Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You

How can one voice define a generation? How can one perspective expose a revolution? The same way a religion can’t sum up faith or a movie can’t encapsulate the dimensions of emotion. Things which are subjective are not easily presented by one person to another of different ways of thinking.

In Buddhism, they teach to let anger sit. Let the hardest, toughest of all emotions just sit within you. In me, anger doesn’t sit, it festers. I have read countless articles and researched countless material in hopes to find an answer when I frustratedly close whatever I’m reading asking “WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I LET IT SIT?”

It doesn’t go anywhere and I don’t know what to do with it. The anger that is constantly lurking, waiting to come out in a petty, self-serving comment towards the object of my anger. Once anger is unleashed from my mouth into the Universe, and within ear shot of the person who has put me in this way, I generally feel awful.

Awful, when I stop to realize that it’s elementary to think a person, let alone an object, can make me angry. My counselor used to have a mantra for me: I can’t change them, I can only change me. That is what anger is. Anger is me. Anger comes from and dwells within me. So when I read “let it sit” it means, let it sit within me until it dissolves.

I’ve been trying to dissolve this anger for years. I mean YEARS. In some situations, however, I can now just let it go. Countless resources I’ve scoured looking for answers to this, as well as a plethora of other quandaries this existence has me trying to solve.

Sometimes I try really hard to get the acceptance of someone for friendship. I like them and really want them to like me too. I read a great article today which basically said that a person’s true worth is what they can offer to another person – as the only way a person would be interested in another person is based on what they receive from them.

I learned something tonight about a friend of mine. Before, I felt this person was worth fighting for, defending. Then all of a sudden this person’s true colors were accidentally left showing and I didn’t like what I saw. Not enough to cut this person out completely, but enough to the point where I realize that when I don’t have that feeling of safety around someone it’s for a reason. That I don’t feel safe enough to let my guard down.

A good friend once told me you can count the number of friends you have on one hand. I immediately laughed and started rattling off names. He just smirked, took a man’s sip of his scotch and said “call me when they don’t answer.” Sure enough he was right.

I chose to move. Therefore I choose not to have all my friends in a neat little zip code. Chicago has never felt like home, yet here I am again living here. I do have friends here, but it gets lonely too. When I left New York I quickly saw who my “drinking buddies” were and who my real friends are. I ask myself if it’s me holding me back – walls in friendship the same way I put walls up in intimacy? Mostly I think my friend was right and we just don’t always have a surplus of people who will go to bat for us.

All this anger and time spent alone wondering what’s wrong with me has debilitated me completely recently. I am left feeling deflated and withdrawn. Then it goes into how my books are not worth writing, because I can not define a generation with my voice and therefore no one would want to read what I have to write.

I assume that since I look for answers others must too and if I don’t have the answers then I’m not an educated authority on the subject and should not be writing on the matter. What I feel is what I feel. It is real – to me and to you. What you are reading right now is me being real. It may not interest many, yet it may some. I don’t think my bildungsroman (coming of age story) has an answer. I think that’s okay.

The struggle itself is what we identify with. Bubble gum endings and happily-ever-afters have never been something I sought. Feelings of failure, loneliness, insecurity, unassuredness are what I deal with. They translate to anger, because anger is the parent emotion to all those feelings. And then I let it fester. Instead of just writing it out, which is the meat of my novel sandwich.

I do not have the definitive voice. I have my experience. I have my bubble of known, in which I draw from in order to write. I wish I had the answers. I wish I had a million bucks. I can wish until Christmas morning for the answers or the money and when December 26th comes, what will I have? Exactly what I have now – me.