searching to bury my bones.

in the story of the choctaw indians, two brothers, chata and chicksah, led their people away from the less-prosperous west. they were guided by a magical stick, which would be pushed it into the ground each night, and which ever way it leaned when they woke the next morning was the way that they would go. after traveling for an extremely long time, they found the pole remaining vertical in the area now known as mississippi. this is where they buried the bones of their ancestors that they had carried along with them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_creation_myth


my magical stick is my stream of conciousness. i don't know where i want to go, where i want to live, who i want to be around me, and what i want to do. i've been expanding my search to reach all corners of the world and everything in it -- but i'm still not sure exactly what's going to happen. this terrifies me.
when i dream [in mind and in sleep], my magical stick constantly is moving to a different direction, so i end up losing ground and after endless circling, winding up right back where i began. i'm pulled to anything that sounds remotely interesting on any aspect of life -- a pitbull named louie, india, painting, italian pizza, or a blue volkswagon vee dub. my magical stick seems to pull me off in tangents very unrelated to my life's search. i barely even trust it anymore.
hopefully, one day, my magical stick will stand straight up [awkward..] and i will be able to bury my past in my new life.

there's not a single, specific "me"

5: "sometimes we dream strange things that make us wonder if there isn't a subversive inner self -- an irrepressible and mischievous spirit within -- which delights in showing us just how falso are the shapes, boundaries and rules by which we lead our lives. this subversive smiling inner self seems intent on showing us that we cannot get away with restricting the freedom and the mysterious nature of human beings."

7: "if the things we face are greater and more important than the things we refuse to face, then at least we have begun the re-evaluation of our world. at least we have started to learn to see and live again.
but if we refuse to face any of our awkward and deepest truths, then sooner or later, we are going to have to become deaf and blind. and then, eventually, we are going to have to silence our dreams, and the dreams of others. in other words, we die. we die in life."

11: "the world 'orthodoxy' conjures up for me a world in which people have reached the final station of how they define themselves."

22: "that is perhaps why the ancient greeks, the egyptians, the africans and the indians have so many gods. each god is the abstraction of our different attributes and our different selves which need to be acknowledged and nurtured in harmony with the whole. we have to accept our many selves, and our one self. we need to be unified. all our different selves must breathe and be healthy -- the side of us that dreams, the part of us that lives beneath the stream of forgetfulness, the body's need for celebration and ecstacy, the soul's need for work, the divine in us that quietly longs for higher unition, the erotic in us that craves mortality's immortal joy.
but when any orthodoxy comes along and tries to repress any of these needs of aspects then rebellious dreams are sooner or later going to break out and disturb the good sleep of the land."

24: "the other way is to undertake the integral migration, to become an exile within the interiors of the self. we accept, we change in some way, we go mad. we live two lives, become two people. we dislocate. we implode. then our secret selves become more real than our external selves."

-- ben okri - the human race is not yet free, for salman rushdie


these quotes are very inspiring and thought-provoking in my situation. at first, i thought that orthodoxy sounded like what i was looking for -- what i needed in my life. but upon further reading, i found out that the author was pegging orthodoxy as the negative and accepting all of your different selves as the positive. i now am starting to realize that looking for my single, specific "me" probably isn't the best way to find myself. while right now i feel that all of my different selves are forced and fake, i do feel that i can develop my real selves with time.

mistakenly following in her footsteps.

sylvia plath, also known as victoria lucas, killed herself on february 11, 1963.
in the bell jar, the character of esther greenwood, also known as elly higginbottom, attempted suicide numerous times.

is this really what i want to follow? why would i want to follow in these mistaken footsteps? if each one of these people, fictional or nonfictional, led a suicidal life, why would i persue that? i really don't know the answer. i'm not a depressed person, and i'm definately not suicidal. i've had a hard life up until this point, but i'd rather make my life as w0nderful as possible with my new freedom, not just end it because of the past.
i guess that i simply like their cynical state of mind, minus the suicide. i don't want to be extremely happy and optimistic, because i feel that it's pointless - but i also don't want to be pissed off all of the time. i guess i'm a hopeful cynic.

a facination with family.

i've never really known what it feels like to have a family. my own family is distant to me, and i can't ever remember a time when i felt a part of it. most of my life was spent wishing that i was never conceived, or wishing that i was simply born into another family.
i've gotten close with my friend's parents, going as far as calling them "mommy" and "daddy" - but i was always awkward around them. i didn't act like myself, so therefore they were "adopting" a different child than myself. i don't like that.
tyler is the closest thing to a family i have, and he's my boyfriend of two years that i only get to see once a week. i am as absolutely close to myself as i can get to when i am around him - but i'm still not completely myself. there are a couple things that i do that i know are not me.
i think that i am so desperate to have children of my own because i just know i'll be able to be myself around them. there will be no impressing or not impressing. through my children, i'll be able to find out who i am. these seem like selfish reasons, but i'm just so desperate.
i need to feel what it's like to have a person love me, but also be related to me. i want to be a mother.

breaking a lifelong cycle.

when I was a child, i never really had a full understanding of myself. I didn’t have a distinguished identity in my group of friends or my family. I was simply “there,” as that’s the only way I can put it. i was never the comedian friend, or the protective sister, or the over-achieving child. if i was there, i was there - and if i wasn't, no harm done. i slipped in and out of groups and conversations and friends, but i never really found a place where i adhered.
i found myself pretending to pretend. true, i had a vivid imagination, but i didn't feel like i was on the same level as the other children i was around. i never really believed that i had an imaginary friend - but i did pretend to hold an invisible hand and had made-up and pre-planned conversations with thin air. my brother had an imaginary friend named carnible, who lived in california and only visited sometimes. everyone thought this was just the funniest thing ever.
i ended up doing stupid and odd things for attention. in fifth grade, each day at lunch i'd mix together my chocolate milk and grape juice, call it "grape milk," and act as if it was honestly delicious. it wasn't. but, after a couple days of this, i was expected to drink my grape milk, because "that's what courtney does."
i mostly remember not being able to talk to my family comfortably. i would feel awkward around my own mother, father, sister, and brothers - awkward, as if i was trying to impress them. trying to make them like me - like they were the "popular" crowd that i just yearned to be a part of. i wanted them to think i was witty and smart, with a good head on my shoulders. i wanted them to think, "wow! what a bright young girl. so intelligent at such a young age!" this isn't a way you should be around your family - but it still continues today. my only claim to fame in my family is my grades, which aren't all that good right now.
i want to find a group of people, or even just a single friend, who i can be with and be "myself." i even talk in a different voice to each of my friends, and i talk about different subject matter. in all of these personas, i've pushed myself even farther away from the real me. i don't know what it's like to act like myself.
for the time being, i'll search for that person. who knows - maybe it won't be hard at all. i just need to know where to look.

but i wasn't sure. i wasn't sure at all.

who am i?

i used to be able to answer that; i used to know who i was now and who i'd be in five years and who i'd be when i died. but now - now, i'm not sure. i feel that there has been a steady decline of myself, of who i am and what i'm about. everything that i stand for, everything that i hope for, all of my strengths, weaknesses, everything - all exponentionally getting worse. and i'm losing myself.

i'm losing myself in stress, and shyness, and fat, and sex. i'm losing myself in memories and hauntings and trauma, and i'm losing myself in where i want to go versus where i'll be. i'm losing myself in everything that i'm not.

i'm the alter-ego of an alter-ego of a young poet who killed herself. i'm fake, i'm unreal - and on multiple levels. to recover from these levels will take such a long, long, long time; when one level is overcome, i will be faced with entirely new difficulties, and entirely new world perceptions. i need to be esther greenwood. i need to be victoria lucus. i need to be sylvia plath. i need to be courtney.

the problem is that i am stuck at elly higginbottom.