"Well Excuuuse me, Miss Life Changes"

I'm at an odd period in my life where I'm weaning myself away from all the things I used to be passionate for. Or with. A part of my mind labels these things as "addictions," and I'm highly inclined to agree. The drive, the need, and motivation I had for them always overwhelmed, to the point where I had happily abandoned logic to pursue those desires. Desires to expel, to create, to take in.

Once I quit cigarettes I quit everything else, as if this new-found will power exploded and stained the walls. Around the same time I dropped the addiction to smoking, I lost the desire for everything else. One of these "passions," I've come to realize, was blogging. (I would say writing, but in all honesty it started and ended behind a keyboard. I was never a writer by way of the pen. Gems dropped by accident during the publishing of musings.)

For me, one compulsion always replaced another. Once upon a time, I used to draw constantly. On my wrists, hands, knuckles, fingernails, tissues, margins, all over my notebook. I drew them quickly and if it were on my skin, I would wash it off after I tired of it; if on paper I handed the masterpieces out to friends like spare gum. I figured my talent would always be with me, just bigger, better stronger. Today, I have no proof of my own artwork. It's all damaged, distributed, or gone.

Sometime during my senior year at a well-known high school for the arts, the drive sputtered out and exhausted. But I'd hardly noticed, because words took over. I embodied everything about writing. I became it, it became me. Blogging was an obsession. I did it at work, I did it at home, I did it at friend's houses, I'd hold in my pee. I did it in the early mornings, I did it most late at night. I did it twenty times a day. And I was SO good at it. Until, one day, that went away too.

I spent some time shifting from one extreme to another. There are some things I picked up, excelled at, and never forgot. I learned how to listen, to move a man to whimpers. I learned how to roll the perfect blunt. Needless to say, I enjoyed both triumphantly. I ate junk food in excess: burgers for breakfast, hot sauce with everything. I yelled at people for their insecurities. I became hellbent on fixing my own. I smoked like a chimney and I fucked like a porn star. That's what made me. That's Who I Was. And then, one day, silence.

I'm slowly forming my way around paths I once used to scoff at. And the biggest transition of all, I think, is this shift I'm making from being an opinionated, i'm-here-get-used-to-it, take-no-bullshit optimist, who dripped sexuality no matter what she tried to do, to being this... whatever the fuck I am right now. LOL! It's a little unnerving, to suddenly realize what it is to walk into a room and not be once-overed by at least 3/4ths of the people in it. Men watched me, women watched me. And I chose to remain oblivious to all of them, until one day I noticed that nobody really looked at me that way anymore.

My clothes don't hug the curves that somehow shifted as time went by, and my sexy is mad undercover. My Swagger doesn't fit with the rest of me anymore, so I tucked her away too. I think this is what I wanted, though. It became tough to bear that kind of attention after a while, like I felt raped by the end of the day. I'm just still not used to it.

Something in me stopped wanting people to want me. I think it was after I recovered from The Heartbreak and started making steps in letting go of Kryptonite. My confidence is quieter now, not so daring, no so present. Fuck that though, I still want to be pretty. It's an interesting balance to find. LOL.