Wanted: Lead Role

I want to star in my own life. For too long, I feel as though I have been sitting back, playing the role of best friend number one or some other sort of sidekick role. I am the go-to-girl; got a problem? Go to her. She's there to listen, offer comfort and advice, and then the scene shifts, the hero/heroine walks away, and we don't hear about the go-to-girl until she's needed again.

But having been the go-to-girl all my life, I can tell you it is not about waiting in the wings. It is more seeing life flow by around you, without ever really feeling like you're experiencing it. It is about waiting for the moment where you are called on - in a crisis, in a pinch, in a lurch. But never to share the happier moments. She is there when you need her, forgotten when you don't. Until the next necessary plot device comes along.

But I am tired of waiting for the story to sail forward. I want to live the life of the leading star - I want the romance and the heartbreak. I want someone else to be the side kick so I can enjoy all the glorious, surround sound feelings that come from truly embracing all that the world has to offer. And suddenly, I am very understanding of the concept of stage fright. How can you not be afraid when you know that your character study could plump the heights and depths of emotions in a second? That experiences which hold the most thrill could also hold the most pain?

A Cruel Mistress

Or else, as everyone else calls it, time. But this is not the age old rant about getting older and suddenly seeing everything start to shift and change (I shall save that for another day), this is more about the things that we all must go through to get to the places that we stand at today. I am talking about the experiences that brand themselves upon us, change us irrevocably, and have us emerge ever different from where we started. Perhaps some of these experiences have been kind to us - perhaps some have even been down right pleasant; but from where I stand, it seems that those I know as well as myself have walked through fires of hell to come out the other side. And sometimes, it does not feel like there truly is an "other side".

A cruel mistress I call her because she denies solace, torments with pinpoint accuracy - knowing how to humiliate and cause pain the likes of which few draw pleasure. There is nothing exquisite in remembrances - instead, this mistress draws her thousand tailed whip of memory and brings to life the emotions and thoughts buried just beneath the skin. Memory, to me, is nothing more than the tool to raise innumerable weeping welts, only to have them heal and be inflicted anew with some thought, some place, some ineffable key that opens the door and lets the mistress in to play.

And how memory has a way of playing with us. How can we trust what we remember when science tells us that there is nothing perfect about the wiring of the human brain? My memories haunt me in the form of a past I do not want, but cannot escape. There is nothing sordid about my life - no hidden bodies or crimes of conscience that I feel I must confess to. But my past, like that of so many around me, is full of loves lost, insecurities, lies, deceptions and countless decisions that prick - was it the right choice? How much differently would I choose if given the same dilemma today. And so memories creep upon me when they are not wanted, reminding me of a past that has gone before and invoking thoughts of all that is yet to come.

Resolve, Resounding, Resolution

I guess it is that time of year to think about all the things that I would like to accomplish. Or at least, to figure out all the ways I went wrong in the year gone by and all the mistakes that I do not care to repeat in the new year. But then, time is circular and it all seems to come around again; so perhaps it is not about trying to avoid situations but instead having the end result - the resolution as you will - be somewhat different and somehow better. So, I am looking behind me - at the wide cut swath of scars - and figuring out where things should be, could be different.

I know that I have not succeeded in love this past year. I have been successful in sating some of my desires - but love, I still have yet to find. And being a bit wary after the year I have had, I find that I have somehow lost the lust for love I once had. I am becoming more and more convinced that perhaps traditional views are not for me. Whether this is a passing fancy - the thrill of the new and forbidden or something more lasting, I am not sure. Yet I know that those who have excited me in the past still hold the possibility of doing so, but life impinges. Situations are not perfect. And I find myself withdrawing - whether to protect a still vulnerable heart or because my intuition has been sharpened by being beat across the rocky coldness of others before, who can say. And I wonder if withdrawal is the coward's way out - something I have never been but perhaps something I am becoming more and more??

My life is no where near where I thought it would be. I have spent the last three months of my life keenly aware of that thing that has haunted me for most of my life, except this time personified and made real. This feeling of unbelonging that has always dogged my footsteps - something I thought I had shed at this time last year - looms ever larger in my life and I find that the more years that past with this feeling of being adrift in my own life, the more and more uncertain I become that this life is really my own to direct. It is hard knowing how to look ahead to an uncertain future when it is so much easier to focus on all that has gone before - the solid foundation of facts - but nothing in the past is really worth holding on to.

And yet I find myself holding on to things. I find myself holding on to resentment and distrust; I find myself holding on to all the past grievances that have been perpetrated against me. And I do not know how to forgive or forget any longer. Perhaps there truly is no such thing or perhaps as the years have passed, I have just found it harder and harder to take in everything and push it down - subsume all the hurt and blame and anger under a layer of nicety and friendship and trust. And in the end, I am finding that I no longer want to forgive or 'play nice'. I am no longer willing to 'keep the peace' for the sake of others. I have become a bit more selfish in this respect - what you see, is what you get. I am not about to be someone you think I should be or someone you want me to be. I am not perfect - have never claimed to be and in fact, quite the opposite - but I am what I present myself as.

Doomed to Repetition

I sometimes wonder why life can feel a bit more like being stuck in an ever-repeating circle rather than just simply moving forward. We like to think that we walk through life that we're on a path - that there is some destination just within our grasp. But what if the way through life is more confuddled than that? What if life is nothing more than a useless spiral that we walk along, sometimes recognizing signposts along the way - sure that we've been there and done that, but in the end leading to some central point that we never planned or expected to reach in all our long searchings?

I just sometimes feel, at the start of each new year, that maybe my life is not so different than it was a year ago. Sure, some things are quantifiably different - no job, no dog, no flat of my own, and no rampant love life (perhaps the last one is not such a bad loss) but then other things seem the same: the ease with which I fade into the background and am made to feel like the third wheel, the fact that I will always stand back and let someone else just take the things I want without a fight. In the end, I feel resigned to history and all the things it seems not to have taught me. And I sit back, expecting more from the people around me than I will ever seemingly get.