fact that after years of thinking I knew everything, in particular everything about myself, I know - in fact - nothing at all. I am told that this is normal at my age....but that does not make it any less disconcerting. And I don't know what about me is real or contrived. And I've played my parts convincingly enough so even those who 'know me best' can't possibly have a clue, can they?

I know what I feel like: I feel like a car wreck. Some bullshit romantic notion I probably got out of a song or some shit - a girl with bloodshot puffy eyes and mascara running down her face. A vile and painful past she won't talk about. Probably wearing a short red dress, by the way, who would love to love you but who doesn't want to fuck anyone else up so she holds back.

EXCEPT: that isn't me.

First off, I may cry from time to time, but my mascara NEVER seems to run. And I don't even own a red dress, short or otherwise. And my past wasn't vile or particularly painful, but even if it was I know I wouldn't hesitate to involve myself with someone even if I could possibly fuck them up. Oh, and I never hold back.

Ordinarily I would say that I can't help myself, that I can't help not holding myself back. But that is quite possibly a lie. I think I just don't want to hold back, but I want everyone to be okay with that and I don't want the consequences that come with not holding back. Have cake, eat too, etc...

At one point I decided that saying whatever I pleased, whenever it pleased me to do so was alright even if there were consequences, even if people disliked me for it. And for this, I place the blame almost entirely on Gone with the Wind because as introspective as I am being right now I am still immature and unwilling to take responsibility for my actions.

Although I do have to say that watching that movie for the first time at age 5....well five years old is clearly too impressionable an age to see that movie. And to see it 9 million times after that...social suicide because Scarlett is a bitch, so devil may care, but she makes it look so alluring. She comes off at least strong and honest...she makes kindness look overrated. And she certainly makes being controversial look like more fun than being 'a mealy mouthed ninny who can't open her mouth except to say yes and no'.

But y'know...I watched that movie last week again for what, probably more accurately than I should admit, was about the 18,000th time and....

Ok, bear with me on this one for a minute:

Yknow that theory (Freudian? I'm not sure) that says that your brain can't actually dream of you reaching death. You might get very close to it but you always either wake up or get diverted from it because supposedly your brain can't handle your 'actual' death.

Well for the first time EVER while watching GWTW I was struck with the most horrendous of thoughts. For the first time ever it occurred to me that maybe she didn't get him back after all. That she got her comeuppance - her long overdue karmic consequences for her words and deeds.

And it was just like that theory - I mean it was like my brain couldn't handle it - it shattered me for the rest of the day.

Anyway, the longwinded rambling point of this is that right now I am second guessing every move I make, every move I have ever made and it is exhausting.

But this is something I think, just think, I know about myself:

I think I am someone who does genuinely want to be a good, meaningful person.

But the question is how much do I want to? How far am I willing to go to be that good, meaningful person. And the fear? The fear is the fact that I suspect that I might be getting comfortable with the idea that I just never will be.

I know I can either choose to be, or choose not to be.....and I have this funny feeling that I am getting closer and closer each day to choosing the road MORE traveled by.

And I do genuinely believe it's because I'm exhausted - and I also genuinely believe that, though I may be trying to get comfortable with that idea, I'll never be truly or even mostly comfortable with such a choice.

There are two kinds of people:

1) There are the people who are blissfully oblivious to their mediocrity.

2) Then there are the people who are miserably aware of their massive potential to be great and have no one to blame but themselves for their mediocrity - the mediocrity which was never intended for them.

The latter are the ones who blow their brains out.