let go

As I've established before, I find New Year's resolutions to be arbitrary in the way that they are attached to a specific day that only comes once a year. Also, I think growth shouldn't be dependent on whether or not you wrote it as a goal on some list you maybe taped to your refrigerator for a couple weeks in early January.

Well, despite ignoring the call to action on January first, there are things I've been working on. Or rather, things I've been aware of that I need to change and that I am in the process of addressing.

Area the first:
Comparisons. I understand that people compare themselves to other people, and that it's essentially built in to being human, but I've been trying to do it less. I grew up in dance, where you literally cannot go a single day without comparing yourself to someone else in some way (talent, body type, prettiness, flexibility, etc). For years, my only images of myself were what I saw in the mirror and how I lacked where other people did not. It wasn't until this year that I finally started trying to really force myself out of this mindset. Any time anyone is praised for writing, I feel inadequate. Any time someone succeeds in theatre, I am confident that I will never make it. Like what the heck, other people's success is not synonymous with my downfall. It's a weird concept to me, and it's weird that it's a weird concept to me. I don't know how to quantifiably judge myself as a person any more. But I'm trying. I'm bad at it, but I'm working on it. I'm not there yet, but I'm going to keep going until something changes.

Area the second:
Just-World Fallacy.(JWF) This is the is a cognitive bias wherein someone feels essentially that the things that happen to people are deserved. Good people should get good consequences, and bad people should get bad consequences in life. Karma, essentially. And it's not that I have it because I understand fully that life does whatever the frick it wants regardless of the kind of person you are, but there are elements of it that definitely sneak their way into my thoughts. And it makes me bitter, I think. I've been trying to take the emotions and distance myself from them so I can observe them under glass rather than through flesh, and I think there is just enough JWF in me to build resentments towards other people. A specific instance, and I apologise for referencing an event that occurred months ago, but the situation discussed in my post "sucker punch". Yeah, sorry about that. I swear I'll move on eventually.

But it's not even that I haven't moved on. I'm nice to her, I talk to her, I accept that she is a fully intelligent human being who has loads of emotions and reasons for doing things that I will never fully understand. I've accepted that, and it's fine. And I dunno what I was thinking really, but I guess JWF got me feeling that because I've been actively a good person toward her that I deserve some sort of reciprocal actions or something. She ignores me unless I specifically address her, and I can tell that she still finds me annoying and wouldn't mind if I were to leave the country or something. I'm sure there's more going on than that, but that's what I've picked up on. But that's not that that I really want to talk about. It's that I'm bitter about other people liking her. Jumping back to my issue with comparisons, I know logically that people liking her doesn't affect me in literally any way, but it feels unfair. Like, when teachers whom I know knew what happened back in February have her as their favourites or congratulate her on things and whatever. And that's good, I know it is. I'm glad that she isn't being treated differently for something that happened months ago, but goodness it hurts. For no apparent reason. 90% of me has moved on, but 10% of me is determined to continue disliking her and wants her to not be successful or liked by anyone or to get accepted into the colleges she wants or to find anyone really neat to marry and have a good life with or anything.

And that is not fair of me. If she works for things, she should get them. If she wants to not speak with me, that's fine, that's her decision. I don't know. I'm trying to let go. It's hard because there is this bitterness planted so deeply inside of me I'm having trouble even locating it to begin with. It's hard because I have basically no anger or bitterness in most other areas of my life, so I feel somewhat justified in harbouring this one tiny thing. It's hard because I know I need to just let it go and move on with my life but I don't want to let it go I don't want to let it go I don't want to let it go I can't seem to let it go because people are acting like nothing ever happened and like she has been completely justified in everything she has ever done, but that encounter ruined me. I mean, it tore me apart in ways I didn't even know were possible, and I'm still suffering from the residue of it that I haven't managed to scrape out of my mind yet. But it's fine. I'm learning to accept it. I'm trying to move on. I'm trying to let go.

solitude

waking up in the semidarkness
wondering when someone last held my hand
walking these deserted streets
half reflections watching from frosted windows
blue fingers trembling against fleece
breath crystallising in frigid air
swirling like some ethereal apparition
glowing light from between heavy drapes
the warmth of which
is too bright for my wandering soul

courage, dear heart

So. We've had this discussion already, at least partially. The one about The Future™. You know, that gibberish I spill into my computer and call a blog. We've had this discussion. And as ever, I don't know how to structure this, so we're just going to jump in.

I'm pursuing theatre. I guess, since I'm not a seer or anything, I don't know what the future holds and I don't know when I'll change my mind about which things, etc etc. But as of right now, I'm the most sure I've ever been in recent memory about what I want from life. I'm tired of pretending I'm going to be a scientist or teacher or something. I'm tired of thinking I'll just go to school and see where I end up and with what job. I let go of dance as a profession, but I can't let go of performance as a lifestyle. I can't let go of sweaty dressing rooms and stage lights and filling up stages with hard work and love. I can't make myself walk away from that and pretend that it isn't sewn into the lining of my bones and coursing through my veins with every beat of my heart.

I know it'll be hard. Like, it's going to be hard. I know it will, but I'm also willing to work so hard for what I care about. I love acting so much I can't imagine dropping it just because I feel like I need a stable career. I'll find a way to make it work. And, you know what? Maybe it's not for me. Maybe I'll get into it and realise that I hate it or that I really want to do something else. But that's fine. That's a risk I'm willing to take because I've finally reached a point where I'm willing to throw myself into something because I care about it that much. I'm finally willing to sacrifice worry for passion, and it feels amazing. Amazing in the way that I get flurries of anticipation in my gut when I think about it. In the way that I'm terrified I'm making the wrong choice or that I'm not good enough or that I'm deluding myself into thinking that this is what I want from life. In the way that every time that doubtful voice speaks up about how I'm not ready to commit myself to this or that this isn't the right path for me or that I'm doing it for the wrong reasons, that every time that happens I lose my breath because I am so scared of being wrong about myself. I've spent such a long amount of time trying to be someone else that now I don't really know who I am. But I think I do. I hope I do.

There's this tiny canvas I painted earlier this summer hanging on my wall above my shelf of knick knacks. It has one of my favourite CS Lewis quotes on it. "Courage, dear heart." I thought I needed those words when I was empty, when I was miserable and I was just trying to get through every day. And I did. Courage is needed when all you can think of is loneliness and hopelessness and nothing at all. But I need it more now. I need courage as I embark on this next chapter of my life, as I follow the lights in my soul and hope that it will pay off, as I open myself up to true vulnerability for the first time in years.

And I'm excited, I am, but I'm terrified. I am terrified of too many things, so much so that I can hardly form a coherent thought.

Courage, dear heart

Courage, dear heart

Courage, dear heart

why did you leave

Take your well-earned pennies, sir
And plant them along the caved casket of an empty bed,
Cold without her. Frozen coals.
She ties her hair in copper coils
And runs from your good-willed but late-willed intentions
And climbs through the sky, that jeweled ascension,
And hides in the moon beyond the shore,
Sung into this universal score.
Catch her! Catch her!
Drag her from those glittering stars
To keep her here, forever ours.
But those lights, how they cradle her heart full of joy
Up through the ages, pages and pages of
Love of love of love of love of love of love.
Those marvelous stars
That gather her up kindly in their maternal warmth
And kiss her hair full of diamond mouths.
I see her, sir, do you? Do you?
Laughing, singing, joking, loving, flying
Out of this world, and into another
That will keep her much safer and love her forever.

anywhere

these are tentative words; I'm spinning them into sentences as they appear in my mind.

I've been thinking about the future a lot. Senior in high school and all that. I know loads of people in college. The statement where do you see yourself in 10 years? puts me at nearly 30 years old. So I've been thinking about the future.

I'm really stressed out right now. There's too much going on and not enough hours in a day. I'm running on fumes and we've only been back in school for three weeks. I'm mentally and emotionally where I was about 2/3rds through last school year. I know stress is relative and things will pass and someday I'll be able to look back on all this with my Adult Problems and laugh at Adolescent Kate and all of her woes, but I'm just not there yet.

I keep thinking of Someday. Of this hypothetical point in my life when I have a fulfilling job and I'm in a stable relationship with someone who cares a lot about me and I'm Good. I live in New York or England or Somewhere Else. I'm Happy. I feel like I'll get there somehow. But I'm not there yet. Before then, I have to get through tomorrow and this week and this month and this six weeks and this semester and next semester and next year and everything in between. Every time I think about it I want to be there. I want to skip everything and appear in that future where everything is okay. But I can't.

"Souvenirs" by Switchfoot is playing on my phone right now. It's off an album that I first heard when I was twelve, carpooling to Ft Worth in a car full of girls going to dance. All of them are off at college now, or graduated. They're going what they love and I know they have problems but they seem so Happy and Free.

When I was younger I had smaller problems. I remember getting excited about things and gosh I miss that. I miss not being able to sleep because of anticipation and throwing myself into challenges like there was no such thing as losing. I miss enjoying little things. If I could immerse myself in that world, just for a while, I think I would.

But at the time I was excited about the future as well. Right now I'd kill to be Her again or to be Future Kate without having to live the intervening years first. I'd rather be anywhen but right now. I'd rather be anywhere than right here.

And that's really too bad. I should be living every moment, sucking the marrow out of life and all that. I want to but I physically feel unable to make myself care. Please, just let me get through this. Please just let me live through this.

an old friend

you knock at my door with the darkness in tow,
and I breathe in that scent that I knew long ago
So we talk of old times
(how I've grown since you fled!)
and you searched for my pain,
quite chagrined I'm not dead
Here we are yet again,
standing close, you and I,
unable to breathe and unable to cry
And I knew you'd return here
to claim what you'd lost
for the stars that have fled cannot stay long uncrossed
But I beg you be gentler than you were back then
for I'd rather fall dead
than be broken again

the laughing heir

          The funeral was a quiet occasion, with few in attendance and even fewer guests with whom the late Lady Mathilda Catherine Kensington could stand the company of whilst she was alive enough to voice such opinions.
          A scarcity of tears were to be seen, of which the majority were cried by the occupants of the first few rows of black folding chairs. These were the guests who received invitations of expensive black stationery embossed in silver calligraphy one week prior; the others attending (who admittedly represented a strong majority of the crowd) had received grapevine invitations from behind secretive hands and hasty letters written in gossip infused ink.
          This latter group had donned appropriate shades of funeral-black and were quite punctual in their arrival times, none of them strolling across the fastidiously manicured lawn of the graveyard any later than ten minutes to the hour. Some brought sleek black umbrellas on the chance that it rain later in the day, but others decided that the pewter grey sky looked too pale for any precipitation and instead favored bowler hats or elbow length gloves.
          One thing this unconventionally invited party did have in common was their reason for taking the time to attend this small funeral on a Saturday morning in April for a woman none of them cared much for to begin with. You see, the late Lady Kensington was in possession of quite a large fortune at the time of her passing, and, having no surviving children or husband to claim the sum, it was not publicly known who would inherit the money. Any number of people could be willed it, and any number more (who were ambitious and persuasive enough) might yet see the old money of the Kensington family, even though many of them had more than enough of their own to be getting on with. But greed is as greed does, and none of them were willing to walk away from this opportunity to add several million pounds to their already considerable fortunes.
          The former group, being friends or close acquaintances of the deceased, did their best to ignore the dry-faced blue bloods who stood behind the rows of chairs and waited patiently for the will to be read, which would not be until the end of the service.
          One of the persons in attendance, however, seemed to fit comfortably into neither company. This particular young woman arrived at fifteen minutes till and sat in the back row of folding chairs, her crisp black invitation peaking out of a pocket in her belted, calf-length raincoat. She wore a pink-tinged orange scarf that was mostly hidden beneath a cascade of auburn hair so dark you could barely see the red at all, as well as grey fingerless gloves that matched the shade of the sky so precisely that they might have been cut from the clouds. She sat quietly throughout the funeral, but with none of the curious anticipation that plagued those standing behind her.
          The identity of this mystery guest was inquired upon by a young man in the front row at her arrival, but none he asked had even the slightest idea who she was or how she had come by a proper invitation. (“Who, that pretty young thing? She looks as though she took a wrong turn somewhere and wandered in by mistake,” commented the late Lady Kensington’s lifelong gardener. “What, and just decided she’d pop into a funeral and hang about?” Retorted his wife, who quite enjoyed disagreeing with him.)
          At the reading of the will, however, it became clear to all in attendance that the “pretty young thing” in the back row was Claretta Bishop, great niece of Lady Matilda Catherine Kensington, and heir to the large Kensington estates along with a sum of no less than 35 million pounds.

***a “laughing heir” is someone who is legally entitled to inherit from someone who has died, even though they are only distantly related, and therefore this person has no personal connection or reason to be upset over the death

phoenix

I've seen the world in sparkling shades,
an effervescent masquerade.
These candy box people
in candy box rows,
they sway and they glow
like the sheen 'cross the spread
of the moth speckled sky
and I see you collapse, that look in your eye.
I see how you feel and I know how you feel,
and I know that you're stone full of darkness, not light.
And you'll break you apart
with the fear in your heart,
but then how you'll glitter, and oh what a sight!
when you rise from the ashes,
a phoenix in flight.