It's pretty unlikely that this particular blog entry will ever see the light of "publication" for all five or so people who ever even bother to read the crap that my fingers spew out from my twisted brain.
It's so much kinder and gentler in a small town in central Florida than it is in St. Louis, MO. The weather, the people, the pace of life. Yes, boring sometimes, but definitely kinder and gentler to me.
Ever since moving back here, I keep getting hit over the head with the conflict that is me. Changeable, like the weather in St. Louis. Fast-paced mentally, like the crazy rushing traffic in St. Louis.
But there's this small child who just wants to sit in the corner and suck her thumb and shrink away from all the things and people who keep telling her she's doing it wrong. She's a screwup. She can't get anything right.
Now Martha Beck is trying to tell me in her "today" video blog (which is, like most of her stuff, actually a rerun) that the only way that others (people, events, would-be employers - that kind of monster) can hurt me is if they reflect something about me that I believe.
Then, she says, I should challenge that belief. If there's truth in it, make changes. If it's not true "make a list of 50 things that say otherwise" or some such crap. That's her answer to everything: make a friggin' list.
If I could lay end to end all the BS affirmations I have listed about myself with the help of various psychotherapists through the many years of my trying to get myself right, I could drown that skinny little twerp Martha Beck in them easily. I might even enjoy that.
Yes, I am angry. I know it, but I don't know how to fix it.
Here's the problem. Apparently I am, in fact, a screwup who can't get anything right. My income statement for the past going on five years would verify this fact. The truth is in the numbers.
So what happens next? How do I fix it? Well, dumbs**t, get a job. Just pluck one of those little jobbies off the little jobbie tree that everyone else but me seems to have growing in his/her back yard.
Hooray, it's so simple! Why didn't I think of that? Probably because I'm a screwup who can't get anything right.
Oh, but wait. I don't have that jobbie tree in this backyard.
Did I have one in Florida, where it was easier to grow stuff?
Um... avocado trees, check (although I never ate the things myself); orange trees (2) which never actually bore edible fruit, check; palm trees (2, one dead), check; grapefruit trees (2) one of which bore about 6 delicious grapefruit, check; magnolia trees, check; gardenia bushes, check; hyacinth bushes, check; you get the idea. I won't even mention all the other trees that dropped all kinds of messy stuff all over - thousands, check.
But no - no jobbie tree in Avon Park at 310 East Main Street.
OK, come back to the present, dear little screwup.
But why? It's so much warmer in the past, especially with these nifty pink glasses on. Leave me alone.
I have to face a few facts. The older I get, the less I fit in. All the mean children of my grade school experience, all the mean GIRLS of my high school experience, every bully and stalker and ridiculer has left his or her imprint somewhere on my brain.
My parents, the nuns and priests, every figure of authority that ever told me what a problem child I was, they're all in there too. The nuns are constantly whacking my little fingers with their horrible wooden rulers with metal inserts. Ouch.
Why can't I figure out what the truth is in this? Every human being has a reason for being here. That should include me, but somewhere in my heart it doesn't.
And the really funny thing is that something in my brain keeps insisting I work harder to fix it. The answer has always been "try harder" for me. It doesn't always work, though. Sometimes "try harder" does nothing except create that desperate energy which repels that which one most needs.
This past week has been one of the hardest ones in my life. The holidays bring everything into very sharp focus and remind us of who cares and who does not. We get to look back over what went right and wrong in the prior year and vow to make adjustments.
And herein lies the problem. What if it's all really and truly out of my control, just like it was in August of 1993 while I had to watch my dear hero and role model, my father, Robert C. Lucas, wither away, turn yellow and die?
Somebody please help me understand where the happy medium lies between trying to fix it and throwing up one's hands and saying "screw it". I could read every book ever written and still not get it.
Meanwhile, I have had NO new online transcription work available for a week. I guess this is a blessing in disguise since I have a kid sleeping in the room where my desktop computer and ergonomic work station reside. I can type things like this from the tiny laptop keyboard set up on a TV tray in my bedroom sitting on a folding chair with a small cushion (for my back, not my fat a**), but this is ergonomic-not.
One would think I could sleep past 3 a.m. out of sheer boredom if nothing else, wouldn't one? This morning my bladder had other ideas, as it often does in middle-aged women. And then the brain takes over and the whistle blows and the conductor shouts "All Aboard!" - yes, it's the 3 a.m. worry train. Choo choo!
It's amazing what comes back to haunt me at these odd hours. Did my father actually create the reality of my mid-life rosacea by his joking nickname for me as a child of Mary Rose J. Berry Nose?
I have always loved "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" - even as a 3 or 4 year old who was able and reluctantly willing to sing the theme song in perfect pitch for anyone my parents deemed a suitable audience. At one point I had a recording of this event on my father's reel-to-reel recorder.
The recorder stopped functioning years ago, probably even before the legendary basement flood. A friend attempted to repair it to no avail. The tapes all went into the trash as part of the legendary basement purge of 2009.
The tale of Rudolph has a happy ending. Everyone is able to be their own misfit self and somehow the snowman version of Burl Ives is able to magically scoot away with a song and a smile for all.
And yet, I still feel like Hermey the reluctant elf and would-be dentist before the funds for his professional education magically appeared behind the animated scenes.
I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. IF I grow up.
Statistics tell me that I have somewhere between 13 and 35 years remaining of my life, with the low end being my father's lifespan and the high end being both my grandmothers' lifespans.
Bank statements tell me I have 20 years of full-time work ahead of me, once the clock starts (that is, once I get a full-time job and keep it for the first time since 2008).
So sing along if you remember the melody that Hermey and Rudolph sang.
Why am I such a misfit?
I am not just a nitwit.
You can't fire me- I quit,
since I don't fit in.
Why am I such a misfit?
I am not just a nitwit.
Just because my nose glows,
why don't I fit in?
And I don't know how to fix it. And I don't have unlimited money or time left.
So, ring out the old, ring in the new.
Here we go again in this big recursive loop called life.
