Reality Sucks
Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2015 2:31 PM

"Destiny… to believe that a life is meant for a single purpose, one must also believe in a common fate. Father to daughter, brother to sister, mother to child, blood ties can be as unyielding as they are eternal. But it is our bonds of choice that truly light the road we travel– love versus hatred… loyalty against betrayal. A person’s true destiny can only be revealed at the end of his journey. And the story I have to tell… is far from over." - Emily Thorne, Revenge

I have been trying very hard not to allow myself back on the roller coaster ping pong ball ride, otherwise known as my reality, but it's like being sucked into a vacuum cleaner with no reverse mode. Try as hard as I might to be the one little dust bunny that doesn't end up confined in a narrow little space waiting to be tossed into the trash, but that vacuum cleaner is going to win. Every. Single. Time.

We had dinner the other night at the club for my sister Angie's birthday. Somehow the conversation came up about university. Oh, I remember now. Our server was going to KU in the fall. So the topic fell on my two sisters, how one ended up getting her masters in urban planning and the other one ended up a pharmacist with no undergrad degree. My dad joked that she spent 6 years in college only to have a doctorate. Then somehow the subject fell on me and how I spent 6 years in college with just a liberal arts degree to show for it.

I said, "that's not fair. One of those years didn't count." To which Angie replied, "how could it not count?" I replied, "I failed the entire year but it was excused by my psychiatrist." My sisters gave me an odd look so my mom piped in, "that was the year Grandpa died." Then they shook their heads as if they compassionately understood my failures.

I just sat there in my chair and asked myself, "is that the reason why I became so emotionally withdrawn and depressed? Did my grandpa's death have more to do with my poor choices than I realized?" Following his death, I started to drink more than I should have. I just assumed my bout of alcoholism was a continuation from my drunken high school days. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe his death did spiral me down a darker path... one that led to me becoming quite vulnerable to the whims of a conniving asshole who changed my life forever.

I don't know if I'll ever know the truth on that one. I can sit here and evaluate every little thing that happened to me over the course of the years, or I can block it all out and not go down that path. Sometimes I don't think I'll ever be mentally okay until I face my demons head on, but other times I think I've been facing them head on for years to no avail. Some people say, "embrace your past and learn from it." Others say to let go of your past and only focus on the here and now. Then you have the group of people who think you should only focus on the future. The way my brain works, I live in a fog which is my here and now. My future is uncertain and the insecurity of that uncertainty scares the hell out of me. And as for my past? It doesn't matter what I do or how hard I try, there are things that happened to me that define my present self. These things won't let me let go of the past no matter how much I hate to dwell on the negative.

For instance, I am afraid of sex. I want it just as badly as every other person in the world, but it repulses me at the same time. Sweaty bodies and pubic hair most of all. The scent of another person. Their taste. I wish it was like the movies where two people fit together perfectly and somehow pleasure each other at the same time. Instead, reality has given us imperfection. Which is really sad given that there are a lot of days I wish I was extremely sexually active with a thousand partners or more. But that's beside the point. Anyhow, I can't help but think that sex repulses me because deep down inside my conscience I believe it's a horrible thing. A disgusting thing. But why? It's a completely natural act that all species take part in... so am I repulsed by it forever because I was being groomed to be molested? Am I repulsed by it because maybe I was molested and don't know it? Am I repulsed by it because I was raped by that conniving asshole? Have I turned off my sex drive and declared myself asexual because of this?

These are all questions I ask myself on a continuous basis. And that's just when it comes to sex. I ask myself questions about so many things all of the time. Oh, how I wish I didn't feel this way. The best way to describe this feeling is broken. I feel very broken. You wouldn't know it by looking at me. I'm that chick you hate because it appears I am oozing bottles of self-confidence and intelligence. I'm that chick you love to hate because that appearance of self-confidence and intelligence seems to draw people to me like a moth to a flame. But those people don't know me. They only know what they assume to know because of what they see.

Reality is... I'm broken. I'm stressed out. I'm depressed. I'm anxious. I'm neurotic. I suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. I am always nervous and tied up in knots. I may sit here silently typing away but inside I'm screaming and all I want to do is bang things around. I wonder if I'm mentally ill all of the time, or if this is just my depression and anxiety taking a toll on me. I'd love to be evil, but my Snow White side keeps the evil queen in place. And by being evil I don't mean by acting like a mean girl, committing murder or some other 7 deadly sin. I just want to take a baseball bat and beat the stuffing out of a football dummy.

This reality sucks. It just does. And by the time I figure it all out, I'm going to be too old to enjoy it. I'm pretty sure.