Day 10 of 365: “BECAUSE I DO HAVE A STICK UP MY ASS!”

I’m feeling hungry, excited, curious, motivated, and hungry.

And hungry.

I also really want to finish the Matrix trilogy tonight because I accidentally Amazon-rented and started watching the 3rd one before the 2nd one last night, and I only have a 24-hour window to finish watching a rented movie once I start it.

TIME CRUNCH HERE, PEOPLE.

By the way, the title will make sense later in the post. 

I enjoy going back and watching movies that I haven’t seen in a while, because I’m a whole new person. I mean literally, cells are constantly dying and being born. I am a different person than I was last night, an hour ago, and when I started this post.

According to a Google search on the topic to be sure I wasn’t full of shit, here’s what I found: “Your body is constantly replacing old cells with new ones at the rate of millions per second. By the time you finish reading this sentence, 50 million of your cells will have died and been replaced by others.”

IT’S LIKE A CONTINUAL RESET BUTTON.

There’s a bittersweet aspect to spiritual and emotional maturity. On one hand, I love learning about myself, humbling myself, opening my heart, forgiving all of the things, and connecting with people, animals, and things on a more magical level than I ever thought possible.

What’s tough is that, now that I’ve released the energy of victimhood (I mean, for the most part. I still have my occasional meltdowns over minuscule things. ), I’m able to see situations from my past through a whole new lens.

There were many friendships I had that abruptly ended, seemingly out of nowhere. I’d feel crushed and hurt and abandoned. In most of these situations, I received no information as to why the cut-off happened. One graciously honest human said, “I just don’t have the energy to fulfill all of your needs in a friendship.”

And, like, she had a good point. I was a handful. If I didn’t hear back from her within 30 minutes, I’d freak out and assume she was mad at me. If she was sad or tired, I’d freak out and assume it was because of me.

I assumed everyone else’s responses were because of me. As if I was the center of the Universe.

(I still experience this sometimes. No matter where a car horn comes from, I immediately scrunch up and am like “WHAT AM I DOING WRONG I AM SO SORRY FORGIVE ME.”)

Over the years, this same thing kept happening with friendships. I actually would tell people: I don’t trust women; once they get close to me, they just leave. I’m too much for them.

Now, looking back, I’m like, “Oh. I get it.” And it makes me feel a little coy and shy and blush-faced. When the embarrassment tickles my insides, I remind myself that I was just a little bunny, trying to work things out. I was doing the best I could from my level of awareness.

Even if that “best” was cancelling every hangout and making every situation about me, only to continue asking for favor after favor. I just didn’t know any better.

I commend these women for making the decision they made. I mean, an explanation would’ve been nice and all, but realistically I wasn’t in the place where I’d have understood it.

They did what they needed to do for themselves, and that’s amazing.

In fact, I find it very attractive. I tell Andy all the time, SELF CARE IS SO HOT.

So… Since I am a different person now, part of me wishes I could sit these people down and be like “LOOK. LOOK AT HOW MUCH MORE AWARE I AM.”

But… That’s still the same sort of “ME ME ME LOOK AT ME” thing. And I’m working hard every day to shift that… to make myself my most important priority rather than feeding off of affirmations from others.

Being a professional writer, it’s best for me to be as emotionally unaffected by criticism (and praise) as possible.

I know all the lessons that I’ve learned have taken me to this very moment. I continue to forgive myself and others, every day, for every single experience in my life. That being said, there is totally a part of me that wants to go back and be like “HEY IT’S FUTURE JEN LET ME APOLOGIZE FOR THIS PRESENT JEN. WHAT’S GOING ON WITH YOU? HOW CAN I BE OF SERVICE TO YOU? YOU HAVE A PRETTY FACE.”

It’s like the time in high school when someone pointed out my ghetto booty + thick thighs waddle-walk and asked, WHY DO YOU WALK LIKE YOU HAVE A STICK UP YOUR ASS?

And I got all embarrassed and said something clever like, “Err..Um..I…Don’t…Know…” And then cried and probably had my mom come pick me up from school early.

If I could go back with my current confidence and 70% success rate with an IDONOTCAREWHATYOUTHINKOFME attitude, I’d be like:

Or…

Or…

Or…

I have spent countless hours replaying this scene in my head. I guess that means I still haven’t released the embarrassment around that memory… And that’s okay. It’ll leave eventually.

So. Here I am… Still walking like I have a stick up my ass (AND PROUD OF IT), and doing my damned best to settle into a balanced place.

Confident, yet not cocky.
Kind, yet not a doormat.
Communicative, yet not tactless.
Motivated, yet not overdoing it.

And the list goes on.

I’m not gonna’ think about it, though. These aren’t things to think my way through, after all.

It’ll all work itself out in the wash.

OK. ON TO THE REAL ISSUE AT HAND.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ZION WITH THE MACHINES?! WILL NEO SAVE THE WORLD?!

SQUEE.