the person that I want to be

I have always been adept at procrastination, but these past weeks I have sharpened my skills to a near surgical precision.
Recent heady conversations with dear friends have provided ample fodder for thinking, for musing, for pensive "brooding." In addition, I have been considering the song below. Who I was, who I want to be, who I once wanted to be, who I am now.
My desire to know myself, to truly know myself, is indomitable.
Recent interpersonal situations at work have cast light on parts of me that I continue to hope are not there. I have seen them, they are unnervingly strong and cantankerous, but I continue to hope that with more ignoring they will go away.
I desire to be the sort of person with no penchant for cruelty. Someone who does not delight in aligning with others to bitch endlessly and "talk shit"... As I stop to consider it, that is a rather apt term.
I consider my next tattoo: "primum non nocere" down my forearm, and a part of me fears that I will be unable to live up to this charge I give myself to "do no harm."

Of course I will be unable to. I am human. And humans, scampering mindlessly about in their daily lives, injure one another both unwittingly and with great purpose every day. A complete Gandhi-Mother Theresa-Buddhaesque desire for nonviolence and gentility would not prevent me from injuring my fellow man. Injury can occur through ignorance, through unrequited love, even self-preservation.
Instead, the tattoo would serve as all the rest do: a quiet reminder. A reminder to do my best - extend my arm in civility and love whenever possible - to sit in inaction when the desire to proclaim myself "better than" washes over me - to stay quiet when the desire to engage in that delicious, vicious cattiness arises - and, most of all, attempt to never pass up the opportunity to help another.

It will serve as a reminder as all my tattoos do -
As my foot tells me that there is no avoiding my pain or my past, and that the best way of managing it is to lock eyes with it and continue pushing through.
As my chest tells me that good comes from every evil, and that love and growth occur with every injury. That sometimes our very best parts are also our most wounded.
As my arm tells me that death is not to be feared with every dear moment so full of life. Living in the Great Integrity means "she never fears the tiger because there seems to be no place to sink his claws."
As my back reminds me that my heart belongs to one, and that my love for her - whoever, wherever she may be - never stops burning.

When I die my body will be littered with languages, important reminders deserving a more permanent etching than the notes I used to scrawl across my hands in high school.

In considering the song below I challenged myself to think of myself five years ago and remember the expectations that I had of this day.

Five years ago I was a member of a college cohort that I loved dearly... but that never quite seemed to fit me as well as it did the others. The "popular kids." I drifted further away as they prepared for graduation and I prepared for a final year of delayed practicum. I hoped that we would keep in touch. (we did not)
I was in a relationship with a battle-torn woman who cut herself bloody and blacked out her windows. In retrospect, I was in this relationship to prevent her final self-destruction. Alas our relationship ended in the coming months and she did not self-destruct... though it remains touch-and-go to this day.
Five years ago I did not know where my career would take me, nor did I have any ideas. I was broke, digging a cavernous hole of debt, and finding purpose only in caring for others and ignoring myself. My aggravation with life and my partnership showed me these same aforementioned parts of myself- the parts that are cruelly sarcastic and cannot control anger. The parts I first unleashed on my mother after the years of abuse finally stopped. I had gone a year without being hospitalized but there were times I still missed having a gun.
Where did that girl imagine she would be in five years?
Fuck if I know.

Where is she?
She is in a quiet, cool room with the thick curtains drawn for an uncharacteristic moment... feet under the covers and next to a gigantic, long-haired black dog whose features can't be differentiated when she curls into a 110 lb. ball.
This girl knows years more about love and forgiveness and friendship and God. She cries more, plays video games less and loves life so much, much more. She has made her peace with God and is so grateful for the loves and loves lost of the past half-decade. She still doubts herself, but hate is no longer turned inward with nearly the frequency or ferocity with which it once was. I find myself questioning whether this hate is present at all, though I dare not make such a bold statement.

This girl, who is a woman, who still feels odd when referring to herself as such... this girl often finds herself confused and questioning, sad. Lonely. Just as alone as ever in numbers, but feeling far less so than in years prior. Still searching for a soul-mate to lock eyes with and disassemble with. Someone to revel in intensity with.

Still pushing myself to do more, still feeling... slightly... as though it's never enough. This feeling too has dissipated. I am no longer so driven to seek more. More, more, More, MORE. I am more able to see the butterfly effects of all small things. And of big things.
My work pits me against a monstrous corrupt machine in which masses of people are discarded and dehumanized. It is easy, during weeks like this one, to feel as though it's all too big. Yesterday I felt as though juggernaut is unstoppable and the quest for human decency and repair is futile. It's no wonder why I can't remember who I wanted to be five years ago. Sometimes I can't remember who I wanted to be yesterday.

Today I want to be kind.
I want to continue to be fond of myself, and I want to begin caring for myself with the same ferociousness that I feel for those I love.
I want to let my heart be the most important part of me. I want to show how big my heart is. Not for any sort of acknowledgment or accolade, but for the purpose of surveying it myself. And improving the small bit of land/space/time that we are each given upon receipt of a soul.

Side note:
During my recent ECHOcardiogram I was able to see my heart. I lay uncomfortably on my side with a pretty woman's hand grazing my left breast and watched the grainy gray valves of my beating heart flapping open and closed, open and closed, open and closed. I felt joyous and unnerved. It looked... so strange. Alien. More than that, it looked very small. My heart is actually not very big at all. Not at all like the romantic muscle responsible for my being alive, my blood flow and my every love and devotion.

(Yes of course it is not the 1500's and I do know that my every love and devotion resides in my brain... but I nonetheless I know how intensely my heart aches when my brain breaks)

The tech examined a brightly colored map of blood flow with great focus. To me it appeared to be a beautifully lit mess, blood swirling in and about in a terrible, jumbled-up frenzy.
As many times as I had thought my heart surely broken, I was mildly surprised to see it there in front of me- pumping along reliably, no nicks or cracks in sight. But small. The size of my soon-to-be-removed kidney. So small. And so fragile.

I am a girl with a normal sized heart and a normal sized brain. Ever wanting to do better, to be better. As a friend recently commented, the best thing I can accomplish might be to realize just this. That I am a extremely normal, normally flawed human. Not as an act of resignation, but as an act of forgiveness.

I know that more than likely

I will continue to fuck things up.
I will continue to get unrealistically upset with "bad" drivers.
I will continue to eat more sugar and drink more beer than I should.
I will continue to procrastinate with mindless activities, avoiding valuable ones.
I will continue to curse like a prison inmate.

But I can also

Learn from my mistakes and make good whenever possible.
Take every opportunity to meditate and improve my frustration tolerance- or at least sing along loudly with a great song.
Enjoy the sights and sounds of a walk in the way that my dog does, and find joy in healthy food that nourishes me.
Give myself time to think of nothing and relax, balancing it with distraction-free time for thinking and doing.
Speak words of love and encouragement to those in need.

There is ever room for improvement.
And there always, always will be.

It's comforting to feel that I might just be the person that I want to be.