cloudy-head

What would I like?

For things to be gentle and quiet, to have time to think and breathe, to feel a bit better. I'd like for things to make sense, for things to feel right, to get what I want out of life, to find the beautiful nostalgia I've been looking for.

Wouldn't everybody?

*****

I'd like to feel ok in this life. I finally get round to reading the copy of Ecologist that I bought before Christmas, and find that the leading article is called 'Medication Nation...being a pill away from perfection'. It's funny how these things work out, that I should find this article now, and not at any other time.

It talks about how we're obsessed with pills now, how our dedication to 'eradicating suffering' in humanity is driving us, basically, to fuck with ourselves.

"...it's the price you pay for living in a society based not round happiness per se, but by its pursuit."

"If someone's life is making them sick then you can make them well by either changing how they live their life or by making them fit in with what made them sick in the first place."

*****

Ever wondered why you look round a room of people you don't respect and feel ill inside for not being like them? Ever wondered how that works, how society can make you feel bad for not being something you don't want to be?

My a-level Sociology teacher used to rant, at length, about everything. I always wondered how he could sit and drink Diet Coke whilst telling us that Coca Cola were shitheads. I wondered, still wonder, how people's lives and their beliefs can be so out of joint, how principle and action are so far removed.

So often, it comes down to feeling out of place. Why, oh why, should I feel bad for not behaving, looking and living like the people whose behaviour, looks and lives I have no respect for? I can bang on about my principles as long as I like, there's still that feeling of just wanting to fit in. That persistent feeling of not quite measuring up to anyone's standards. No matter which group I'm in, no matter who I'm with. I don't quite cut it.

"here no elsewhere underwrites my existence"

Pretend then, that somewhere else you are the centre of attention. Keep yourself aloof, always with somewhere else to be, some other group to grace your presence with, a lady always leaves them wanting more, a lady always keeps a part of herself reserved.

*****

Another word of wisdom from my Sociology teacher was "If God had wanted you to have eyelashes like a fucking camel, he'd have given you them".

I'm pretty sure from conversations we had afterward that he was in no way a man of religion. He used the term 'God' to illustrate a point, the comment meant nothing to him in that sense. Of course, it meant rather a lot to me in that sense.

This was back in the day when I never wore make up. Back in the day when I'd just started 6th form and was furious at the way I was completely invisible, feeling that no one would ever notice me in this enormous crowd.

I took his point to heart, and stayed fresh-faced for another year. I also stayed horribly insecure about it for another year.

The day my gran died was the day I'd given in and gone out and bought make up from the Body Shop. Her death should've put the whole thing from my mind, but it didn't, and putting on eyeliner to go to her funeral felt deeply symbolic.

Now, just like I always feared, I hate to go out without it.

"don't go and sell your soul for self-esteem"

*****

Perhaps it's better this way. If eyeliner, like nice clothes, makes me feel good then I don't believe there's anything wrong with that. But then I see some girl walk past, some skinny skinny girl with perfect face and hair and perfect clothes and I don't feel good. I don't feel good at all.

I don't wanna be her. I'm not her, never will be her, wouldn't want to be her.

And those people in the article, with pills to bring them up and send them down and curb their addictions and give them the love they never got at home, pills to stop them shopping and gambling and all the stupid things that society has taught us to do, pills to make them fit in without fitting in too well, to make them happy but not too happy, to make us ok, or at least almost ok, at least believing that once we buy one more thing we'll be ok.

I don't want to always be a pill away from happiness. And I don't want to always be a new t-shirt or a haircut away from happiness. If I could just lose weight, if I could just look nice, if I could just be pretty and popular...

This is fucking adolescence all over again.

This is where principle and action go astray. I know why that teacher still drank Coke, I know why I still go to McDonalds and I know, finally, what the problem is.

So much freedom to do exactly what we're allowed to do. Society makes people sad.