I think I kept expecting my life to make this wild turn, whereas really, I think some stuff might be more of a gradual turn…
When Jaime came to town, and I danced the night away, and I finally started to feel like me again… When I grabbed dinner and ate it in the middle of Times Square, and took in how beautiful the city was… When I re-met Cory Booker – I had all of these moments that I thought, “This is it! The beginning of the new beginning!”
And then invariably, something would happen that would make it feel like, “No, there is no new beginning. I’m a bad person, who’s failing, who’s already messed everything up and it’s too late. And it’s over.”
My dad always says, “Never get too high and never get too low,” and I have sooo ignored that advice since being here – letting every single thing be the end of the world and the greatest thing ever. And that’s exhausting! (Maybe I should listen to Daddy a little more…maybe.)
Then, going from Friday being the worst day since I’ve been here (the worst day in a long time, really) – when I literally sobbed on the floor of my office (thank goodness for the blinds on my glass door), to later in the weekend when I had one of the best nights of my entire life, I finally thought, “I need to even the heck out. My heart doesn’t know what is going on. And this is too exhausting – I’m sure not only for me, but for everyone around me.” So I’m pressing the re-set button – re-calibrating a little. [*sound effects*]
It’s finally time to stop allowing every thing to be a humongous thing.
That doesn’t mean that I’m not ever gonna come home from BMI and put on Gladys Knight or Sam Smith and cry. I’m pretty sure I will…
It also doesn’t mean I’m never gonna complain about anything on my blog again. I’m sure I will. But I’m gonna try to handle it all in the context of a bigger life.
In the past week, I’ve been doing everything I said I wanted to do – working on rebuilding the pillars (working out more, reading more, writing more, lining up performances, the whole shebang), actually asking some of my friends how they’re doing instead of only talking about me 24/7. I’m making efforts, and things are going better.
I’ve spent some time on this blog beating myself up about ways in which I felt I mistreated people, or was maybe too dramatic or this or that.
And sometimes I think I’m making myself sound or feel awful, when not everything has necessarily been so super awful. Some things are kinda small…
For instance, there is a very nice person who really doesn’t even know me all that well, and yet has still always tried to be nice and supportive. He tried to talk to me at a party (as I was kind of ignoring the other BMI people there, since I just couldn’t take i anymore), and it is burned in my brain the way he tried to tell me I was doing well in BMI, and I snapped at him, “I can’t talk about BMI anymore!!!!”
And I know it’s my right to not have to talk about anything I don’t want to. But there is such a nicer way to express that. And it’s obviously not nice to raise my voice to anybody ever – and especially not to those who are only trying to help.
But when I apologized for it the next chance I happened to see him, he said he didn’t even remember me snapping at him. So, maybe I’m over-blowing things in my head because I feel bad. Or maybe I’m lucky to have patient people in my circles.
Nonetheless, I feel there there have been too many moments of snappyness or not thinking or caring about other people enough. I’m sure that I have hurt or upset people in the last few months and that is a crappy feeling.
And I’ve obviously internalized that feeling sort of a lot. And that’s not helping anything either, because for one thing, I’m making myself sound awful, which is not good either.
Plus, it’s almost like in my feeling bad, I’m taking even more attention of “Look at me, I’m so terrible. I’m the worst. Poor me” – which is not what I’m trying to do, but it could be coming across that way…
Like I was a victim in the beginning of “oh, woe is me, life is so hard. Then when I didn’t react well, the that intensifies with “oh, woe is me for being such a terrible person.”
So, I need to just be done doing all of that – the snippiness, the shame spiral of the snippiness. That doesn’t mean I don’t still feel bad about any time I’ve been too short with someone while my emotions were high. It doesn’t mean I’m not still a little nervous that there are gonna be people running around this world like “oof. That crazy girl?!” It just means I can’t live the rest of my life hanging out in shame, just ’cause I wasn’t the best version of me during some tough times.
While I’m not proud of the way I’ve acted in every situation all the time, there’ve also been a lot of good moments. There’ve been moments I kept my cool under adversity (if you can believe it in the way I’ve been talking about myself lately. :-P)
I’ve also been a little more visible at work lately, with my half promotion – interacting with more people and more people in the halls just talking to me, congratulating me, etc. And a ton of jokes have been made about me being the most positive person on the planet, or like, “Oh my goodness, when Aurora gets upset she just smiles and dances.” Or “you know you are only seconds away from a dance when Aurora’s around.”
And there are other subsets of people who’ve been talking to me that way recently too – saying they’ve seen resilience and strength and positivity… So, I haven’t alienated everyone in the world. And I haven’t been mean to everyone. And I can’t believe I live in a universe where it’s like, “the majority of people are totally wrong about me and a small crowd has seen the real, actual terrible person.” I have to believe, “I’ve been kind of a jerk to a small crowd. I’m taking steps to try to remedy that as best I can. And thank goodness for the rest of the world helping me to believe I haven’t totally lost ‘who Aurora is’ after moving here.”
I’m just a person – not a perfect one by any means. But just a person. And just as my dad said to never get to high or too low, I think that applies to this too.
When I’m doing my best and am at my kindest, I can’t say, “I’ve done it. I’ve reached Cory Booker level. I’m perfect and everyone must love me.”
And when I accidentally fall short of the kind of person I want to be, I can’t sit around saying, “Well, that’s it for the rest of my life. I made someone feel small [*or insert other negative emotions here*], I’m the worst person on the planet. Get out the rocket ship and send me away. (And don’t ever let anyone dare say anything nice about my ever again, ’cause *tilts head back wildly* it couldn’t possibly be true!
It’s easy to kind of let that happen, because I want to be perfect all the time and I want to show love to everybody, and I get a little too gumphygrunkmahuff when I fall short.
But it’s time for a recalibration.
I’m sure I’ll still analyze my behavior sometimes. I’m sure I’ll still get my thoughts out on the blog. But let’s try to start with a fresh start ish. I’m gonna try to be better (as I’ve said), and enjoy New York more (as I’ve also said), and we’ll just go from there.
Thanks for sticking me, you gorgeous fabulous blog readers (and friends) xoxoxo