dear gloria steinem II

“You’ll be drinking coffee all night tonight,” she heard herself think, and suddenly didn’t know if she should use her hard work ethic’s need to maintain a high level of caffeine to explain how little she ate; ‘caffeine is one of the five basic food groups.’

Britney Spears

If Britney can I can; having been this kind of person doesn’t make me evil.  Being hated for the plight of being the “advantaged” skinny girl is too much, and it’s real, and my suffering and strength is legit. “I like to keep things to myself.”  I want to kick this.  I’m disciplined, right? I take pride in that about myself, don’t I?  “Am I coming down from this?” she knew she wasn’t allowed to ask herself, just incase she ever needed it again, incase she messed up again.

 

“this story is the nightmare of someone catching up on unfinished business.”  I am watching the making of “Vanilla Sky.”  I have just learned that the same team made one of my all-time favorites, “Almost Famous.”  At first this coincidence bothered me, because I have been trying to escape my coincidences, but I’m learning to appreciate that effortless quality of mine.  For example, I don’t know about you but I would personally enjoy some sweet sounding poetry because I love the thought of flying and I like the coincidence that fly and sky rhyme.  How lucky.

“Everyone knows she can’t write anymore,” she heard herself think to herself.  It was the same internalized voice that made the coffee remark, or some sort of similar kind of realism she’d gotten used to.  “But I like being hard on myself,” she pleaded with herself, “Its one of the ways I stay so disciplined,” she slowly nodded to herself and continued on.

Gloria, now I am thinking of a song that has the line “Gloria” in it, am so thankful that the “making of” chapter is over because I didn’t really want to watch it, and want an excuse to comment on my profound laziness.  In fact, I’m now listening to what was at first a kind of ‘nails on a chalk-board’ sound that has now got this post rock ambient feel that reminds me of something pleasant from all those times I stayed up drinking coffee.  This is what I want to write about, the feeling.  I loved adderall.  There’s an admission I never knew I wanted to make.  I’ve got no clue what it means and I don’t care.  Its part of the puzzle piece of me though, and I’m complex as it is.  Somehow I believe that I have the strength to become less complex so that I can become a new kind of interesting complex.  I still believe life works this way, that you can continue to reinvent yourself.  I don’t know how or why.  It scares me a little, incase I can’t do it, but I’ve taken to not worrying about things in an attempt to accept myself as though that were some kind of thing that I should be striving to do “right now” or… always…?

Gloria, whichever Gloria you are, that’s the thing about me.  I can always tie everything together, and it bothers me that I feel like I’m stealing from Simone De Beavoir when I say that I didn’t know I’d have to examine myself as a woman before I’d know how to say anything of value at all, and I think that this makes me a feminist, and I don’t like the sound of the word feminist, and I think that it matters that I aesthetically don’t like it; it’s not pretty-sounding and I feel like I’ve got this innate femininity that is a little more beautiful than something that sounds as ugly as the word “feminist.”  Still I am drawn to it, annoyed that the reality around me still is without the right kind of feminism.

I am smiling because I’m about to watch this movie about someone getting in touch with themselves, and am hoping that maybe I internally will find the right kind of feminism.  I put a lot of weight into things.  I can feel the gravity of things, sometimes.  I mean everyone can, right?

The old me would say that these things don’t happen overnight.  A newer me would just chill and allow the wishful me to let it happen, and the me in this moment has no idea what to expect, and this is the kind of pressure I am talking about.

I’ve written some of the best shit that there is, and I am able to do so because I don’t let anyone see what I’m writing because writing was always my saving grace, and I don’t want that stolen from me.  It’s like writing only makes sense in a certain context.  I hate that.  I wish that there was writing for writings’ sake but that nauseates me.  There is too much narcissism everywhere.  I search for a disparity in my own, find none, am discouraged, and go looking again.  I like that I drink coffee and get awful nagging feelings.  I both do and don’t like that I am bored because I know it means that maybe I am sad, but it also means that it’s possible that I’ll learn new things that will occupy spaces, and maybe the pressure feeling will lessen… I mean was I kidding myself all along thinking that I knew what was up?  Something tells me no.  No I was not kidding myself, and was at the same time, but just about my own journey, which is totally normal because noone can see themselves, really see themselves, and now I wish I was watching a more familiar film like Almost Famous or The Craft or Center Stage instead of this foreign thing I don’t know all the secrets and twists and turns to.  Am I afraid to learn something new about myself?Well it’s like the gravity thing.  I have never watched this entire movie, and there are real, secret reasons why that is, and it just feels like this unspoken thing that would be so obvious to anyone if I ever let anyone in, but I don’t, and I stopped doing that a long time ago, maybe longer ago than I realize, and that’s okay.

Maybe that’s why I made myself popcorn for the first time since I was a little kid.  I know I want popcorn, coffee, to write, and I know that I may hit play despite some misgivings.  I feel like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love.  I remember when she wanted to buy the new pencil case in the beginning, and now I am reminded of all the female writers that I love and I feel a sense of joy.  I don’t trust it, but I want it: the joy.  I want the joy.  I want it all to make sense.  I don’t want this anymore.  This is modern adventuring.  Traveling within oneself.  Hasn’t everyone done this and isn’t everyone bored of this?  Why does that displease me, that not everyone does this, that the world isn’t as at peace as it could be?  I do recognize that 50% of the earth’s human inhabitants are the 50% more likely to do “good things.”  I don’t think that my feminism is off, and I think that “female’s plight” should be added to the DSM because I think it’d really speed the process along, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t, don’t try to, cause if you have to ask, you’ll never know.