I've been doing lots of deconstructed self-reflection. I've been writing. And I don't post it here, I horde it in my personal correspondences or in a network of highly chaotic, disorganized documents. I've learned a lot out of it, asking myself questions in the process of reflection, which is an activity too intensive to really do here. I identified something that's really universal, and typical, and common in myself.
"I feel good about doing things that I am good at."
For the most part, even if you've grown tired of the activity (like me and tutoring), you receive a bolster of self-esteem for being masterful at something. It affirms your functionality.
And I wonder about where I belong. I tried so long to be a geek girl; to embrace the geek culture... but I'm too aware and adept for that. I don't belong there, physically or psychologically, I have a lot of geek interests -- 'I dabble in the geek arts'; I am geeky, but I can't really take that on as my identity. I don't have the attitude for the geek girl trope, and I don't really want to be it, ultimately. And since I feel good doing things I'm good at, and having studied and forced myself to understand what that culture is and how its members function, I pretty much lingered on seeking out those people. And I was good at it. No, fuck, I AM good at it. I know how to talk to those shy, introverted, awkward, terse, white nerdy boys with brown hair and some specialized interests -- how to get them to loosen up. I can encounter so many of those people, and make them friendly towards me.
I like those people, too. But I know that I can more than certainly, go in directions other than that in terms of social niche; I am lately interacting with others in this ethereal identity -- the 'post-geeks'. Those who ARE into gaming and anime and whatnot, but who veered out of the social trope and present themselves more mainstream, the kinds of guys who design RPGs but also developed into being more athletic and charismatic. The girls who voraciously debate over classical literature and also get into the swingers community (for being hot). I never was intense enough. I wonder where I might have more felt naturally at ease, rather than attempting to pigeon hole myself, a triangle peg in a round hole -- I could never fully occupy a place like that.
Frankly, I'm prissy and vain and hyper-feminine; loveliness. Often been asked why I wasn't associating with the more typically popular people in high school. I wonder if I could have been one of the Pretty Spoiled Smart Girls, had I pushed myself in that direction.
But I probably couldn't, due to my skin color and sexuality.
Right now, I'm kind of just "literary faggot". I read, and I'm gay for words, and I actually am kind of sexually oriented (but I won't ID myself as that being my primary identifier. I identify as a writer much much much higher on the list than I do 'into girls'). And it evokes the images of the very self-absorbed poncy fancy Oscar Wilde.
(By the way, that's a gigantic pet peeve of mine. Oscar Wilde did SO MUCH MORE than be gay. I am hard pressed to find any literary discourses on him that aren't all about "ways in which Oscar Wilde showed he was gay with these words." He was a critic and a media personality, and we wouldn't think of him as such a famous persecuted homosexual if it weren't for the fact that he paved his way to notoriety with his critique and persona and his works. I hate that you academic people boil him down to such base simplicity. The man has more talents than being gay! Talk about them!)
And I am into fancy, aesthetic, femme, self-absorbed things... I identify myself in those things and turns of phrase. Nobility and arts. "bastard poet-prince" "threshold King of Everything -- a comical absurdist" (Saul Williams, in Niggy Tardust. I love that album. I love that he makes rap intelligent and hard and urban all at once). I think of having a section of my friend group in my book shelf.
Anyway: my intellectual high-school drop out friends. I accumulate you guys. And you're smarter than systematically educated academic performance types, and I resonate because I can't let myself learn as a rote memetic system. I WANT to care about what I'm learning, and take it seriously and personally rather than just spouting off answers for tests.
I had to escape the academié. I know there is more passion to learning than these impersonal structures, and things that matter much more than test scores. I had to see for myself, so I separated myself so much from being identified with the academic world, and more with the world of ideas altogether.
The world is smoky; thick and dark and weaving, curling and twisting around.
[I just interjected that tangent of my social group because I think an awful lot about class ignorance. I want to be a comprehensive person. I think about what causes me and him to have gone so differently, and why I'm okay to talk to about stuff, why I'm a good confessional.]
Oh, speaking of which, I had a chemical fire today. Put on the kettle for tea, tea that would wake me up, and went to check my e-mail. The cat started screaming. I came out of the bedroom, the entire condo was filled with smoke, and it was coming from the stove, and lo and behold, I didn't put the kettle on, instead I turned on the element for a glass pot that had a plastic spatula on it THAT WAS MELTING. OH GOD. I pulled the pot off the stove, and put it on the counter. It started making the counter pop and left a burn mark, eroded the counter top. FUCK. I put it in the sink, where there was water, where it wouldn't burn up more things. I opened the door to the balcony and urged the cats outside, turned on fans and vents for the smoke.
Then I proceeded to start to try to make tea again. My roommate got worried about the odd smell and the cats bawling, and came out and yelled at me; I explained I melted a spatula. He yelled at me more to stop standing around in the kitchen and inhaling chemical smoke.
I really wanted tea though, even at the expense of my lungs.
But I went back into the bedroom with him, since I guess I can understand how my lungs matter more than a bit of sugar and caffeine, if pressed.
I should have skipped class and gone to the doctor's to check how bad the smoke inhalation might have been; it was thick, I was in it for at least 15 minutes, I was struggling to breathe and it felt weird to inhale, but I didn't feel so significantly weakened I should do anything about it.
I do that... beat myself up through negligence to my humanity. I learned it from my mother. She wouldn't have let me skip class, if it were up to her -- and she owns me. Better people would have given me a sick day or compassion, but she thinks I have to at least push myself as hard as I can to perform in these short term tasks in order to demonstrate I am a Hard Worker.
Hard Work is important; and if you're not succeeding, you're not working Hard enough. It's a largely bourgeois and pig-headed attitude. Straining yourself doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing whatever it is well. It just means, necessarily, that you're strained. If I can keep straining myself, I'm a better person, right? I don't actually believe that, but it's a habit of existing I've had implanted in me.
And I feel a lot of guilt when things are easy for me, and my friends struggle; I have more than I "deserve", I impulsively believe. It's not true. There is no "deserve", and I'm not a bad person for... being capable of doing things.
I'm a bad person for throwing those opportunities to do things away.
And if I don't make the gesture, of Common Decency, of at least straining myself, I don't really "deserve" to have my Human Needs met... because Human Needs are secondary to performance in anything. Performance, mind you, and not mastery or experience; simply displaying myself as if I have.
She'll deny that she raised me to believe those things. She never directly said it. But she's bad at articulating what she does believe, bad at demonstrating her actual motivations. And so, that's the message I took away from her performance. And the message she takes from my performance is that of negligence and apathy.
Ultimately, I like me. And I like what being me gives me the opportunity to do and experience, and I see its limitations, but also its privileges. It's the best I can do.