The days of judgment

'Still so young to travel so far
Old enough to know who you are
Wise enough to carry the scars without any blame'
                         'Distant Sun'  Crowded House

Saw hypno-dude yesterday and am feeling quite a bit better about my ability to crack on with this whole self-help malarkey...which is good, as I was absolutely flogged and desperately searching for pins to stick myself with to stay awake on the train trip down to his. It would have been a bugger to have gone in that state and come back thinking well now I am not only flogged but despairing of myself as well. It wouldn't have been the first time I've been both flogged and despairing of myself, but it's not a state I recommend lingering in.

We talked a fair bit about confidence and Thailand and bullying and Dr Martens and vodka and being at ease with yourself.  The first five I can discuss with some authority, even if I only really have a grip on Dr Martens and vodka, but this idea of being at ease with yourself is something I haven't really considered before. That you can just be comfortable being you in any social circumstance. Comfortable being yourself? What sort of strange magic is that?

I want to be me, have worked hard on being me, been militant about my right to be me, and occasionally have even been happy to be me.  At ease with me? Nevvvvveeeerrrrr. Well maybe not never, but I can't think of any examples of times where I have been, so nevvvvvvereerrrr is probably right. I'm always agitating in my head about wanting to be better and do better and while I don't think that has to necessarily have to be a bad thing (because why else would you move on in life) it's rooted in a feeling of not being enough...for me or anybody else.

This is where the hippy dippy pan pipe CD playing incense burning positive affirmation chanting freaks come in and pat my hand and say it's because I was adopted and had issues with my adoptive family, there there dear, here's a tissue.  Thanks for the sympathy, but fuck off. We are the masters of our own destiny, our own self esteem, our own levels of ease with ourselves. The fact I was adopted or that my adoptive family was a bit psychotic and never really understood where I was coming from may be regrettable but it was me who chose to believe that made me not enough.  Nobody held a gun to my head and said now shit on yourself or else.

I've talked before about having this veneer of confidence over the nervous shambles that is the actual Sandy and you could say it works in social situations for the most part.  When we went to Manchester the Yorkshire rose and I discussed confidence and not having it and trying to get it and she said if I hadn't told her, she would never have regarded me as somebody with confidence issues. The veneer kind of works and it might help me wing life, but I'm bloody sick of flapping. At ease with myself? Wow. Just wow.

We all get so sucked in to what other people think though, don't we? I seem to have had a few discussions about bullying and general prejudice this week. Hypno-dude told me yesterday about how he got beaten up regularly in high school. I got tormented for being fat and having sight problems. My best friend in high school got shit because he was gay. The kindest man in the world got bullied for liking the Beatles and having acne and recently got branded a pervert for telling somebody she had nice eyes.  A friend of mine in Glasgow, one of the strongest, most fabulous women I know, took up running at 20 stone and is now 14 stone and has people laughing at her in the street for daring to be a fat runner. People get judged on their background, their size, their skin colour, their sexual preference, their clothes, their hairdos, their accents.  At this point I would just like to say to everyone who's out there thinking somebody else is weird because of how they look or where they're from or what gender they shag or what they choose or don't choose: will you please just calm the fuck down and live and let live?

I don't understand this gang mentality where everyone has to dress the same and speak the same and do the same to be accepted and where everyone who doesn't conform is viewed as a threat to be smacked down. We live in an age where we are supposedly above prejudice and value individuality. Pig's fucking arse. Do the gang members really think they're superior, or are they so insecure in themselves they need to pull down anybody that threatens their idea of normal?

More to the point: why do we, the so-called freaks, allow ourselves to get sucked into somebody else's narrow minded bullshit ideas of how we should live? And by we I mean me. Yeah, me, Miss You Are Responsible For Your Own Actions And Reactions, the one who needs to learn in middle age how to be at ease with herself because she allowed herself to think that everybody else was right and she was wrong.

Why does anybody read this blog, I am obviously a whackjob. But at least I'm an evolving whackjob. Suck that, judges of normal.