There's No Place Like...

HOME.

I'm home. I was so excited to come home, I became a cheeeezball and listened to "Home" a lot before I hopped on the plane. I love home, I love it here, it's a vacuum of everything me, and for a narcissist that's like a gift baggie of smack to a junkie.

"Narcissist?" Igor gasps. He rushes into my head, checking around to make sure no one heard me. His voice lowers...

Igor: Uh, ix-nay on the arcicssism-nay. People don't like them. They're lame douche-bag assholes.
Me: Yeah, I can be a real asshole sometimes.
I: (waves away the point) So can everyone. Just don't call yourself a narcissist out loud.
Me: Why?
I: It's not pretty!!! (Catches himself. Breathes...) I don't think you know what the word means.

We look it up:
nar·cis·sism/ˈnärsəˌsizəm/Noun

1. Extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration.

2. Self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects.

Igor looks at me. He bites his chapped lip. "Just- shut up." I gloat in satisfaction. He sees me gloating and sneers. "You're not that bad."

He's right. According to a Dr. Drew's online Narcissism Test, I'm above average, but I'm no Jersey Shore.

Still, in the interest of my demons, I'll call a spade a spade, and I'll call myself an asshole when its true. Of course it's not true ALL the time, but probably more than I'd like to admit and that's okay. I think most people are crappier than they want to take credit for, and as long as we're able to realize it (hopefully in the moment), admit it (maybe to our audience, certainly to ourselves), and apologize for it (if you must, and I'll tell you right now- YOU MUST) then who cares?

Anyway, back to the notion of home.

It occurred to me that home has little to do with any demons and more to do with ghosts. I'm surrounded by the ghosts of everything that made me into Me. The ghosts of my childhood hide in the shallow eyes of the stuffed animals my mom still keeps for me and in the ritual of burying my head into my mom's arm when I feel like crying. The ghosts of my innocence call to me from places around Austin where I grew up too fast, vamping up and down Sixth Street or riding on the back of my boyfriend's motorcycle through the Hill Country as I fell in love for the first time.

These ghosts haunt my dreams, and people I haven't thought of in years visit me, love me, tangle with me, make-out with me. I see old friends and catch glimpses of past lives in stories I can't remember but they can. They ask me about other friends, people we both couldn't care less about, people I've lost touch with, people I never knew in the first place, and I shrug and smile.

It doesn't matter how anyone is, I realize. If they're anything like me, they're exactly the same as they've always been except in the exponential ways they've grown that you could never measure with a bank account or number of offspring. We're all annoyingly the same- except totally different.

On one hand, I never again want to see the red glasses I wore from the ages of 10-13 that meant I was nerdy and ugly (I thought). I don't want to see all the places my boyfriend's family took us to dinner where I would sit and laugh and glow with the knowledge that they would someday be my family, too (I thought). I don't want to drive by my dad's first apartment after the divorce and look at the sidewalk and remember how every time he and I would walk to the park, I would step on every crack and make the same wish...

 

 

But I do. I dig up the red glasses. I wonder if my ex-boyfriend's family still meets at E-Z's for milkshakes and burgers as I drive past. I look for that sidewalk and that apartment and damned if I can't find them. (It's honestly driving me crazy.) The insecurity, the desperate need to belong, the magic-disguised control issues of an 8 year-old... I seek this stuff out because they are my ghosts. Mine. They it made me who I am, and I love them for it.

The thought that my current life will become a ghost to haunt me in the future comforts me more than it terrifies me. Yes, I'm terrified of getting older. But, I'm comforted by the knowledge that I'll continue to grow and evolve (even moreso than I am now, and I think we've all decided that is pretty evolved, narcissistic tendencies notwithstanding... sorry folks, just a little ego humor.) - and maybe in my evolution, getting older won't be such a fat, wrinkly deal.

As an aside, not every trip home is such an existential exercise. Truthfully, I rarely think this much.

 

 

...That's a total lie. Regardless, I blame my spiritual transformation- Thanks, Awareness, this is almost fun.

Well, That Happened.

Demons.

Funny, part of the reason I started this blog about demons is because I've always liked the misunderstood. I believe there's good in everything, even the Tea Party, even Evanescence, even demons. The way I see it, they're all just doing their jobs. (Like the Tea Party's job is to keep me fighting for universal health care, equal rights, freedom of choice, and all my other liberal beliefs, and Evanescence's job is to make me stop listening to work-place radio.)

Demons simply do what they do, whether its torturing humans or just acting ugly. They don't mean to be "evil", its just our perception of the effect they have on our lives- if you even believe in demons, because you can't get hurt by something you don't believe in... right?

Sigh. Let me tell a personal story and see if I can answer my own question.

The truly observant may have noticed I've been off the radar lately- particularly where this blog is concerned. It's a long boring story to everyone but my mom, but the bullet points are:
- I got my heart broken.
- Had a nervous breakdown.
- Haven't written a word.
- Am still recovering.

Because these bullet points are reading far more dramatic than I anticipated, I'll flesh each out a little.

Heartbreak: It's happened before, it'll happen again, but this one was the nastiest motherfucker to date. Not because of what any guy or girl did to me, but because of what I did to myself. I can't attribute this heartbreak to anyone but me. I broke my own heart. I'm my own bad boy.

Breakdown: I use the word flippantly. I didn't get a diagnosis from a doctor. But I did need help. Lots and lots and lots of help, and I found it with my spiritual practitioner. What I call "breakdown", she calls "spiritual transformation." Spiritual transformation sounds groovy, spacious, and smooth. To me "breakdown" more reflects the choking, desperate, writhing place I found myself in. I do like the movement and hope embodied in the word "transformation" rather than the dead-end that "breakdown" invokes... okay, fine, spiritual transformation.

Haven't written: I really haven't done much of anything beside reflect. And listen to endless TED Talks. For the first few weeks, being upright was a major accomplishment. My Type-A Barbie is doing her best not to whine and judge and remind me that writing is what we do! And if we don't do what we do all the time, how do we ever expect to get paid to do what we do?! ...she's trying.

Recovering: Sometimes I feel awesome, sometimes I feel stupid, sometimes I feel like I can conquer the world, sometimes I feel like I'm not good enough to eat. The point is I'm feeling. And feeling means I'm living. And living means I'm not still curled up in a tight little ball in my comfy chair.

...What was my point? "If you don't believe in something, can it hurt you?" was my question.

I hurt myself, I broke my own heart, because somewhere deep inside I believed I wasn't good enough. This belief was so deep and ingrained, I thought it was a fact of life, like my heart beat or my brown eyes. This belief was my default.

Over the course of the last two months I've begun to re-program my thinking. Contrary to what I would prefer, it takes longer than a weekend in bed to exorcise a demon I've had for a lifetime, but at least I'm aware now. For the most part. Enough to know "I'm not good enough" is total bullshit. And awareness is a wonderful gateway drug to healing, acceptance, and love.

So can something I no longer believe in hurt me anymore?

No. It fucking can't.

It feels good to be back. (Barbie just died from yessing too hard.)