It's afternoon, I'm on the couch as usual with the fucking tv on. Waiting to feel some fraction of self-content. Or at least for the drugs to kick in... I'm watching a DVR recording from BBC Jewels: Joe Jackson. And when Joe starts into the bridge of "Is She Really Going Out with Him?", I feel the slightest tug of memory. A comforting old feeling is buried in my abused grey matter and I want to re-experience it, so I close my eyes desperately rummaging through my memory banks for that spirited young girl I once was. She gleaned so much "adult" meaning and moony teen butterflies from this sarcastic Joe Jackson song. Its smart cheekiness informed my psyche, at the brink of adolescence, portending the mixed emotions and punishing complexities of grown up life.
That was so many charmed summers ago. I spent them in a state of euphoria: developing serial crushes on country boys, riding horses all day long, building hay and log forts, hanging out with my dozens of country cousins, trying on a variety of identities - suspended in a Rocky Mountain High - so far away from my suburban metropolis home. It was in that protective, unscrutinized bubble where the radio fashioned a colorful 70's and 80's soundtrack that painted the world in groovy Brady colors, therefore depicting my expectations of what was yet to come with a growing interpretation of life itself. Of me. I thought I wanted to become a marine biologist, borrowing the idea from being privy to my Mom's thesis fieldwork. I wanted to be a gymnast (a la Nadia Comaneci). And most secretly, a performer of some kind: singer, dancer actress?! Daydreaming, hmmmnn... so delicious. Nothin', except my shyness discouraged me from imagining myself as "Benny" in Elton John's "Benny and the Jets". Engaging in these fantasies was so fun, seductive even! Though I didn't know it at the time that "electric boots, a mohair suit" were never going to be in my future. But oh, how I miss being her!
Which may explain my ennui, or dysfunction, lately.
I feel like at 39, I should be proud of my life, along with its many illuminating detours, legitimate accomplishments, the people I've known (loved and learned from), my intellectual and emotional capacities, etc... Whatever makes a person - shouldn't I find some satisfaction in owning this ephemeral thing called identity. This thing called me? Somewhere along the way, between those sunny summer days to now. I've lost my way. My ability to bounce back from a setback or disappointment is becoming increasingly hard. I feel helpless and useless. I end up trying to make sense out of each senseless day. I hate myself for what seems like frittering away all that intellectual capital my parents invested in me and that I worked hard at in my 20's and 30's to accrue. It feels like I'm leading someone else's life, now. My personal equity has been misspent or lost somehow, left behind, back at the last fork in the road.
I'm going to look into this... 'cause I don't want to keep feeling sorry for myself. It's fucking boring.
Bad day. Sorry to be gloomy. Maybe, I'll dig through my cd archives and listen to something to defibrillate my soul.
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