High maintenance

For some reason, the realization that I’m not a prima donna, but still high maintenance, is coming to me. I suppose I’m high maintenance in the sense that certain things, seemingly unrelated or insignificant, are very important to me. Without those being just right I am a cranky girl. These are often first world problems, but so be it. I don’t drink adult beverages, I don’t smoke anything at all, I’m not a clothes horse or anything akin to a fashionista, I don’t take expensive vacations. I am somewhat of an audiophile and enjoy my tunes at home and in my vehicle, and I love books whether I read them in a timely fashion or not. I suppose when you have no income, that’s high maintenance but so be it.

There’s a writer’s group that recently sent out a prompt for an upcoming reading they’re putting together, and it seems rather interesting to me. “What I want you to know.” That got me thinking about how I might answer that. For a long time I didn’t really want people to know much, although I would tell someone at the bus stop my life story if given the chance, The problem, though, was that I didn’t really know my life story. I knew events and shared history, but I didn’t understand who I was or what was my own life story. Maybe I still don’t, but I believe I’m closer than I’ve ever been. It’s not only about what happened, it’s about how that made me who I am right now. I had no perspective in those old days, so I could have been reading a book written by someone else. These days, I am reading from my own book, my own experiences, from some place deep inside. The memories are no longer disjointed factoids attached only to anger and trauma. Most of the resentment has been replaced by curiosity and questions of why things happened the way they did, mixed with a fair amount of gratitude for it all.

I often wonder what my reality would be today without some of those experiences, no matter how insane or traumatic or hurtful. Would I have learned anything without them? Would I have become a good musician or a corporate success without the trauma and the genetic predisposition to being slightly left of center? Would I still lay claim to alcoholism and food addiction or would I be a pretty, feminine girl with appropriate measurements and children? Is who I am nature or nurture? Do I question still how I’ve turned out? On some levels, I suppose I do wonder if I’ve sold myself short.

There was a local author back in the day who frequently said that events in life are a crap shoot. The bullet wouldn’t have hit you if you’d been a few seconds faster or slower on the path, the car wouldn’t have hit you if you hadn’t swerved for the deer crossing the road. Chance explains so much, if that is where you’d like to put your faith, if you choose to believe that we’re at the mercy of the fates. The flip side of the coin, however, is that everything that we experience is the answer to a prayer, a manifestation of what we call to us. I’m not quite sure what to believe. Would I still be me if the wheel had turned one more click on the roulette wheel of life?

Belief is a loaded term. Faith may be a better way to describe the indescribable and illogical sentiment that something outside of ourselves has a part in our existence. Some of us believe in a sentient and supernatural being that controls us, others believe we control our own destiny but there’s some external force that makes our existence possible. Some of us think we are all that is, and we alone are responsible for everything that makes up our reality. Since none of us knows for sure, it mystifies me why some are obsessed with what garners everyone else’s faith. That’s not about anything but power and control, in my not so humble opinion.

But, back to the original question – what do I want you to know? I suppose I want you to know how confused I am about questions like the ones I described. I want you to know how frightened I am about whether I’ll be living under a bridge when I am very much older, whether I’ve thrown away all my chances of being secure in old age. I want you to know that despite my bluster and braggadocio, I’m a really small person who isn’t sure I’m right about much of anything, that I know much of anything, and that I’ll always be alone in my thoughts of what’s right and what’s wrong. I want you to know that I can’t add 2 plus 2 without a calculator but I can follow the money in systemic oppression and tell you who’s getting rich. I understand how the prison-industrial complex has replaced chattel slavery and how the mentality of supremacy has not changed one iota since this country was founded.

I want you to know why I don’t trust very many people and how betrayal of my trust has caused me to be a rageful marionette with a withering resting bitch face when provoked. I don’t forgive easily, and when I do I’m likely never to let you know that I’ve gotten past your abyssmal testament to being a second-rate human. I’m not leaving a crack in the door that should have never been opened n the first place, because you’re likely to invite yourself in for an unsolicited, and undesired, reprise. I’d rather be alone for the rest of my days than give you, or anyone like you – and you are not even a dime a dozen – the chance to use me so frightfully again.

If there was any one thing I could tell anyone, it’s that I feel as though I’ve ruined my life, wasted my time trying to figure things out instead of living. I have worried far too much about other people, about what they think of me, about how to please them. My ego has been oversized, my self-esteem undersized. I cannot please anyone, because their feelings are not in my control. I’m far too old now to attack what I enjoy with gusto, or with abandon, because I just don’t have the energy. Along the way, people have said I am strong but I have been very tired of being strong for a very long time. Now I just want to be happy but I don’t know if I have what it takes any longer.

I want you to know I am not sure I ever had a dream, only a destination that I believed was the one prescribed for me. Right now, I am closer to contentment and happiness without a job, without an income, without full physical health than when I conformed more to status quo. In my own neurotic way, I have been fighting against conformity all my life, have never wanted to be part of the proverbial rat race, never had the confidence to take the lead. If there had been words for neurodivergence and trauma-informed care in my childhood, I wonder if those would have been of some help or just another rigid container of someone else’s design.

I want you to know how deeply I feel things, and the rage is only a measure of the love. It is only recently that I am coming to understand that my heart is too large for conformity, and refuses to be contained by science and diagnostic manuals. If you can’t understand that, just leave me alone. That will make us both happier. Some of us were never meant to be here but I believe I chose very consciously to show up in this time, as painful as it’s been. I walk between the raindrops of time, and feel the pain of people I’ve never met.

I want you to know that I’m here for a good time, not a long time, but I’m keeping the records and telling the stories. Some things should never be forgotten, and I will not forget. I am no longer trying to understand, no longer looking for explanation. I’m just trying to live in the intention of now, the reality of this moment. Sometimes I get ahead of myself, and then fear rolls over me like a blinding and paralyzing torrent of water that blocks the light and steals my breath. This must be death, when the body is useless and all thought is lost.

I want you to know that I don’t always understand what I know, or what I want you to know. I want you to know that I’m not sure I can change a single thing in my reality, but that I am overwhelmingly sure I can’t change anything in yours. That’s your work, and it’s far above my pay grade. I want you to know that I fully understand the concept of powerlessness, and that it doesn’t mean weakness. Most of all, I want you to know that I will never give up on trying to get to wherever it is that I can do the most good, live the best life, and have the most joy no matter what I say in the darkest of moments. Y’all are stuck with me, high maintenance and all.