Stumbling to find my balance

 I can be a mess of contradictions at times. I mean, we call can, can't we? But mine feels particularly pronounced. I once had a young child look me right in the eye and say, "You're a double-minded girl!" He was, I think, speaking from an evangelical Christian paradigm, and referencing the double-mindedness that Scripture warns against. But there's a truth to it.

Case in point:




I consider it the very definition of unfair that these cards exist and I don't have someone who would appreciate them as a significant other. This kind of dark sensibility is a big part of who I am as a person. I enjoy books and television shows about serial killers. I once wore out a mix tape that had nothing but "Something I Can Never Have" by Nine Inch Nails repeated over and over on both sides. (Is that really a mix tape? Probably not, huh?) I named my cat Lisbeth Salander, after the antagonistic protagonist of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Even my very name means "dark."  It also just so happens that I was born on Halloween. Some things are just beyond our control, y'know?




But then I also have this hippie part of me that loves daisies and hopes for more peace in the world (but a just peace, not one where we just ignore systems of inequality and oppression as we skip around holding hands singing "Kumbaya") and recalls childhood evenings listening to my parents' Peter, Paul and Mary albums with great fondness. It's this part of me that is drawn to SARK, the teacher of the writing program that prompted me to start this blog in the first place.


This quote is attributed to many different people on the internet, but the most likely source seems to be Henry Ford.


While I enjoy having a more forward expression of my dark/cynical/snarky side, it hasn't exactly served me well. See my last blog post for a more in-depth exploration of this fact. And since I've tried before to get a handle on my compulsive overeating - and failed rather spectacularly - I decided this time I was going to have to change some things up if I didn't want this to be yet another example of having some success, getting some weight off, but then sliding back into old habits and gaining all the weight back (plus some), I was going to have to do some things differently.



I am plagued by thoughts of being a failure, of being worthless, and all manner of other not-good things. I have a mountain of evidence I can point to which seems to back this up, as well - friends who've disappeared from my life, bosses who flat-out hated me, my broken marriage and my ex's (so far accurate) prediction that I'd be alone for the rest of my life if I left him, on and on and on.




But I'm trying to shift my thinking away from this being who I am toward these being things I've experienced. It's hard, though. But one of the things I've been trying to incorporate into my day is surrounding myself with things that are encouraging and tending more toward that hippie side.

One of those things is listening to this song every morning as one of the first things I do. Some day I hope to believe it. And that my dark side will stop internally gagging at the overwhelming positivity of it all.


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