We live in a society where a person’s worth is sooner judged by a scrap of metal on four wheels than on character and integrity. Where a suit and tie mean power, and success, and the goodness of intentions go unrecognized and unappreciated.  We live in a society where beauty is measured by a waist line rather than our deeds or the warmth inside our hearts. Where obsessing over a number on a scale, or a number on a tag, is considered normal and an estimated 70 million people worldwide will have an eating disorder; some of them as young as 11 years old. Where people take their own lives because they hate so deeply what they see in the mirror. We live in a society where a father would sooner teach his daughter the value of appearance than the value of self-respect and demanding respect from others; and sooner teach his sons the value of the figures on his pay cheque over compassion, empathy, and patience. 

We live in a world where you can get product in every colour, shape, and size but the models selling them in the pages of magazines come in one colour, one shape, one size. Where it’s okay to be different, but not that different, not that kind of different. Where breast implants and butt implants, face lifts, tummy tucks and books on “why men love bitches” are real things that people feel that they need.  We live in a world where self-esteem is still FOUGHT for, and not a basic human right. Where niche campaigns that promote health, wellness, and happiness, have to exist because for some reason our daughters and sons are sooner taught fractions than how to love themselves and treat others with that same dignity. Where a sense of self-worth has to be earned through accomplishments or validation from others instead of being instilled in us from birth.

We live in a society where scars have the ability to prevent connections, and the shadows of our mistakes are forgiven, but never forgotten. Where our past has the power to dictate our future regardless of who we are or who we might want to be. 

We live in a society where the worst thing you can be is sensitive. Where people would sooner expect you to toughen up and move on than expect somebody to be a little more considerate, or have a little more sympathy. Where we have no hesitations in honking our horns, or yelling at our servers, or criticizing our fellow-man, but every reservation in putting ourselves in another person’s shoes and inconveniencing ourselves for the sake of another person’s well-being.

Today our success is measured by meaningless numbers. By money and things. By ownership. And then that success and that ownership is compared to the success and ownership of our neighbours and our hard work is either substantiated or not good enough. Today our contribution to society is measured by our income, our spending habits, the money we pump back into the economy and not on how we treat the people around us. We live in a society of first impressions and everybody is fighting to make the perfect one for strangers who don’t matter and who won’t actually care. 

People are fighting for legacy in the wrong ways.

And I feel so lost.

---I have so much more to say about this---

Wake up 4am. Eat? Maybe? Bike to job #1. Work. Work. Work. Try not to pass out. Bike home, feed cats. Eat coffee for lunch. Bike to job #2. Work. Work. Work. Go to UBC to check on dog. Work. Work. Work. Work. Bike home. Feed cats. Shower. Bike back to UBC/work. Walk dog. Feed dog. Get to house at 11pm. Collapse into bed. Sleep for 5 hours. Wake up. Repeat.

Okay. Okay I got this. 

Remember what you were like when you were 23 and then cut me some slack.

Heavy

I think I cry more than anybody I know. 

I think the idea of graduating is affecting me a lot more than I realize. I have been in school for 19 years...the security of those four walls and the desks lined in rows and the smell of chalk is all I know. There is safety in university. A comfort in knowing I am allowed to be in debt and I am allowed to be uncertain. Comfort in knowing that I don't have to be getting married or pregnant. Right now I don't have to know where I want to buy my first house, I don't have to know anything about mortgages or property taxes, I don't have to worry about what school to send my kid, I don't have to worry about my parents getting older. These things have been reserved for future Lisa. Reserved for the right time and the right place. But will I be ready to face everything that comes after I graduate? 

The truth is I want so much more out of this life. I want more than the husband and kids and dog and white picket fence. I want more than the 9 to 5, watch-the-clock desk job. And while I want to get married and I want to have kids and a dog and, yeah, maybe even a fence, I want more than routine. Life is about moments, and I want every moment of mine to be something I can look back on and be proud of. Have I set myself up to get more out of this life? Have I kept my options open? Do I have the strength to take what I want? 

The worst thing I can imagine is ending up like my father; so deeply discontent and looking for any escape he can find. Infidelity. Alcohol. White hot, blinding rage. Sleep. The worst thing I can imagine for my life is forgetting how fragile it is, and wasting it on anger or regret or bitterness. 

But what do I want out of life? What am I doing? Who do I want to be? 
I am so terrified and so anxious and so affected by my past that sometimes I wonder if I have the strength to keep going. To claw my way out from the clutches of the beast inside my heart.

I wrote this last year in a journal I had to do for school.

"Growing up was sort of difficult for me. My Dad left my Mom and started a new family before I had even been born and as a result I felt the weight of stress and burden and suppressed resentment for much of my childhood (if only in my head). Being so small and fragile made me an easy target for bullies and I never really had any friends. Instead when I was younger I spent most of my free time alone; preforming scientific experiments on plants, drawing maps to non-existent buried treasure, interviewing my cat. Everyday when the bell rang for recess my heart would jump into my throat and I was showered with an unrelenting anxiety that made it hard to breathe. I experienced early on the amazing thoughtlessness and often downright cruelty of people, and as a result I became guarded. Even as I got older I took it upon myself to become as detached and self-reliant as I could. People were disappointing, and I had already suffered through so much of it that I figured it would be easier just to be alone. Instead I found peace in writing, dance, music, and any other hobby that would distract me from the outside world."

And I find it interesting to read this. Because on the one hand I AM detached. I am detached and I am disillusioned. If I needed anybody to substantiate me as an individual I would have given up on this life a long time ago. I have made myself happy (or I have scraped by, at least) for 23 years while people came in and out of my life. I have gotten by relying on nobody but myself. I have overcome self-inflicted injury, years of eating disorders, drugs, alcohol, sexual abuse. I have worked hard to build myself up despite the cruelty of others. I may have so much more work to do, but here I am. Still standing. So I'm detached and self-reliant...but I care. Does that make sense? No, I'm sure that it doesn't. But I do, I care. I care so damn much about people and what they think and what they feel and do. I care what people think of me. I am detached and self-reliant and yet I am so eager to please, and eager to find that one person that makes me feel good about myself. Male or female, friend, lover. Doesn't matter. I want to find that one person that loves me just the way I am. Now. Not who I am going to be when I figure myself out. I want to find that one person that stays with me because they think that I am great. I want someone to kiss my forehead and love all of my flaws and tell me "it's okay, Lisa, you are doing a great job. You can relax for a little bit because I will make you feel good about yourself until you are strong enough again".

Believe me, I wish confidence and self-assurance came easy. And I wish I could forget my father and the fact that he left us and started a new family. I want to forget the men I considered father figures growing up that I became attached to and then were no longer around. I want to forget bullies and friends who decided I wasn't worth their time. I want to forget the guys who I fell  in love with and broke my heart. I want to forget all of it so I can maybe stop blaming myself and thinking about all the reasons why I may have driven every single one of them away. 

I am trying so, so hard. But I have done it all on my own and I just need somebody to be here and just fucking BE here. 

Ask a boy for a little bit of reassurance and they go running in the other direction. 

Why do stability and certainty have to be all or none terms? Why do they have to mean "marry me, right now"? I am certainly not asking anyone to know that after 8 months. I don't even know what I am going to eat for breakfast tomorrow. 

Why can't certainty mean..."I am certain that you are adorable, and I am certain that you make me happy right now. I am certain that I will see you this week because seeing you makes me happy. I am certain that I am going to make my very best effort not to hurt you when you cannot afford to be hurt. And I am certain that even though I may get distant, you are special to me".  

Why can't stability mean "you are important to me, and I feel distant and confused and tired right now but I am going to put that on hold for just a little bit because I see that you are having a bad week and could use some sympathy and a hug".

Are my expectations really that unreasonable? 

And now my eyes are open,
        And now my heart is closing. 

Working two jobs is rough. Working two jobs while not being satisfied with your school timetable and furiously changing it every day is also rough (this is probably a product of pre-graduation stress). And then doing that while trying to find extra jobs to pay off your VISA. And then grocery shopping and doing laundry and cleaning your apartment and cycling wherever you have to go. And then doing all that while being incredibly ill and not sleeping at all.

I suppose, if I put things in perspective I am quite fine.
But I still would like a hug in a big big way.

I had no inspirations upon starting this post. 

There are clouds rolling past my window in the light of dusk. 

I am currently having some vague internal debate over...my entire life. Although it is all very vague and messy, like my thoughts are a big pile of vague spaghetti.

I ate mangoes for dinner. Although now I wish I had had spaghetti. 

Something awful happened to somebody that I don't know very well and I briefly felt anxious, but I closed my eyes and I took a deep breath and now I mostly just feel all the empathy in my body trying to find a way out.

One day I am going to be old. One day I might be so old that I won't remember anything I've done or anyone I've met. And I would just like to have it written somewhere that I existed and I loved people and I did my best to be good and I felt like spaghetti sometimes. Even if Mark is the only person who  reads this, this is my silly life and I am doing what I can with it. And one day I will look back on this journal and I'll remember who I was trying to become.

I like walking alone at night. I like watching the birds, their fat white bellies illuminated from the street lamps below. I like watching people hustle about. There is no such thing as silence here. And while it is certainly nice to escape, sometimes the traffic and the laughter and the feet on pavement make you feel a little less alone. A little more at home.

I spend a lot of time staying strong. For myself, for others. Sometimes it's nice to just break down. It's nice to just fall apart, alone in the dark city where nobody will judge you or ask you what's wrong.

I'll pick up the pieces tomorrow.

The Nature of the Beast

I feel like a burden. I feel like the very idea of me is a burden to many people. And the idea that I might, in fact, be a burden makes me want to run far far away to a land filled with elephants and surfboards and beaches and no worries. 

In fact I quite often feel like a burden. I burden my parents financially. My mother, emotionally. When I am not calling for help out of my hole of debt, I am calling in tears because I cannot get a handle on my anxiety (which explains why I haven't spoken to my mom in what feels like weeks; I have felt oddly at peace and the weight of my anxiety has lifted--if only temporarily-- I should really call her). I feel like sometimes I have emotions and values that other people don't. People tell me I would get by if I just cared less. And even though I have been spending my days focusing on myself--working, climbing, sleeping, registering for school--and even though I would never sacrifice who I am, I do not agree that it would be best not to care. And that is who I am, I guess. I think caring is important. I think getting close to people, as scary as it is, is important. And sometimes I think that means caring about how they feel and what they think. 

So here I am feeling like a burden to the people around me. To people who know me well, know me a little, people who don't even know me at all. I feel like my mere presence is a burden, a blight upon the earth, an unwelcome blemish. I am a blemish. Every feeling that I have been brave enough to feel has been invalid. Someone has made it invalid. "You shouldn't be sad", "You shouldn't be worried", "Someone has it worse than you, you know", "think about the children in Africa", "well what about so and so, how do they feel?", "stop caring so much", "relax". Geez, sorry. This has happened so frequently, that recently I have taken to invalidating those feelings myself.  My feelings and my thoughts are equal and opposing forces. I have an ache in the pit of my stomach with a brain saying things like "I do not have any logical reason to be upset", "consider the other person's perspective", "don't be sad", and these things antagonize one another until numbness is the only logical response. Until my feelings feel like a burden to everyone around me and I have no choice but to carry their weight on my own. Until my knees buckle and I resolve to feeling nothing.

So my feelings are a burden. And I guess the rest of me is too. Although I can't really figure myself out long enough to tell. As far as I've gathered I'm on the extreme end of whatever it is, though. I am either too loud or too quiet. Too chubby to be a head turner or too skinny to be healthy. I'm either a pushover or a bitch. A suck-up or lazy. I either annoy--incessantly pestering others with unwanted cheer--or I furrow my eyebrows in a look I am sure is uninviting. Somebody somewhere feels burdened by my  enthusiasm or bitchiness or compliance. Heck, somebody somewhere probably feels burdened by my kindness. "How dare she be so nice to me". 

And that's where it gets sticky. I'm not caring, right? I'm numb. And now I'm a mess because the one thing I thought I had going for me...this compassion and empathy and kindness that I have FOUGHT to make a part of me in spite of the cruelty I've faced...well the only thing it gets me is criticism. "You care too much", "you're too nice". In my struggle to become a good person I seem to have missed something.

I guess I should be asking if my needs are being met. But that would require knowing what those needs are.  But to be honest I feel like I am a fairly simple person. I need food and water and shelter. I need time for activities, I need to be outdoors. I need to feel the forest floor on my feet, sand in between my toes, rain on my face. I need a little bit of sympathy sometimes, a lot of sympathy during a certain time of the month. And I need to feel like I am doing somebody, anybody, just a little bit of good. Because I refuse to believe the world would be better off if we didn't care about each other. 

I certainly have a lot of things to work on.