update on my life

[fuchs]

So yeah, since the beginning of december I haven't been very, uhm, communicative, I guess.
I'm never in ICQ, always 'busy' in skype, waaaay behind on answering emails and comments.
Although, december was good. Creative, loving, busy. Until christmas came around, which was just awful. Lost so much family, in 2005, so we were just grandma, Henni, Pa and me. And granny grows old. And sick. I didn't want to be merry and celebrate this christmas. I wanted to crawl into my own bed and only come back when it's done and over with. But I had to, and maybe this knowledge was what darkened december for me.
So I thought, well, leave christmas behind you. Meet old friends, struggle through snow and plan the new year. Good times.
And then New Years Eve was overshadowed by misunderstandings, lacks of sensitivity and tolerance and a very childish, grumpy face. We wrecked havoc in the kitchen and had fun and I thought, okay, this is just the fitting end to this horrible year of constant fighting.
I am so lucky that so much love made 2005 bearable at all...
Anyway. 2006 started fine, for a week. Then I got rid of my wisdom teeth and everything went downhill. I cannot be creative while hurting. I cannot even think straight while on heavy medication. Okay, I thought, take a break. Sleep. Get well again. Plan february. Januaries never liked you.
Today I'm still so very tired. So prone to sink into deep fandoms (firefly, gundam wing, harry potter, lost, thief lord...) and flee reality. So very, very far away from who I want to be and what I want to do.
My mother seems to have a plan to declare me 'grossly ungrateful' which allows her to stop paying me anything. So I have to write a long counterstatement, declaring that I am not ungrateful, just mightyly pissed of, and with reason.
Still fighting.
I don't want to fight anymore. It's hard enough only being able to eat half a pizza. The upper half, I mean. To try to not let the inconvenience and pain of having a retainer all around my tongue distract me from living.
But fighting it is, then. My only motivation right now is, that this year I'm not fighting old wars, I'm fighting new ones which hopefully will settle very old problems.
Jaw. Knee. Weight.
Mother. Money. University.
Creativity.
Last summer taught me to stop being defensive. If somebody is attacking me, I am counterattacking. I don't have to defend myself when I'm not guilty. I don't have to be nice when I'm very angry. I quit being considerate when I am totally ignored, used, manipulated. That spares me a lot of long fights.
2005 I rescued my sister, the finances of my father, my studies and my teeth. I lost most of my family, few friends and very much energy. I played a lot, loved and had fun, nonetheless.
2006 I will defeat my mother once and for all until she stops bugging me, therefore rescue my finances. Also I will rescue my jaw, my knee and my studies. I will lose weight and gain very much energy. I will play. Love. Have fun.
And perhaps next january can't hurt me that much. Perhaps next winter I will be nearer to who I want to be and what I want to do. Hopefully, as the days grow longer, I won't be so very tired anymore.

Comments

[ontheseams.livejournal.com]

The thing with fights, though, is that to an extent they are goals you set yourself, things that can be planned-- it doesn't make it any less of a struggle, but it's easier, in a way, because you know what you're up against. I'm very like Buffy (the Vampire Slayer-- one of the fictional characters I can most idenfity with), in that I know what to do as long as you give me a fight to fight. I made a mess? Fine, I'll solve it. There's some sort of conflict? By all means, let's sit down and talk about it. An all-nighter for paper writing, a long-overdue apology, a new plan of action. I arrived here like the girl in my favourite myth, "her hair heart knotted into a hard, horny mass, her eyes void of brightness." And somehow I untangled myself, learnt to walk and speak and be, because that's what you do-- that's who we are.

But what I have been struggling with lately is--
the reason we fight is the "at-the-end-of-the-day". To keep safe, or to gather like treasure, the things we come back to. Love. Friendships. Home. Where fighter-self and person-self can meet in the middle and create art, beauty, meaning. But what if you feel like the foundation isn't there? Like "the ties that bind us" don't bind you enough? The problem with that is that you can't turn it into another fight to fight-- you can't forge a life of (mutual) meaning out of thin air. "Aim your road on my bow of hope, and in a frenzy I will free my flock of arrows" (Pablo Neruda, a theme for me last year), but if you don't know how to work with, gain strength from or maintain strength in, a certain situation? I don't feel like I'm being given enough to work with at all. I see your hardships and I empathise, but I see your strength and in a way, I envy, because I feel like I lack the sort of foundation you have, that which gives you the strength to say "I will, I will."

[fuchs.livejournal.com]

The most positive thing about my fights has always been that I could look back at them, afterwards.
I can look back and see a long list of fights fought and of goals reached and not.
I fought for this foundation and gained it. But this one fight, the one about love, friendship, home, is one you can't fight like any other.
If there's no victory in sight, it doesn't necesseraly mean that you didn't fight hard enough, didn't believe anough, weren't good enough. In this fight, chance and luck are your unreliable allies. I always thought fights with these allies easier to bear with, than those without them. At least it didn't have to mean 'my fault' when I didn't succeed.

I think you are, as always, a special case. You crave this kind of foundation, but normally people need years to gain it. Slowly separating from home-that-was, settling somewhere, meeting people, sorting trough them. I won this fight in the end of 2002, when I was 23. And that was very fast indeed! (It seems to be believed that the time of life between 20 and 30 is kind of reserved for this fight.) Incidently, I wouldn't have been able to fight for creativity, for strength of will and for finding my true self before then.
You are, and you fight all those fights, without a foundation. Yeah, I think I can imagine how terribly hard that must be.
And perhaps Lady Luck and Lord Chance aren't that fast. Need more time than you do. Perhaps even your special-ness can't rush this fight.
It's a sad thing, that giftedness and swiftness always seem to come with impatience. That's a cruel package indeed.

[ontheseams.livejournal.com]

It feels like a punishment for figuring things out quicker than is normal. I reached that certain point, great, but the 'reward' is having to sit and wait for 'life' to catch up with me. In a way it's just like high school, where you learn the lesson in the first ten minutes and spend the remaining half hour wanting to smash your fists against the walls. It just doesn't feel worth it.