Muchness and Light

She fills up every corner like she's born in black and white.

I was talking to Growler today, relaying some lascivious detail of some antic or another, when she paused. 

"My god, you are ballsy!" she laughed.    

Why, yes.  Yes, I am. 

But I wasn't always.  I've talked many, many (manymanymany) times about how my fears held me back.  Or rather, how I let my fears hold me back.  But even in my seclusiveness, I had moments of letting that all out—especially if I was comfortable with my surroundings.  Hanging out with my friends, I could always be loud and bawdy and brash.  It just wasn't always apparent to the general public. 

The biggest apprehension, for me, about being so open and sometimes brazen is that what I do will be bad.  Take my writing for example.  It's easy for me to hide behind my words.  I can use them like a big, decorative shield—to either protect myself or to distract the other person from the underlying emotion.  I can spin the words lovingly into some never-before-read combination, but that doesn't mean it's good. 

That's the fear I'm facing with Persona Non Grata. 

I admitted online a couple of days ago that I'm afraid it's really bad and that no one's had the heart to tell me. 

"I would find a way to very gently tell you, if I thought it was terrible," Tiff assured me.  "It's not.  It's good."

She's pretty exacting and finicky, though she's also been my BFF for a really long time.  She's not afraid to tell me when something I'm wearing is bad ("That dress is doing you no favors.  Toss it."); why would I think she would let me spend a year working on something so difficult and personally poignant, just because she didn't have the heart to tell me it sucked?

Some of the inner circle readers have been only gushing.  (I totally love the ego boost from that, by the way.)  Some have been more politely critical about specific aspects and issues that really did need to be addressed.  And my editor has been incomparably patient and honest in her critiques. 

But there's still this chance that it gets out there and everyone thinks it's bad.

There will be people who don't like it because it's not their style of story.  There will be people who don't like because they don't like me.  (Suck it.)  There will be people who don't like it because they don't like anything.  (You have met the internet, right?)

My hope is that there will be people who like it so much that they recommend it to their friends.  Or they go on Amazon (when it's available) and leave a nice review.  Or they just send me a message to say they loved it. 

But what I hope, more than anything, is that someone who doesn't know me says it's good.

For a long time, I could write what was in my heart and head but not actually say the words.  My spoken voice didn't usually flow as easily as my typed voice.  That's not so much the case now.

"I can always tell when you're writing," Mo said one afternoon on the telephone.  "Your vocabulary gets huge."

Indeed. 

Something about the process of spinning the big words make me even more willing to say exactly what I'm thinking and feeling and to ask for what I want.  I'm more likely to be that direct, loud, ballsy girl, knowing full well that there are some people who just won't like it. It's just part of my muchness.

But I also know that the real good is in having learned how to do that, how not to let my fear stop me from stepping out from behind that golden, glittery shield.  When those words are spoken in confident candor, I have the victory, regardless of what anyone else thinks. 

12:51 is the time my voice found the words I sought.

DH and I have had a couple of conversations recently about the purpose of my blog.  It's definitely a personal blog (as opposed to a corporate or organizational blog), meaning that I'm reflecting on what I think and see and feel.  Originally Muchness and Light started with a definitive Alice in Wonderland slant that shifts my writing from time to time, but I quickly realized I had more to say than what Lewis Carroll or Tim Burton could directly influence. 

I don't run ads, with the exception of my links to Zazzle and my Amazon aStore.  If you purchase products through those links, I get a small percentage, which helps cover my blog and domain services.  I've debated setting up an agreement with an ad service, but I don't really see the necessity or the long-term benefit.  There's already enough going on on my page.  I don't want to clutter it further with unrelated content or pretty pictures.  I can handle being scattered without any help from the outside. 

I don't write a lot about the day-to-day facts of my life, though I'm likely to mention them on my Facebook fan page.  Most days for me are a mundane mix of errands and chores and momness.  Sometimes, something exciting or extraordinary happens.  If I'm inspired, I'll write about it.  If not, I'll keep it to myself.  But I always try to find something more to say than just what I'm thinking and feeling. 

There's always the issue of what the reader adds to my words.  You aren't me, you aren't in my head, and you may or may not know the impetus for a piece I've written.  You certainly don't know the thought process I went through, jumping from one point to the next.  But you bring your own experiences and moods and expectations to your reading and that will undoubtedly influence your own perception of my writing.  That's what's expected of the audience, and I think that's what makes feedback interesting. 

Sometimes I'll discover that someone has read something and totally missed my intent.  It can be frustrating, making me question whether my words were effectual.  I have to remind myself that I'm also not in your head.  I'm a reader in my own right, and I know there have been many times when I've reread something, perhaps for the dozenth time, and realized I was interpreting it in a completely new and unexpected way. 

Every so often, I'll go back and read something of my own—an old post or random writing—and be surprised to see context and meaning I hadn't noticed before.  I've written specific things that were intended to be about one thing and ended up being about another, only recognized in hindsight.  I've been in one mood when I wrote, then in a juxtaposed frame of mind when I reread it, and seen my writing in a completely different way. 

I guess that's part of the fluidity of the written word.  It can say so much or nothing at all.  I'm sure I have days (and posts) where I do both. 

But, like me, Muchness and Light is a process.  My voice is on a journey of its own, and I'm excited to see where it takes me.  For the first time perhaps in my entire life, I feel like there are other people who want to hear me and who value not only what I'm saying, but the fact that I'm saying it at all.  It's simultaneously humbling and gratifying, knowing that you've made the choice to read this—that you have sought me out and want to see what I have to say, even if it seems like I'm only talking to myself.

 

(Yes, I know it's a Strokes song.  So does Adam.  But he's the one I love the most, not them.)

Only we will understand that the silence is broken by our language of love.

I have this friend who recommended a book to me the other day, Gary Chapman's The 5 Love Languages.  (Believe me, if I told you who it was, you'd be like, "WTF?  Really?")  So I went to Barnes & Noble, looking scurriedly around to make sure no one saw me purchasing a book from the Christian Inspiration section, got my copy, and went home to start a little light reading.  It's not a long book, and I'm a voracious reader, so I was done pretty quickly.

I must admit, I was really surprised by what the book had to offer.  In a totally non-judgmental, non-religious way, Gary Chapman talks about the five languages of love: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch.  His premise is that people give and receive love, filling "love tanks", in usually one of these basic languages.  (Some people are bi-lingual, but I'll talk more about that later.)  The idea is that partners need to receive love in the way that's wired into them, and that they don't get it when it's spoken in the wrong languages. 

For example, if you innately receive love through Acts of Service, you get it when your partner does things for you, like mowing the grass or cleaning the house or washing your car (an example Chapman uses quite frequently).  If your beloved is always bringing you gifts but never hangs that beautiful family portrait, it may not mean very much to you and doesn't fill your love tank. 

I read through his descriptions and examples of each love language, plus ways to go about expressing love in the respective manner.  There's a profile at the end of the book, kind of like a Cosmo Quiz.  Turns out I'm bilingual in Words of Affirmation and Quality Time, though even the latter seems to be specific to Quality Conversation and feeling like I'm being understood.  The two languages are of virtually equal importance to me, though Phsyical Touch is also, to a lesser degree.  Gifts and Acts of Service don't mean a whole hell of a lot in my world. 

I passed the book to DH, who read it in an afternoon and completed his own profile.  I was a little surprised by his results, which I won't disclose because that's not my confidence to share.  What I can say is that it gave us both a lot to think about, as far as how to approach each other.  It was interesting, to say the least.

So I started thinking about how I receive love from other people, how what they do or don't do applies to these ideas of Words of Affirmation and Quality Conversation.  I examined friendships and past loves and familial interactions.  I also started to look at how I approach myself, of how and what I do fills or empties my love tank.  (Yes, it's a somewhat silly expression, and it's easy to go with innuendo, but we're all adults here.  Kind of.)

Absolem yelled at me recently, asking if I was really as insecure as I was acting.  The answer is a resounding YES!  I am horribly insecure in who I am and have a very difficult time seeing my own worth, seeing the value of my central role in my broader life.  I need to hear from other people— and somewhat regularly depending on the relationship—that I matter, that I am important to them, and sometimes that has to include the why of that importance.  I need private conversations with the people closest to me, the intimacy of giving and receiving deep truths and shared confidences that connect us infinitely.  Those dark and quiet moments, when there's nothing else in the world but those words passing between us and the emotion they contain, that's what drives me and makes me feel complete.  That's what shows me I am loved and helps me explore the depths of my own heart and head and to so tentatively share those expanses with someone else. 

I think, in part, it's why I write, especially why I blog the way I do.  Muchness and Light was born from my own need to discover myself again, but there's certainly something telling about the public way in which I do it.  My love tank is filled when I get a response, when people tell me how I've touched a nerve in them.  It's not that I'm opposed to criticism, though it's honestly only happened a couple of times.  But it does my psyche good to explain myself as thoroughly as possible and to receive in turn the affirmation that I'm understood and that it was good or beneficial to someone else. 

I think this also goes a long way toward explaining my desire for experience and understanding of it.  Yes, I am reactionary at times, then overthink a situation sometimes the point of exhaustion, but that process gives me time to really grasp what's happening.  It often provides me with profound insights into my own actions, as well as the actions of others. 

My love ("Addiction," said Absolem) of words and understanding may well be one of the things that explains my deep love of music.  Lots of studies have shown that thrilling music causes a release of dopamine into the brain, the same neurotransmitter released as a response to pleasure from food or sex or any number of other things.  For me, music isn't about the instrumentation, though that's certainly a requirement of being, you know, music.  That coupled with poignant lyrics that make me think someone else gets it, tacked onto a pleasing voice that I can sing along with, is undeniably, overwhelmingly pleasurable for me—it fills my love tank in a way nothing else can.

No one was more surprised than I that The 5 Love Languages struck a chord.  It's given me a whole new way to look at my relationships, most especially with my Self.  I'm pretty adept at finding my own quality time (again, ignore the innuendo), but I'm not so good at affirming Stephanie.  In some ways, I still need that from the other people in my life, especially those I hold so close to my heart.  But now, maybe, I won't be so reticent to tell myself that I'm okay, or even that I'm good.  Whereas before it just seemed egocentric, it now seems psychecentric; it's something that I need to be able to do, for your sake and for mine.

 

That's nothing to what I could say if I chose.

In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice encounters the irascible Duchess in the house with the screaming baby.  As she leaves to play croquet with the Queen, the Duchess flings the baby at Alice, who tries her best to calm the ugly, wailing child until the baby turns into a pig.  (Rest assured, we'll come back to this bit at some future time!)  Alice sees the Duchess again at the Queen's croquet ground when the Duchess is brought from prison to determine if the Cheshire-Cat can or should be beheaded. 

Alice notes that the Duchess has a much-improved demeanor than what she's encountered in the house.  The Duchess shows herself to be a compulsive moralizer, although she often dissolves into false syllogisms and absurdity.  This happens during the chapter entitled "The Mock Turtle's Story", which is possibly Carroll's most-concentrated commentary on language.  Carroll is truly genius with his twisting and bending of language to show how verbosity can submerge simple meaning in obtuse verbiage.  (i.e., people can use big words and be asshats)

After turning her own logic upside down, confusing poor Alice about the ways in which flamingoes and mustard are alike, the Duchess starts a new moral tangent, related to neither flamingoes nor mustard:

                " 'Be what you would seem to be'--or, if you'd like to put it more simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might appear to have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.' "

                "I think I should understand that better," Alice said very politely, "if I had written it down: but I ca'n't quite follow it as you say it."               

The gist of this, of course, is to be yourself.  The inside and outside should be true and honest reflections of each other, both to yourself and to others. 

I have long been a proponent of such Verisimilitude of Self.  It's no big secret that I try to live my life in the way that I see best, regardless of what anyone else thinks about it.  Don't like my clothes?  Don't care.  Don't like my purple hair?  Don't care.  Don't like that I sometimes swear like a sailor?  Don't fucking care.

Someone, a nameless asshat who barely knows me, decided to call me out for dropping an f-bomb as part of a comment to a picture posted on Facebook.  It was a personal picture posted to my own wall.  She was upset that her teenage son would be unduly influenced by my choice of language, and she demanded that I stop using such language or remove her son as one of my Facebook friends. 

First and foremost, as I explained to her, I am an adult.  I can choose to exercise my staunchly-defended freedom of speech in any way I deem personally appropriate or necessary.  Secondly, he's a teenage boy who attends a very large public high school.  I can guarantee that I am the least worrisome influence in this kid's life.  If she chooses to wage war on such an influence, I wish her the best of luck on her uphill journey.  Personally, I think it's a waste of effort.  Lastly, I haven't seen this kid in six months, he doesn't show up in my News Feed, and I have no reason to take him into consideration when doing anything I do.

I was happy to oblige her request, and I have unfriended and blocked the entire family.

This brings me back to the assertion that I will be who and what I am, regardless of the opinions of others.  There are very, very few people whose opinions matter to me, and all of you know who you are.  I may (or may not) consider their opinions and reactions when I choose to do or be anything.  Chances are, they would already approve of my choices, because they are the people closest to me.  I wouldn't have let them get that close if we were diametrically opposed to begin with. 

As I publicly said today, if you don't like my choices of language, topic, hair color, or anything else, GO AWAY.  Please, do us both a favor and don't even attempt to be my friend.  I won't take kindly to your unsolicited judgments, and I won't pretend to be anything more, or less, than who and what I am. I'm all about the Truthiness of Me.

My only resolution this year is to keep doing the things that make me me.  I've been doing it a long time, but I can always do it a little better.

Happy New Year, fuckers!