You’re Kind Of A Big Deal February 8, 2008

I have a lot of faults.
 
Too many, in fact.
 
And I’m quick to acknowledge all of them before anyone else gets the chance.
 
I know I drink too much. And that I talk too loud. I’m so fucking emotional. I curse. I’m inappropriate. That line that people always mention? I’m the one who crosses it. Repeatedly. I’m a glutton. I’m not good with money and I spend too much of it but – hell – it’s my money. I’m addicted to sex, bad TV, insomnia, and denial. I fall into fits of practicing unhealthy extremes. I lash out at the people I love when I’m in a foul torpor and feel copious amounts of remorse immediately afterwards. I’m all energy and flash and jokes and flurry when people first meet me because if I’m hilarious and fun as hell, it covers up all the shit, right?
 
It’s almost as though I enjoy conducting some macabre roll call in my head, where instead of the version teachers use to see if Billy or Tonya are present, I’m checking to make sure that all the dysfunctions that call my little brain or body home are still there. By being the first to point out just how fucked up I can be, I feel like I somehow win.
 
You can’t insult me with that. I already called myself out, bitch! 
 
(I think, by the way, that this is the strategy Eminem applied during his last battle in 8 Mile. When he was still thin. See? So inappropriate.)
 
It’s most likely a defense strategy I developed playing subject to my father’s repeated drilling growing up. I lived in frequent terror of him and our one-on-ones. He’d yell and yell and then yell some more while I tried everything I could to not cry in front of him because that only meant more yelling and – if he was feeling really ripe – some slapping around. I didn’t know how to protect myself from him. So I began trying to predict everything he might possibly say, the absolute worst thing that could happen, comforting myself that if I knew beforehand what to expect when he hired midnight until dawn to berate me, it might sting less when it actually happened. I was always wrong, it always stung, but I almost aways felt relief repeating to myself that the worst he can do is kill me. It helped put things in perspective.
 
I’ve made my peace with my upbringing. Sometimes, at its best, it’s only an uneasy peace, but it’s peace.
 
Of course, there are its longer-lasting effects.
 
I cannot accept compliments gracefully. I respond with quick self-deprecating quips or flashes of rolling eyes and half smirks. I don’t suffer from poor self-esteem; not in any typical fashion anyway. My father’s brand of steady attention parlayed indelible strength in me to stand up for myself always. Some may call it a wall that I need to fucking get rid of already, but I appreciate my fortitude. I know all too well I could have easily crumbled and ended up completely broken. In a round-about way, my father raised me to be a fiercely strong person.
 
But that social grace, the one of tactful compliment acceptance? That’s not exactly how my family worked. Grunts from my father served as acknowledgments for my first place finishes in 5K invitationals, and a mild frown from the guy was response to my mother’s announcement that I had been awarded a prestigious academic recognition. Those kinds of responses didn’t prepare me to hear things like You’re so pretty! or You’re so smart! comfortably. So I shrug those off. I guffaw. I throw the compliments back.
 
There are some really amazing people I have met by blogging. People I want to know. People I’d like to zap to Chicago or zap myself where they are so we can raise hell together in – gasp! – 3D life. Internet inhabitants that I dare call my friends. Genuinely cool people who read this thing and email me and leave comments and compliments that throw me into blown away disbelief. When I respond with some – probably failed - attempt at funny, I’m just hoping you’ll be too busy laughing to notice what a complete tool I’ve made of myself.
 
But believe me. I really appreciate the comments. Every single one. I don’t always know how to respond. All the ways I can think of saying thanks or that I’m flattered just sound so … plastic in print.
 
Maybe that explains why all Hallmark cards are so full of cheese and awkward humor.
 
I write about a bevy of stuff, but I know I focus often on my family. Or about how fucked up I feel. How fucked up I am. I make jokes about it. I share tales of my upbringing hoping that you’ll see beyond the sad and the hurt and detect the girl who is still all shades of sensitive and sickeningly idealistic. Maybe even see the humor in some of this stuff, too. 
 
Or perhaps how fucked I am in the head to even be able to find some of this stuff funny.
 
I guess I choose to see it as acceptance. 
 
Because I wasn’t always so forthcoming about my family. Lying ad nauseum was standard modus operandi for a very long time. We looked the role of perfect on the outside, and I was too ashamed and scared to let people know what that shell of perfection hid. Distance and college helped, but one doesn’t heal in a handful of years the all too many spent broken and battered.
 
This blog has become a part of that adjustment. The writing helps. It sets that angry, emo kid inside of me free. The one that grew, hid and beat against my insides while I played Perfect Student, Perfect Athlete, Perfect Prep, Perfect Personality, Perfect Home Life, Perfect Little Miss Homecoming Queen. Nothing, I think, can be as suffocating to a person’s soul as playing so much pretend - playing dual, triumvirate, quadruple roles. It may be an anonymous truth released to the internets for strangers to read, but when even one person says something thoughtful or tells me they went through some shit like this too and that they relate, it helps. It helps with the sadness and feeling less alone; to digest the memories, pull out the moderately funny moments and gain a perspective less bitter and more contemplative. 
 
I learned on Monday that I had won the two 20something awards for which I had been nominated. I was stunned. Floored, really. I’m not sure if it’s proper etiquette to even mention this. Should I act more discreet? Make a joke or add it as a by the way to one of my posts? Just tack on the award images to my sidebar and leave it at that?
 
I chose to write something now that the voting thing is long over because I really appreciate the thought. I’m flattered. I’m grateful. I may have trouble accepting compliments and accolades, but it’s certainly not because I’m not thankful or touched. I always am. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Because for all the sarcasm, the cynicism and the inappropriate cracks I make, don’t ever confuse me as an aloof or detached person. That people voted for me? Batshit manic, can’t stop with the inappropriate humor, ridiculously wordy me? Well. That means a hell of a lot.
 
This post isn’t just about the awards though.
 
Thanks for accepting what I write. It can feel scary as hell to post shit about my dad. How he used to lock me inside of a dark closet for hours to teach you discipline, daughter when he learned I was afraid of the dark. Or that I used to keep a strand of paper clips on my backpack in middle school as some kind of demented keychain that I’d add paper clips to every time I thought about ending myself. That’s some sad stuff. So thank you for not making me feel like a complete freak when I share things like this. Or for letting me think that I’m at least an entertaining freak.
 
Thanks for understanding that sometimes, among the depressing and heartbreaking shit, I crack jokes and post pictures of my stuffed monkey Bernard hanging around on our fake rubber tree. No matter my upbringing, my fall-out is being able to see the humor in too much of everything. So thank you for tolerating all these multiple personas fit into my one person.
 
Thanks, Thanks, Thanks.
 
Because each blogger is allowed one gratuitous blog post waxing saptasical about blogging and their readers/fellow bloggers, yes?
 
Now, before I turn all Cady Heron and use MS Paint to cut up these awards – that someone took their time to create - into little pieces and virtually toss them around, I’ll stop.
 

 
(Best Title shared with the very kickass Ashley of This is Not the Life I Ordered! )
 
Come to Chicago - all of you. Rounds of tequila shots and champagne flutes on me. Some scotch, too, because I know there are a few of you that appreciate a nice glass of Glenmorangie. If tequila isn’t your thing (coughNicolecough), I’ll fill your gullets with cheese. And Barefoot Contessa Outrageous Brownies. Of course the Barefoot Contessa Outrageous Brownies.
 
And if this post was entirely too obnoxious? Let’s pretend it never happened once tomorrow comes. Very much like some morning afters that I’m sure we’ve all experienced. I’m okay with being that blog as well.