We’re about to go on a quick trip from attachment to detachment in one post.  Ready?  I’m not sure I am, but here we go.  Ever since I was … a zygote … I have lived and breathed for the approval of other people.  I have existed to make people proud of, in love with, or enamored of me.  It is an addiction that lives in a house in my chest with all my other addictions (active and otherwise).  I have fed these addictions with actions done in expectation of the reward, the pay off, the acceptance, not realizing that  it’s a temporary thing and soon … likely very soon after the pay off the other person will move on to the next thing.  The next focus. They will return home and feed their own gluttonous needs and wants.  When you are not serving up the soup of the day that their inner glutton craves, they move on, or worse, they get angry at you.  They may even hate you.  These little monsters are ravenous and they don’t have time for you if you’re not feeding them.

I know I’m rambling.  I didn’t say the ride would be easy or coherent for that matter.  So, this morning I got a phone call.  A simple enough phone call, it was my Mom, there’d been a miscommunication that was in the grand scheme of things pretty minor.  I was yelled at and as per usual accused of being selfish. This is a recurring theme in our relationship by the by, and part of the reason why no matter how successful I’ve been or may become why I find it so hard to enjoy.  My choice to be a writer the majority of the time has felt ephemeral, insubstantial, and extremely selfish.  There’s this little fucker that runs around in my head saying: “How dare you go around here pretending that living this dream is ok, living this life you’re living is fair to anyone else! How dare you be enjoying life on your terms, you selfish bitch!”  And I would gladly smother him with a pillow if I could find it in my constitution to consciously and subconsciously disagree with him consistently.  He’s my absorbed twin that never got to manifest in body. He has lived with me since I was that zygote.

If I am to have the life I want, and honest to God I can’t even figure out exactly what that is cause he won’t shut the fuck up, I have to abort.  I have to abort all people, places, things, thoughts, and ideologies that implant doubt in my ability to achieve anything an everything I want to believe in this life. Even if that means I have to create distance from those whom I love very much. And that hurts, it feels like a literal ripping apart of myself from myself.  The person I knew myself to be and the person I am becoming cannot live in the same place.  One must die for the other to live. Because it’s not about whether or not I’m a good or great writer. It’s about what I believe  myself to be, and I will never ever ever ever believe in myself if I continued to be caught up in the sub par desires and expectations others have for me.

I think we’re almost there. The twin wants to have a word to ensure that I don’t isolate people … always the worrier he is.

None of this is to say that I’m cutting people off or doing one of those obnoxious “Facebook cleansing” were I get rid of my haters/detractors.  I don’t think I’m that pretentious … yet. What I am purging is the value I’ve placed on people’s expectations of me and my limited thinking. The fear that I have of aspiring to whatever the fuck I want to because it seems some how “wrong” or unattainable,  is a cancer, and if I have to gut myself with knife and rip it out  along with every fucked up thing I was raised to believe or told to believe about myself I. Will. because goddam this is my life and I’ve only got one shot at it. It’s hard enough trying to be somebody without being simultaneous made to feel like the somebody you want to be is wrong or unfair to others.  Fuck that.  Yes, I do think I’m good enough to achieve any accolade you could name for my writing, but I won’t even have the capability to be in the running if I don’t cut all this self defeatist bullshit out of my life. And none of the accolades matter anyway if I’m not doing this for myself because I must, because it was implanted in me to be this person before I was a zygote. It’s my destiny. Yup, I’m over here manifesting destiny.  It’s harder than childbirth, but it is the only true freedom.

Ok, we’re here. I’m done. For now.

Rosie.