December 14, 2005

That's right.

But I 've decided I'm totally cool with it.

I should really be writing this mental health action in my paper journal but pens are so - late nineties style.

Anyways I had this revelation today while talking on the phone with a dear friend. I realized I judge my own emotional health/strength against hers. Like if she sounds better than me at coping with the curve balls of life while I'm like a rookie at bat who's taking a bunch of fastballs to the shin. Well obviously that's cuz I suck right?

No, no more. I am going to stop doing that today. But not by faking some sort of stoicism in the face of my emotional realities. I have already written at length about the difference between being strong and faking strong. I think it's time to achieve some sort of resolution.

I am not strong, not in the ways I often would like to be. Not in the ways where I get over things. Not in the way where I can keep my feelings to myself (obviously). It's too bad, because those are traits I admire in my friends.

But maybe I am strong in other ways, and I need to stop blaming myself for feeling like a jellyfish in sea of spiny urchins.

This doesn't make the feelings feel better all the time, but maybe I can stop holding myself up to yet another set of principals to be a failure at.

Being a jellyfish is kind of neat- I get to cry at sad songs and laugh too loud at bad jokes, and feel the knife when I watch somebody getting stabbed on tv.

Being an urchin would be neat too, I would have clear and spiky boundaries, and I could probably turn some feelings off at will.

We'll sea, (ha ha that's one of those bad jokes - eh) maybe on day I can buy myself an urchin coat or take some urchin lessons.

Fellow Jellyfish I am up for making a support group - I don't know, we can cut cardboard spines out of old refrigerator boxes and decorate them with sparkles and pictures of superheroes, it'll be largely a symbolic gesture but what the heck - kinda fun I bet.

Okay maybe I am not cool with it yet. But I will be one day, I can feel it.

This is dedicated to my mother who had a giant cardboard spine hidden somewhere in her apartment and to my dad who is a champion at applying the sparkles to his.

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