mirroring: leave your house or die
there's a post i recently just saw from taidama titled "Leave Your House Or Die."
quote to quote, it's very morbid sounding. even confusing, as nothing can get me while i'm in the comfort of my room...!
well, past the assertive title, the post talks about something that resonates with me on a intrinsic level. the idea that you, yes you, are not living an experience worth much of anything, if you bar yourself from everything that could flourish it by giving arbitrary #reasons on why you can't do...
...well, anything.
you're doing everything to convince yourself you can't do anything. a bit flipflopped, huh? doing so much to stop yourself from doing something so little that, later down the road, will mean a lot. it's an interesting perspective.
however, i'm sorry to get your hopes up, i don't relate to the frustration around stagnation. if anything, i deeply, deeply relate to taidamas mother and taidamas own, anxious, house-ridden introversion that was before.
it's a frequent point of conversation for me to be surrounded by people who do things more than i. for people to, example: go biking out into the great wilderness of california, coming home with scars and wounds that make you look like an action hero from how you've crashed redundantly...it's something i've never understood. for people to just do things, y'know?
there's always a trillion reasons why i'll convince myself i can't do it. always one thing after the other.
taidamas mother specifically likes to pull the, "i missed my opportunity early in life, so i can't do it now," card. she expresses a sort of pessimism that because during all the times she might've wanted to be out and about, she couldn't. so now it's a comfort zone of hers to be stuck at the house, being unable to go out, because going out feels wrong. or it might poke at deeper, unmoved stones that she's made peace with because hell! what else can she do, right?
truthfully, i'm not here to psychoanalyze another bears own mother... but i see myself deeply in her adamant nature to be...unwilling to do something for, as taidama puts it, #reasons. i've made peace with it too!
but i know it's killing me.
i know that every day i choose not to do something because it doesn't fit within my tightly knit comfort zone, it's punishing me far more than the complaints and conversation i may be able to appreciate and laugh at later in life.
or later that week.
or whenever i remember it and have a chance to share it with another in an unrelated conversation.
i suppose an example of this happening was not too long ago, when i was hanging out after work with someone i'd met from a similar proximity: omar. it was a routine of ours to hang out and chitchat about basically whatever until we parted ways for the day.
not that i disliked it or anything, but for someone who traditionally keeps to myself, it always had me feeling a little out of place. so whenever his friends would socialize with him, i'd be stuck there, rolling along like a third wheel, usually immediately remembering why i don't talk to people. thinking things like "you can just talk to people? like, anybody?!"
but, it was odd once one of them stuck around for longer than i'd expected. granted, i was okay with it, y'know. i'm traditionally good at ignoring people i don't like. i'm even better at ignoring my jealousy that our routine we shared is no longer exclusive.
omar, however? wanted nothing more to do with the guy. that shocked me, as i had assumed that you're comfortable with allowing your time or energy - even in small increments - was someone that you liked being around. that's how it works for me, at least. my friend nick observed that i surround myself with only people i like, and i barely, if at all, interact with others outside of those i like near perfectly.
so, in a quite unexpected detour, he suggested we go walk to the store. a passing comment of his a while ago was that he was hungry, so i assumed that's why. i told him he could go by himself both times and i wouldn't mind.
but he was inviting me along.
i growled, showing intense disinterest in being around someone outside of work. there were SO many reasons i didn't want to go.
where IS the store????
i don't have money on me, why would i be going to a STORE?
what if he buys something for me and now i have to repay him later! every time i go somewhere with someone (like, twice before,) people always spend money on me and i feel guilty!!
i feel disgusting, what if i don't look good enough! what if the wind screws up my hair! i know my makeup feels gross and greasy after work, i don't know how it presents past the 8 hours i have to spend here! i usually wash it as soon as i arrive home!
what if he sees more of me that i tend to not show people outside of work!? what if he gets CLOSER to me! what if he realizes i'm much weirder than i present, and that me staying home all the time and never being around others who know me inside situations i have zero control over is a protection mechanism to control my identity!
what if this makes him someone i can't push away,
before i'm pushed first?
seeing me for who i really am,
behind all the walls i've hidden,
myself.
oh, the horrors! no can do.
i just couldn't stop walking, though. his uncharacteristic silence was eating at me, making his "friends" immense interest in our activities appear starving for attention. at this point, i was poking fun at him. all the hushed giggles i was making at his expense was a far more polite way to essentially say one thing.
see? this is what you get for letting people you don't like too close to you. you can't be personable with everyone. it'll bite you in the ass later, and this is now.
eventually, this "friend" snapped off from our pod, and we continued our journey to the store i had no idea existed.
it might as well just be an excuse to get him to take me to his house or kidnap me. i started mapping the directions it's taking to get there in my head so i can have an easy exit.
after half-attentive conversation about his grandfather being deported, a topic i remained relatively silent on as i had not lived the experience and i was, honestly VERY terrified of saying something that didn't quite fit into his shoes despite my empathetic nature: we arrived.
a flat little convenience store that looked far more like a laundromat to the point i had not put two and two together that he stopped to cross the road to GET to this store. stupid idiot. pay attention next time.
walking in, i'll stand very corrected. it was the absolute prettiest and comforting store i've seen in a while. it's like if you watered, sunlit and gave nutrients to a wilting plant. it grows and extends all of its branches, baring fruit in colors that you'd never believe could grow. not in this forest, at least.
so to say that i was enamored by how gorgeous a distant cousin of a dollar tree looked was shocking.
i romanticize a lot of the mundane, and for those who live next to this store, it's probably nothing special. but for the yellow tinted lights to share the shine of plastic bags with glowing light outside,
for the unapologetic littering of pinatas, nearly breaking the ceiling tiles wide open with how proud they are - how excited they must be for others achievements,
and for everything else in such stark vibrant colors that suffocate your eyes, unable to tell what's what - just a splattering of colors resting on racks, making this small store i'd never think once about visiting on my own...
it felt good. it felt really good. to finally break my routine and get out of my comfort zone. to get out of my goddamn house for once. to see something new. to BE somewhere new. i must've looked so out of place with the awestruck expression burnt on my face. maybe that's why the stockers looked at me so bizarre.
to keep it realistic, however: i did not lose my immediate sense of self. he had bought me an arizona cocktail (to my dismay) and my immediate fear was whether or not this was alcoholic or not.
i had no other sense of the word cocktail, after all. >:(
i was petrified that i'm going to get drunk and end up at his house,
end up drunk unaware of how to get back home.
or worse: end up drunk and letting my guard down, spilling bullshit about myself that i needed absolutely NOBODY to know.
graciously, exiting the store i was reassured by him that it in-fact, wasn't alcoholic, and we traded drinks for comfort. thank god. i can stop remembering how to get home by mental image. we split a ice cream sandwich, and he poked fun at me, saying i'm sheltered. he gave me that kind of look as i retorted that i'm not.
..fucker.
overall,
i could come up with a dozen reasons why i wouldn't go off and do this again. i could come up with a HUNDRED. granted, i still struggle deeply with going outside and just embarking on new places - something i strongly desire to fix, even if it's the act of taking some random transit bus to carry me off to a new part of this state i've never seen.
but that's the beauty of what i think tadaima was trying to convey, it's so much better to just set aside your #reasons aside, even if for a moment, to get out of your house. but it is still godawful hard to get out of your head. going to new places won't be the immediate fix to your problems,
but you should still open a window in your comfort zone to really take in the rest of life.
to appreciate the small things that appeal to you, even if you hate the greater whole,
letting in the rest of what should be lived,
if yours is truly worth living.