My hair was stunning when I was a kid. It had these glorious highlights and lowlights, this honey-caramel-golden-brown confection of wavy fluff.
I don't get out as much these days. Don't get a lot if sun. Mostly because of the myriad of doubts and concerns I secretly have, and the serious lack of fucks I give in general.
I imagine thats why my hair has dulled as it has. Its gotten darker, except for the ends, which had suffered at the hands of my dying habits in the past, and now can't forget at one time being blonde.
It can't be how each of my childish goals have one by one fallen by the wayside as I've grown up. It can't be the slow and steady comprehension of my own inescapable depression that had darkened it. It can't be a manifestation of the loss of innocence and the shift of naivete to skepticism.
But I digress. This entry is called 'work in progress'. Because what bigger work in progress is there then yourself?
I'm fairly lazy. I know the things I want require effort, perseverance and confidence. I have those things, don't get me wrong, but ita currently the wrong side of me who boasts all those traits. You know, the one who reminds me that I'm (mostly) trash? The one who says, 'I can't even get my closest friends to do this one thing that means a lot to me, why do you think strangers would do it?'
Not a fan of that guy. That guy wants a cigarette so bad it makes all the little hairs in the back of my neck stand up.
Anyway, I'm working on it. We all are, aren't we? Trying to be better, healthier, cooler, better looking, more creative, stronger, richer, blah blah blah. We're constantly trying. Trying so damn hard. Because when we stop trying, and try to look at how we are now, we get slapped with the guilt. Why did you stop? You're giving up? You can do better!
It doesn't matter if you like what you are or how you turned out, because we are saddled with the idea that we are not good enough as we are. We need high paying jobs, we need a car, we need a relationship with someone else, we need to accomplish something.
I don't even know if these wishes are mine anymore. I just know that I've had them for so long that they're burned into my eyelids when I shut my eyes. The thought of not achieving them is just a friendly lead weight in my head. I struggle through pages and pages of what I used to think were lovely words and hack at them like an out-of-practice duelist. I revisit my dreams and try to fit them into boxes other people can understand, just so I can share these incredible visions with as many people as I can.
I have no idea why. Why do I care? Why do I care if I have someone read one of my pieces and they tell me they liked it, that they could see just what I was hoping to show them, that they were swept away? Because I've felt that way myself, and it's the only skill I whole-heartedly believed was worth having when I was young? That I want to bounce that experience back to others, like paying it forward?
Who the fuck knows. I just know it's eating me from the inside out, and I'm having one fuck of a time trying to fill in the empty space my own failure has left behind.
But I'm trying. Its a work in progress.