Priority Use

I had just written this amazingly introspective and intimate portrait of myself on the verge of realization. And then it disappeared. Well, it didn't really just disappear on it's own, I made it disappear. Which is even worse. It might have been for the better. I might have been saying things I wouldn't have actually been glad I'd said tomorrow, or the next day. But, they were said, and they felt good saying.

So, the post disappeared and I just had to cry. Sometimes it just builds up so much that something ridiculous--like losing a post to the mysteriousness of cyberspace or the motherboard on my computer--sets me off. I spend so much time being consumed with being okay, staying sane, staying healthy while doing it all that sometimes I forget that it might be too much. But, somehow everyone else manages, right?

Tonight I went to a gymnastics meet. When I was little I used to love watching gymnastics. Yet, at the same time, it always made me feel bad about myself. It was almost as if I was adicted to the fascination of feeling bad about myself than actually enjoying watching the sport. I would look at those girls and wonder why it was that I wasn't good at something like that and why I didn't look as good as them. Yet, I couldn't turn away. Really any non-professional sport brings up these feelings for me. Only sports though. Nothing else.

But, tonight, it was different. I wasn't consumed by feeling bad. It was this odd realization of how things are. An acceptance, almost, that I could be that good at something. I'm just not, though, because I don't try. This could have made me feel worse, but, instead, it made me feel better.

We were sitting in, oh, I don't know, the third row maybe. Which was also really good. When I usually look at seemingly perfection, I'm usually looking at it through the lens of a camera, printed on the glossy pages of my magazine, or through someone else's perspective on my tv screen. But, this, was different. I don't know if it's cause I'm getting older, or maybe it was a fluke, or maybe just cause we were only 3 rows up. But, it didn't feel so bad. We were so close that I saw the bruises on their legs. I saw that their skin made dimples and little folds when the bent down to fix their taped up feet. I saw that their tooshies (quite strong, I might admit) jiggled a bit more than I'd ever noticed. And that was really good. Sometimes I forget that people aren't perfect. Instead of being consumed by their faultlessness--a faultlessness that I manifest, not one that is actually there--I looked at their faces and remembered--just for a second, but that's all it took--that they, too, were human.

It's odd to admit that I think about such ridiculous and "cliched" things. It's embarrasing to concede that I cry when I lose an unimportant piece of prose that doesn't even need to be written. But, it seems to me that if we all admitted these things, it wouldn't be so hard. We all spend so much time trying to be perfect that when people aren't perfect, I think they forget that no one else is too. So, I still want to be perfect. I still want to do good and be good. But, I guess it's not always that important. I'm sure I'll forget how self-assured I now feel in my momentary overwhelment when I wake up this morning