50 Things I Should Have Said

I wasn’t going to write this, because who cares, but then I remembered that this is my blog and I’m entitled to use it however I see fit.  Ha-ha, universe.  Though it oft seems you are conspiring against me and waiting for me to go off the deep end, this is one aspect of my life you can’t have jurisdiction over.

The semester is almost over–Fall of 2015, part one of three of my senior year, and it has not been easy for me.  I mean class-wise, it was fine, always is for the most part.  But in terms of emotional well-being, well, it was rough.  And certainly there have been times it’s been worse, but it was the first time I’ve really thought so much of it to be just…unfair.  Full of a lot of trying to be a good person, trying to make people happy, and a lot of feeling empty.

[EDIT: I know that when people read this, half of you will understand, and half of you will be impossibly confused, because you know different sides of me.  I hope that you will not read it and find me to be an inherently miserable person, because I really don’t think I am.  But inner demons cannot be denied, and it is something I needed to write.]

Real talk.  Alter-ego writer’s voice I tend to tuck away.  Being a person is…  I oft feel a prisoner in my own skin.  I’ve tried really hard since I was little to get out of it, but inevitably, in certain settings, I am subject to the shackles once again.  I guess it’s the introvert mantra, but I don’t want it.  All I’ve ever wanted is to connect with people.  But I do not.  I sit, silent.  I cower by walls.  I hide in bathrooms (youth groups in high school were a rough time) (shoutout to Sarah Scotchie, she knows).  I think about how much I want to jump and sing and blab, but I cannot part my lips.  Or when I do, something goes horribly wrong or I have an ant in my teeth, and the failure sends me back to silence.  And thus, I recede to the edges.

Let me give you an example.  Yesterday at work, we were all sitting at a table–a group of like seven–rolling silverware, and I had been wanting to just leave but really had been set on making more of an effort with my coworkers, so I forced myself to speak.  I  got up and was like, “we’re about done, right?”  And my student manager was like, “yep!”  And I said, “okay, cool!  I’m gonna clock out.  …just didn’t want to be weird and just like disappear haha.”  and she was like, “Oh, it’s cool!  To be honest, I probably would have just been like “oh, where’s Melanie?” and everyone would have been like, ‘Melanie who?’ Haha!”  And I was like.

I have worked here for two years.

TWO YEARS.

I am invisible, and I tell myself it is by my own choice to make myself feel better, but I don’t know if it is.  Lately I’m starting to feel I’m just made of different atoms.  Eh, not even lately.  Pretty much have felt like this forever.  Always think it will change.  Yet to be proven wrong.  Flip flop on how I feel about it.

Some people don’t get it, some people don’t see it, but I live it and it makes me feel very small a lot.

Now, the implications (and really, also, causes) of this are that I hold back a considerable amount of what I have to say.  Which is probably good in a lot of cases; I mean, honestly, my humor is too twisted for a lot of people, my standards are higher than many would care to know, and often I’m just a moron.  But I think some of those things I yell alone at my fridge would be better off spoken.  That is not to say that I don’t indicate, that I don’t try to speak up–I do.  I try to say the things that I need to say.  But, in general, the tendency is to water something down to being as un-serious as possible and throw in 2500 jokes and say it in a particular way that renders all of the original words meaningless not only to the other person but also to myself.

What I’m saying is that, generally speaking, I’m not saying the important things I want to say clearly, and when I shut off into myself, I don’t say the things I should at all.

[By the way, if you’re reading this like “everyone’s like that,” shove an actual brick up your ass.  The fact that other people are like this and deal with it too doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.]

[And also, arrogant turdbag reader, the point of writing is to connect with what other people feel anyway SO YOU SUCK.]

Anyway.  Anger at a figment aside, the big thing that changes this, that makes it fine, that makes me make it feel like I am seen, like I can speak–is relationships.  I have always valued my friendships more than anything in life because I know that people are the most important, that we are all we have.  But this year a lot of people who were very important to me stopped being present in my life without explanation, and in that I experienced a loneliness I have not felt in years.

I also experienced an incredulous gratitude to the few who stuck around, and the new people who were kind to me this year.  It has meant more to me than those individuals can possibly know.  While losing those other figures was still incredibly difficult, their presence really softened the blow.

It is a fundamental weakness or strength depending on your deck, but substantial relationships are the very most important thing one can have in life.  I wondered, over many mullings about what went awry, what the issue was underlying the loss of these friendships.  And the only conclusion I could come to was that I was expecting too much.  Which I think is half baloney, and half true.  But it made me really understand what I need from people and what I am willing to give, reasonable, unreasonable, or other.  Which made me realize…I need to be upfront about that.  I could benefit from being more upfront about a lot of things.  We all could.

So, now, wannabe psychologist ramblings and outbursts in brackets out of the way, we can get to the meat of today’s post.  An ambigous, cooler in concept list born out of emo-ness and “hey, that could be fun.”  It is just the first of many steps in which my blog goes from something kind of cool into the cesspool that is Buzzfeed.  I even have a meme up there.  ↑  It has begun.

But yeah.  Some on the list will be pointed, some will be general.  It was hard to think of fifty, and that made me very happy.  My goal is to chop down this list, and thereby this tendency, substantially in the next few years.

Anyway, here it is: the list, in all of its anticlimactic glory.

 

50 Things I Should Have Said:

1. I think you have a beautiful heart.
2. I have no more time for hollow words.
3. I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove to me by destroying yourself.
4. Yes.
5. I appreciate the thought, but this princess towel just isn’t really me, Grandma.
6. The way you treat people is disgusting.
7. You’re a hypocrite, and I wish it didn’t matter to me.
8. No.  (To “do you want a cookie?” at Hardee’s.)
9. You mean so much to me.  Thank you for forcing your way into my life, and I wish you didn’t leave.
10. No.  (To “do you want two cookies for a dollar?” at Hardee’s.)
11. I don’t like it when you talk to me like that.
12. I want to talk to them.
13. I owe so many works to your memory.
14. You don’t deserve this.
15. The text was confident but I cried the whole way home.
16. Stop being a flake.
17. I don’t deserve this.
18. You broke me with a single glance.  If this is what you want, I’m done trying.
19. I value our friendship.
20. I’m down to cuddle if you are.
21. You weren’t in my dream last night.  (To undo this one time I told someone about a dream I had where they farted on me…trust me, that did not go over well.)
22. Is it a hobby of yours to make me feel like shit?
23. I think you are so damn perfect.
24. I have!  I’ve worked on little video projects of my own since I was in fourth grade.
25. I am not fat, you asshole.
26. I am not a bad singer, you asshole.
27. You are an asshole.
28. Thank you for caring about what you do.  Thank you for expecting so much from us.
29. Thank you for making me believe in myself when I didn’t.  At all.
30. No, thanks.  (To “do you want a large?” at Mcdonald’s.)
31. I’m not laughing.
32. All of those songs were about you.
33. This is bad.  Don’t let people lie to you.  You should not pursue this.
34. Why do you treat me so nicely and them with disdain?
35. Your Rachel Dolezal post–that shit is so ignorant.  I can’t believe the hypocritical crap that is coming out of your “open-minded” mouth.
36. Why are you lying to me?
37. That suicide blood pact joke got me through that semester.
38. I was in the wrong, and I’m sorry.
39. I’m not always going to be the one serving you bread.
40. I know you think she’s perfect, but have you ever dated a woman with her own poorly-developed motivational sticker business idea?
41. I love the way you walk, the cadence of your voice, and all the times you fumble.
42. Singing for you was the scariest performance I’ve ever done.
43. You shouldn’t say that to me if you have a girlfriend.
44. Yes.  (To that guy who asked me to prom.)
45. No.  (To “are y’all ready for dessert?”)
46. That is so incredibly insulting, and I would never do the same to you.
47. We should hang out more.
48. Please change the channel.
49. I believe in you.
50. We are going to be more than this someday.

 

 

I’ll probably weasel in and out in the next two days before I’m satisfied with the list.  I always go back and patch things up with people and situations where I can, to a point of “just let it die,” so maybe I’ll work on saying these and cross them off as I go.  Most of them have long-since passed though, so probably not.

What I have already learned–I don’t disclose the extent to which I care about people enough, I don’t disclose the extent of my fury when I see people mistreated, and I make poor fast-food choices.

I guess it can then follow that the moral of the story is to tell people you care more, stand up to people who’re being terrible, and eat some greens.

Also, if you’re a person, I recommend doing this.  It’s good to get it all out and it makes you more aware of who you are and where you’ve been.

Concluding comfortable with yet another unusual non-narrative post,

M

 

P.S.  Here’s one of the most honest songs I’ve ever written.  Also the longest.  From a few weeks ago.  Closely related.