Extraordinary
Starting today I plan to hide the metaphorical razor blades and start living, loving and hoping again.
Joel Osteen said something profound, that God already heard you loud and clear the first time you prayed for something. No need to beg. He doesn’t react to begging. Just keep praising him for making your wishes come true, and that’s when they will.
Even though I’m a little older than the entitlement generation that wants/gets everything now now NOW, I have to admit that my patience is the only thin thing about me.
I’ve begged God for five-plus years to get my mother healthy and on her own. I’ve begged for financial stability and the love of a good man. I’ve begged for happiness and peace and a plane ticket to Paris. And I continue to wonder, well, “When? What do I have to do to be heard in a universe of 7 billion that are praying for similar and, let’s face it, probably more-important things?”
Osteen’s solution is to pray it once, and thank God for bringing it to pass, whenever it will be brought to pass. And you know what? I’ve tried everything else. I’m going to try it his way on this one and see what happens.
I look back fondly on my 20s, on the time I spent alone and scraping together my last few bucks to do whatever I wanted to do. Friends didn’t want to show up for anything I wanted to do? Fuck ’em. I tried not to miss out on too much.
Now here I am in my 30s, and it’s mostly the same song and dance. It’s pretty bad when the most-stressful years of my life were the best years. And if these are the traditional best years, please tell me they’re not going to get so much worse that I WILL be looking back at this time with any degree of wistfulness!
I figure this is my last chance to make absolute miracles happen. To really figure out what I want to be when I grow up … to become the woman that no man in his right mind would resist … to be so in love with life that it can’t HELP but love me back and shower me with all the blessings I desire and a bajillion that I didn’t even think to ask for.
I hate being ordinary. I hate how willingly I’ve accepted it. I hate how enslaved I feel to situations that are absolutely fucking hopeless. I hate continually battling for my joy, and for the anchors tied to my ankles that keep pulling me under to the point that I cannot fathom continuing to tread water, let alone swimming away.
Some people let hate or fear or frustration motivate them. It doesn’t work like that for me. I have to be happy to want to do and be more. Happy isn’t a destination, though, I’ve learned. It’s the gas in the car — broken-down as said vehicle may be — that gets you the fuck out of Pity Party Town.
My home situation hasn’t been what’s broken me, although it’s certainly driven me over the edge and I’m sitting in the sealed-up car at the bottom of the ocean, living on borrowed time. It’s love, of all things, that tore me apart … that I could be treated so horribly when all I did was try to love someone who just doesn’t want to be loved by anyone but a horrid piece of shit who, if he’d just fucking examine the damn situation, doesn’t give a fuck about him … this fucking wrecked my entire world.
The thing that I thought would finally save me, was what smashed the window on the sealed-up car at the bottom of the ocean and caused me to drown on impact.
And here I am, dragged upon shore and looking around at what’s left, and not being overly excited about still having to deal with it.
“See me jump through hoops for you
You stand there watching me performing
What exactly do you do?
Have you ever thought it’s you that’s boring?
Who the hell are you?I am extraordinary, if you’d ever get to know me
I am extraordinary, I am just your ordinary
Average everyday sane psycho
Supergoddess.”— Liz Phair, “Extraordinary”
I stopped dreaming in that car. I forgot about setting goals. I quit envisioning the life I once believed I was meant to have. I see the anchors affixed to my ankles and I don’t know how anyone expects me to get up and walk away from all of this when it will keep FOLLOWING ME.
I realize that nobody else is going to change and I am sick of always having to be the one to change, to do better, to dream bigger, to carry more of a load with every step I take.
But I think today I decided that, well, it’s OK. This is it. If I don’t do something so over-the-top spectacular — and soon — to rescue my mind and heart and body and soul, then I can buy the hats and horns for the pity party.
But in the meantime, I have one last miracle in me … the last drop of oil that can last for 40 days if I just thank God for that to happen … and damn it, as soon as I figure out what it is, I’m going to come out of this stronger, better and anything BUT ordinary.
Just because someone special turned out to be just as ordinary as everyone else, doesn’t mean I have to follow his lead.
Move over, world. Imma show you how a real comeback is done. …