Taking it personally

You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot
You had one eye in the mirror
As you watched yourself gavotte
And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner
They'd be your partner, and

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

Carly Simon, "You're So Vain" 1973

— `phfina commentary:

You know, I get this all the time. From a goodly number of you, too: "Why are you writing about me in your entries?"

Okay, so you are ready for the one-two sucker punch, right?

Honey, you think this entry is about you, don't you? And you take it so, so personally, don't you? Oh, yes, you do. I know. I smart — still! — at some of the very sharp words I have received about things I have put up about ... "you."

Well, there's several things in that above statement (sez `phfina, wearing her professor tweed blouse) and the first thing that strikes me is, well, how else would you take it?

I mean, really, there's a couple of ways to deal with things, one of them is to be cool as a cucumber about it. "Well," sez you, "that's your point of view, and that's all very well and good, but it really doesn't apply to me. I don't take it personally, and nor should you, when I say the things I so coolly say. I have other concerns, you know, so I don't have the time, really, to engage with you."

You know what I have to say to that.

Well, I could be all impersonal, and say, "Well, fine, and have a great day."

Do you see me wearing that hat? Well, besides all day, that is: "Enjoy your beverage!"

My other response is screamed: "Well, fuck you!"

Some of you have faced that, I guess.

Look. Cool? Me? I was just accused of being 'not cool' ... and I'm like ... have I ever been accused of being 'cool'? And if I have, I would rip your face off.

"Oh, `phfina, you're so cool!"

Excuse me? Excuse me?

I BURN ... okay? I'm burning up, and I DON'T be all like: 'well, there's nothing personal.'

Because why?

Because GUESS WHAT!

It IS personal. Somebody said something to you and you were affected by it, and if you WEREN'T ... well, then go to the hospital, and get your pulse checked 'cause you just may be dead, okay?

"Don't take it personally"? Well, how the fuck else am I supposed to take it?

Excuse me, but if you're forgetting, but I'm a person here, and — newsflash — so are you!

And you just said something to me, and, yes, guess what? I took it personally, and just because you can use everybody else as a doormat, saying that sh!t to them, I am not going to let your shit fly with me, got it?

Like bullying. Like I am now.

*sigh*

Cool as a cucumber? Well, you don't look like a cucumber to me, but if that's the way you want to live your life ... as a cucumber, and not as a person ... then I say: have at it. I won't be able to stop you.

But I grieve, though. I do.

So ...

hm-hm-hm.

So some of you ... a lot of you ... read my posts, and are like, 'well, that's ... interesting.'

(how I detest that word. A cop-out word. A word that commits nothing of the sayer, ... just makes them think that it makes them look intelligent)

... And what do they get from that? Being cool as a cucumber?

What does anybody get from being cool ... instead of being committed?

But some of you go the opposite way, and go all `phfina on me.

Like, okay. I write in 'update soon' that not coming out to your mother is a cop-out, and who took it personally? (edited) And she was furious with me. Furious.

Did I write that post about (edited)?

Like, okay. I write in 'bad news, you win,' how you push around somebody you can own, bullying them until you suck the life out of them, and (edited) got it in her head that I wrote that post about her.

Did I write that post about (edited)?

But what did these girls get out of taking it all `phfina-y?

They got really, really pissed. At me. And took it out. On me.

And that hurt. 'Cause I didn't write those posts about them.

But then they did something. Then they looked in the mirror, and saw where those posts did apply to them, in their lives, and what did they do?

Well, they looked at were they were doing this, and they got to work on themselves. And the rewards, for themselves, on recognizing in themselves something that they didn't see before about themselves, and didn't like, and seeing it, and not liking it, going to work on it now, instead of just automatically lashing out, hurting people ...?

Well, have I given away too much? But when you see something in yourself, that somebody else points out, so rudely, so harshly, with so much love in their heart for you?

(Because otherwise, why would I bother? If I don't love you, why put up with all this pain and hurt of saying these painful and hurtful things?)

New worlds have opened up for them. For them. Plural.

I have opened up new worlds, for at least four girls ... because they took what I wrote ... personally.

And I didn't even write it for them.

Who did I write it for?

Who is the one girl who hasn't benefited from all that I've written, who, writing these words, instead of getting better, shoveling her way out of her shit, just digs deeper and deeper into the morass, finding more and more shit she has to own up to, but instead of getting better, just gets worse and worse and worse.

Who, when asked, 'how are you?' answers, 'I'm fine.'

But who really is in a place where she knows if she says, 'I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself. I want to die.'

Well, that raises all sorts of issues, problems, that have to be dealt with, but people just don't leave her alone with the 'I'm fine' answer but demand, 'No, really, how are you?'

But we've covered that ground before.

All this stuff I write, you take so personally, and I have to say ...

I'm so proud of you.

I'm so proud of you, taking on yourself and your life. You may think 'you're so vain' for thinking this post is about you. But I have an entirely different view on the matter.

You are so brave, reading yourself in this post. Daring to take yourself on. Being. Living. Daring to be and to live and to face yourself and revel in the things you like about yourself, and be pissed off about the things you hate, and then taking those things on.

When you read a post of mine, and say, 'well, that was interesting ...' look out. Look to your life, because I think you're not living it, if you're merely existing in a smug sense of self-satisfaction. But when you read my post, and you get so, so pissed off at me ...

Well, I could ask you to be gentle with me, the little hypocrite that I am, hitting you so hard with my sucker punches but then hiding under the covers the second you cut loose at me, screaming like a banshee for singing your life with my song.

... and that's me: so cutting, so insightful, so scared of her own shadow, that when somebody wants to put my name on a brochure that lands them millions of euros, all I can think of is people seeing my name, and I get sick, physically ill, just thinking of that.

... and that's not you. You aren't me. Thank God. You've dared to read my stuff, and to cry, or to cum, or ... even to dare to post a review! (Oh, the terror!) Or even dare to tell one of my friends you like reading my stuff (but not dare to say peep to me, God damn it) ('cause you know I'll tear you a new one) (but then you're shocked — shocked, I say — to find out that sometimes (okay, sometimes) I can be sweet, you know).

But what have I dared. Well, today I dared to go out to a museum. Wow. Hooray. Stop the presses. And that's about all I could muster. I mean, I liked it and all. Didn't like Paris. I was like: "City. Ick. People. Scary." Yearned for a forest in the countryside, but here I am, in the metro D.C. area, with all the city-life conveniences, so who am I fooling. I'm not a eel catcher in the forest of Fontainebleau. I'm not an Alsatian girl with a pretty little hat (she did look rather Irish to me. But what do I know?)

And going through the city, I kept my head held high. But all those people. No. Not people. Families. There where tons of them. Families. Mommies and Daddies and babies and children. And it was nice. But it bore down on me. It wore me down. I just ... wherever I looked, I was like, there is something I'm not, and never will be. All those families, so happy together.

And what am I? And what am I?

And know, being what I am, which is nothing, I just draw further and further into my shell, and that hurts you. You wonder how I am, ... but knowing full well that I am not well. So now I have people who care about me, and it hurts them that I'm hurting.

But when I was out, and writing, and getting so much attention, most of it good, but the bad was really bad. Really bad.

'cause I take it personally, your callousness, and your anger, and your righteousness. It's your shit, but I'm the one who gets shit on, for daring to say what she sees. And — oh! — you have made it abundantly clear to me how much you don't like being told things you don't like to hear about yourself.

So I thought writing would ... you know, ... be cathartic, you know? And let me release all this stuff that is tying me down to the past, so I could cut myself free of my suffering and float away into blissful nirvana of living my perfect, perfect life.

But ... look at me now.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones ..."

I'm this little stick. This little reed. And I so wanted to be solid like a stone.

But I ... my body's burning up. I ...

I set out writing, and I ... well, you see this great whatever ... and I'm wasting away into nothing. All these words I've written haven't helped me any at all, they've only made me worse.

And what's worse-worse is that you've subscribed. You've read my stuff and now you care about me. So my hurting now not only hurts myself, but now you hurt a bit, seeing me shrinking into myself. I can't have a good sulk and die all to myself, oh no! I hurt you now, with my silence and sadness.

Would I have written word one, seeing me now?

No.

This hasn't been pretty. This hasn't been pretty for me at all. And I can mirror-time all I want, but I know in my heart of hearts that it's all a big lie. All just another attempt to try to believe in hope when I see that I'm just trying to reach up from the darkness of this pit of despair, when I jolly well know this is my eternal consignment, so the reaching, grasping just shows the glimmer of light for one second before I'm re-immersed in darkness, making it all the more bitter for me, my fate.

If I hadn't written, I wouldn't have all this love and care from you. I wouldn't have you to hurt.

And I can't even manage hurting just myself. It hurts too much.

Hurting you? Seeing you rise above yourself, but then, you turn, having made it, and reach back for me? to pull me up and out?

I think: how sad. You are living the impossible dream. And I beg you to cut the chord. To move on. You've saved yourselves, ... please don't wreck your lives going back into the mire to rescue a lost cause.

I wish ...

I wish you were smart enough to see the reality of it. To take your earnings and to cut your losses (me, that is).

I wish God had answered my prayer a couple of years ago, and spared you, and spared me, all of this that is me.

But I can't go back, and I can't go home.

I can only go forward into tomorrow, until it's today. Again.

Or ... not.

I'm going to bed now. Good night.