Vidiot, Vanitas, Verbal Diarrhea

As much as I enjoy TV and movies, especially in the case of television, I know it's nothing but bread to go with my circus. When I was little, I wanted passionately to become famous. I wanted to grow up and be on M*A*S*H, to have the fun-loving, family cast feeling I thought from the minimalist exposure we had to entertainment news back in the 70s was their fantasy world. And I wanted to be famous. More than anything, as the remarkably unpopular girl I was (I don't mean that it is remarkable that I wasn't popular; I mean that it is remarkable to me now HOW unpopular I was - it's hard for me to find anything all that awful about being shy or odd or slam full of daydreams), I wanted to become famous. There was a lot of money in fame, that much I knew, and I wanted that. There was also some sort of vindication in it.

I got older, I became a theater geek.

I got older still, I started watching all the loud little eighties bimbos on Sally Jessy Raphael and that sort of thing, and I wanted to be the rock star's hot wife. I always wanted all the better looking women to stop sneering about how jealous everyone was.

Then I started to lose my jealousy. When Beloved Ex and I split, I put a lot of time into letting go of my horrible behavior toward him - the expectation that everything he did was about, and reflected on, me, and therefore had to come under my control or risk my censure. And, in letting go of the idea that ANYONE who loves me has ANYTHING to apologize for in spite of (or because of) that love - in letting go of the idea that my own good behavior toward anyone is a privilege which had to be earned - I began to learn a lot about my own vanity.

I've never lost it.

But I do realize that at some point, slowly, and on silken-smooth gimbals, a shift rotated my perspective, and I'm able to see jealousy, and overinvestment in the way other people see me, with a lot less of that "investment" (... see also: cruelty).

My vanity has turned from valuing the externality of my assets: "I am so amazing, I'm with the rock star, and he is CRAZY in love with me - oh, and a nice guy too, yeah" - to actual confidence. I gave my ex short shrift as a person; I valued him in relation to myself, and in relation to him, I was just not a nice girl.

Viciously, it took separating from him for me to overcome that nastiness inside myself. What a terrible thing. And I still feel like he had to pay for something for me. Not fair.

And even still I value what I have become. Gratitude is central to my life, and that life is loaded with blessings. I can never give back to the world - and to those who love me - enough to come close to matching what has been given me.

(And so: I strive to be a good enough person to deserve my dog. Figure that is an excellent standard to aspire to; and impossible enough to achieve that I can't get too complacent.)



X once said of me, "You use your wit and your intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating."

I told mom that once, and she remains pretty green about a compliment like that to this day. But it's the man who loved HER that way - and she herself - who taught me how to be the person who could attain that admiration. And it's a whole lot of compliment. It delves into so much; I'm amusing. I'm smart (savagely, he always said). And not that it's exactly buried in there, but I'm also a kind of beautiful that has power of its own ... and even so I don't depend on it. Thank mom and dad for that last part. And thank X for explaining the overdrive into which the package of me can put the right person's feeling. No other person has ever known me so entirely, and even with exposure he found me compelling.

That's me. That's not my 25-year-old's hottie attitude. (I was far more appealing by 30 anyway - hah.) That's not the clothes I wear, the friends I choose to accessorize myself with, the trends I suck, the influence I surf. That's. ME. My vanity isn't centered on mascara anymore. It's the power behind the paint. The thing that MATTERS. The wit and the intelligence that make the pretty-pretty irrelevant - and also animate whatever physical beauty I once had, and which still hasn't abandoned me completely.

I've blogged many times about courage. "Who needs strength, I want courage." The older I get, the more I feel the staggering power that lives in the blessings I have been given. Not the power of my features, either. The power of the facts of my birth - where I am in time and the world. The power of my intelligence, which fuels my livelihood in incalculable ways. The power of my family, who gave to me formidable tools, to be ambitious, to be independent in a world where women not so long ago could not hope for so much. To love formidably, and to pledge indelibly.

If you are loved by me, I think it's ever less likely that the woman I am will EVER take that away from you. If you are my blood, if you are my friend, if you are important today: tomorrow is not going to be able to change that. In my life, I have allowed relationships to go, in the past. But I have never found the alchemy to turn love into hatred. I've been bad, and even betrayed, but I've never truly *turned* on anyone. I find that less and less conceivable, the older I get. The more important I realize "love" to be. The more I realize its power, and find myself addicted to its rewards. It is beyond me - the ability to even understand loathing where I have loved. The ability to *do* that.



You're all hidden in the weeds; Blogger's stats can't tell me who reads this. I can know ye by your follow-ation, but only in a general sense. I can hope, but I don't really know. But YOU know - who you are - whom I love, and will never stop. Those girls. That man with my father's boots and a laugh I can hear right now. The tall woman so smack full of charisma I can never forget the first time I laid eyes on her. The Manly Man, whom I love for himself, and not just because of her. The Elfin One, and her family, all of them. My dear V, who has become part of my grain. And her man too. And his son. And K and T, just thinking of whom makes me smile. A, who will never be a "B" and will probably never read here. My mother, my cousins, my cousin-lets, my adopted family, my seldom-seen friends, who still mean so much to me. X himself. I love you.

I can't know. But I hope you can. Can feel what has become of me - the girl who knew nothing but that fame was my only hope, even someone else's.

And add to my blessings: that I never touched fame, and it never came for me either.

I turn my eyes to my father, and ask him what he thinks.

And he says to me: "It is to be expected."

And I can feel his arms holding on to me.



I am blessed the most to know what kind of people love me. Me! And grateful for nothing so much as for that bounty.







"I have come, that they may have life; and have it in abundance."

How can it be possible to know Christ had that to give ... and not to take it - and not to be thankful for it?