"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."
- George Bernard Shaw
...So does that mean it's better to never get it and be miserable, or to get it and be miserable? I'm in a state of not being able to decide.
Sidenote: If a tragic beer bottle accident is the worst thing in the world for someone, they've got it good.
Haven't you noticed how certain festivities never seem to end? You're sad when they're over, but within seconds it's that time of year again. The time this time? Roll Up The Rim, baby!
Last year, there were many ridiculous adventures in rolling, from the time the cup of winners was left unattended and it took all my ethics and morals and convictions put together to not take the entire cup...all the way to the time I spilled my steaming cup of hot coffee all over myself on a first date and luckily it was a winner so I got another one (along with a conveniently awkward clothing malfunction and pretty severe burns). Ah, to be young and addicted to caffeine.
For the record, I can smile again when I look back on stuff like that. It duesn't hurt me deep down anymore, even when I stare it all in the face. Sometimes I miss the way things used to be, but my only regret is that I didn't appreciate it as much when I had it; I'm taking my lesson away for the future.
It's 3:28 in the A.M. and I'm eating Greek chips and drinking real orange juice with pulp (not from concentrate) and just finished watching One Tree Hill with Emily. I'm sitting on a lumpy couch with a misplaced pair of scissors beside me and a dream on the fringes of my mind that I can't quite grasp but can't let go of either...I think it had something to do with a cruise ship and a jeep and a long-lost something or other. I slept twelve hours last night. I did not stop eating for more than half an hour at any point since 4 P.M.. Oh, and I'm wearing Sunday socks, which is very confusing, which might help to explain how I forgot to put mascara on today (which is very unlike me and had me distracted the rest of the day...slash made taking my make-up off a thousand times easier tonight. But anyways...). This is me. This is exactly where I'm at and it has to be good enough. I have very little energy to give in a day, and the fact that I have that much to write about (and am even writing a blog, for that matter) is a miracle in itself. And tomorrow I'll work harder. And the next day, and the day after that. "And one day, you find you're strong enough to fight through the pain until it doesn't hurt anymore."
We live in a world that pushes us forward, begging us to take the plunge and dive into whatever we most desire and to do whatever it takes to get it...sex, money, alcohol, drugs, power, fame, "happiness." And then we get hit with the double standard: when we, especially as women, give our all to get what we want, we're seen as conniving, pathetic, egotistical or slutty. We're taught in one breath to move as fast as possible for the ever-shifting finish line, and at the same time be prepared to hit the pause button at any moment and to somehow know when that should be. We're new at this, for crying out loud! I'm twenty-one years old, and I do not have this whole living thing figured out yet. I make a lot of mistakes, regularly, and at some point I need to stop apologizing for things. Some of the time, I'm really not sorry. And some of the time I'm even proud of myself. But for the rest of the times...I just need to change. Slowly. If I try to rush this part of the process, I'll really mess things up. I'm in way over my head, in ways no one even understands, but I think that if I go slow enough I'll be able to surface slowly and not burst my lungs from the pressure.
I have been bombarded all my life with conflicting messages, and they get harder to decipher every day. Relationships are the hardest. Always have been, probably always will be. It's at the top of the list for what I most desire, what I am most willing to sacrifice for, and therefore have the most power to hurt me. Go slow they tell me, as they throw images and story lines at me that tell me it's not possible to. Fast is the new slow. But fast love hurts just as bad as slow love, the potential for pain just comes more swiftly.
In the words of Brooke Davis, "Slow is good, but fast is better," but it begs the question "for whom?"
