Elizabeth vs. Myself

I don't think I started this series correctly, I seemed to have left out various parts of myself which would have given you a better understanding of what I contain, of my being, which seems to confuse even myself - even after 31 years of walking around with my same skin and my same thoughts.

I seem to have created a rather great frustration for you as I write so superfluity with little regard to how the words strike across the page. Some of this dealt with the creature that I am, the contradiction of my thoughts and my speech. I am the greatest philosopher if only in my head.

I am a contradiction. Though I am hopeful that you may feel the same about yourself, as you move through your life with your thoughts and actions and how those thoughts and actions seem to bring light the different aspects of you, even those you would rather remain hidden.

It is important that you should have known this and the other things that I will write now about my inner workings, because it will allow you to take what I had have written and the stories that I have shared as just a very small part of me, the light part, the part I can express.

I am entirely complex and that did not appear in anything I have written before. Hopefully now it will take the forefront, at least until I am bored with it. To elaborate on the notion of contradiction, I seem to spring disappointment in those that I meet. A rather sad life if you really think about it. Though others have disappointed me so I suppose it is quid pro quo.

I also hate clichés though I use them quite frequently. I have a tattoo that is scribbled across my left arm, just below the shoulder muscle, above the bicep. The contradiction comes to play when you look upon my dress. I don classic attire, not the sort that one would suspect a tattooed individual to select. It springs comment from strangers, "you do not look like someone who would have a tattoo" especially when they note my Louis Vuitton handbag.

Yet here is the complex part, they do not realize that I only chose the classics, not for pretension, which has crossed the minds of those that I meet, but because I am very afraid to shop for myself and need clothes that will last awhile. Therefore, classics do quite nicely so that it will spare the embarrassment of staring at my underwear clad body and forcibly try on clothes that I would never in reality look decent in. This I have shielded from others, this lack of confidence in the face of blatant arrogance.

Another contraction: I once had a radio show, full of dark heavy tempo music. I chose pieces with as little words as possible, mostly because I would much rather have the music become the background to the thoughts engulfing my time. I would read poetry during the time in between the music, not because I thought that I was more educated, more enlightened, but because I had no idea how to choose the appropriate music for the time allotted, and I had a horrible time searching for music in the back CD library, so my sister's spoken-word anthology began my ruse.

I went with a group of friends to the local college bar, where radio stations and eventually my show were brought up. Not by me, of course, I would not like to bring attention to something that I was not proud of, and I was not proud of my lack of radio show etiquette. As my friend prattled on about the wonders of my music selection and the fact that it aired from midnight to 3am, unknowing that I selected that time so that the possibility of listeners would be as little as possible, an eaves dropper was contemplating her story and asked "do you know this girl, because I have been trying to find her all throughout campus, and I have asked every Goth chic I found if she was her."

My friend with more pride that I would surely have, pointed to me and said "it's Elizabeth, right here." I still remember the disappointment in his eyes as he looked upon my perfectly make-upped face and butterfly sparked tee and I remember quite vividly as if it happened just moments ago him sinking 2 inches in his chair, before rising and excusing himself.

It is this disappointment that I feel from others as they realize that I am not what they had fantasized me to be, I suppose I have inherited the empath ability from my father. Which is why it takes awhile for me to voice any disappointment I may have had for the person sitting in front of me. Part of it is people pleasing, having been accused of that before, yet that part is so very little, so minute.

The large part is that I struggle with connecting thoughts to words, or written words for that matter as my horridly written stories previous to this had surely attested. So I slink through time, building resentment against the other until if becomes more than I can control and spills forth in a dramatic angry babble. It is not for pleasing people, it is for my abhorred inability to express my thoughts and the jealousy I feel when those whom I need to relent against have placed what they feel/ need/ think so eloquently that I need to make sure that I am as eloquent too, at least to save them from any more confusion.

So I clam up, waiting until the thoughts that I had so perfectly in my head are able to come out in words. It takes months for this to occur, though I have worked upon it that I now can at least say what I need to say and more importantly be understood without escalating the situation any more than possible, within a few hours of the incident.

Quite an accomplishment, if you were looking for one.

Continued in Part 2 of Elizabeth vs Myself.

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