Renewal

This blog expires in twenty-two days, unless I renew it. I’ve had this blog for years now as a faithful companion on nights where my pride, my anger, or my frustrations kept me up at night, but I find I am not the same person, or writer, that I was when I started this blog. Of course, some days pride stings my throat, anger rumbles in my belly, and frustration fuzzies my brain, but I’m not sure my way of expressing it is the same. I used to laugh everything off, maybe because I was so often laughed at. It was easier to cope with life by mocking it rather than accepting it, which, unfortunately for me, just makes me another uninteresting and desperate cliché. Do not worry though, my self esteem isn’t as low as it might seem to you. In fact, it’s high enough that I might actually engage you with my sincere thoughts, and not just what I think would bring laughter to your lips. 

Have you ever told a story so many times that you’re sick of hearing yourself recite it? That’s how I feel about the brand of comedy I’ve chosen to publish here. It’s almost as if I was trying really hard to keep wearing the hard shell I built around myself: Nothing gets in, but nothing gets out. So fuck it.

For the last ten years of my life I have taught myself to be closed off emotionally, to expect rejection in every encounter. I haven’t always been successful in the past, but my present has been successful and lonely, and not because I lack companionship in my life. My life is lonely because I won’t let the people who love me get too close to me. I guess that’s what happens when you tell a child to be anything other than themselves, to be “normal.” At some point, that child wil turn into a tween and find ways to slowly start closing off her heart. This was an active decision, a series of habits I began concocting when I was fourteen. If the people close to me were going to point their fingers and laugh at me for writing poetry, for always speaking my mind without censorship, for obsessively reading Oscar Wilde (even during social gatherings), for being the purest form of myself, then I had to find a way not to care about their opinions. Because the alternative was to become “normal,” and, well, I seemed to be incapable of accomplishing that feat.

The change did not occur overnight. It took years. It wasn’t until I was twenty that I realized that I was no longer the same trusting person I once was. Trust is an interesting thing, because I find it has little to do with the information one keeps secret. I could care less if the world knew the number of sexual partners I’ve had, or if it knew about the time I got my period during a piano recital, or if people found out that I struggle with bulimia. Who gives a flying fuck? If anything, these objective facts can always be worded in ways to create a sense of empathy in others. No, no, trust has nothing to do with factual secrets; trust has to do with revealing the inner workings of your heart. To trust someone means to let them know your feelings, despite your pride, anger, or frustrations. To trust someone means to let them  know that they make you vulnerable and not just that: to trust someone means to let them make you vulnerable. In that sense, I don’t think I trust anyone. I used to trust everyone and I taught myself to trust no one. On the bright side, nothing and no one can touch me: no words or actions are too painful that my life just stops; I always find ways to move on or to use the hurt to fuel my work. I have made myself as invulnerable as I could possibly be. Yet, on a darker note, nothing and no one can touch me.

I used to write comedy for a variety of reasons, but mostly to cope with my pain and anger, and turn it into tasty resentment and wit. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to unlearn what took years to teach myself, and I don’t want to spend the next ten years of my life doing it. So, bad habits must be discarded and newer ones must be created.

So, will I renew this blog? Most likely, but not to cater to anyone’s trailing laughter. It will cater to my heart and only my heart. At times it might be funny, at other times it might be heart breaking, and most times it will probably boring. The point is no longer to build up walls with amusing rationalizations and funny comparison. The point now is to tear down those walls.