Well, well, well.

I need to stop napping during the day. I seem to have the strangest dreams when I do. For instance, today when I woke up I would have sworn to you that I visited the afterlife and am no longer afraid of dying... Not to quote Twilight or anything, but I think they had a good point with this line, "Dying is easy, life is hard." Or something along those lines, it's not verbatum.

It's hard to type when I'm feeling this philosphical and introspective. Every time I stop to take a drag off of my cigarette, my mind goes on a different tangent. Don't worry, I'm almost done smoking.

I can feel something inside me starting to shift. I'm thinking about everything again in depth. Sometimes too far, but please don't consider it your stereotypical overanalyzing- it's something more than that. My ability to think about things and try to understand them used to be my favorite thing about myself, but I lost that part of me a long time ago. I guess when I decided to join the game of "life" which is the public as a whole's view of how I should be. I threw that notion in the trash for good about a week ago and it seems like the person I used to be is starting to flow back into my body. I'm not okay with mediocracy; I'm not okay with just getting by; I'm not okay with not being happy and not being someone that I love. I threw it all away for my white picket fence life. I threw it all away because I wanted someone to love me more than they loved themself. I threw it all away on a lie I fabricated in my own mind.

Take the man I'm seeing for example. I absolutely adore him. He's great to me in pretty much every way. Then something gets triggered inside me (usually when I talk to other people) and I start freaking out. We've been dating since before Thanksgiving. Sometimes people ask me about my "boyfriend". Well, I don't technically have a boyfriend and that's a pill some people have a hard time swallowing. They start planting these seeds about "commitment issues" and "not respecting me enough" and my personal favorite "waiting for something better". That last one is a doosey. That is enough to send me down a self loathing spiral of crazy to be spewed all over said man that I adore, who had nothing to do with the comment itself in the first place.

Why am I supposed to have a label? For security purposes? I know he's not out messing around with other girls. I don't need him to be my "boyfriend" for him to know that that is something that would hurt me. I'm not his girlfriend, but I respect him enough to not go home with some random asshole from a bar because I'm feeling frisky and he's not with me. He knows I care about him, and I know he cares about me (which I need more reassurance than he does in this department). I'm okay with how we are now. It doesn't bother me until someone convinces me that it should. I almost feel like if I pushed the issue for him to be my boyfriend that I might as well hike my leg and pee on him in front of other people so they know he's "mine".

People look at me like I have a 3rd eyeball on my face when I say I'm not interested in getting married. Do I like the idea of loving someone so much you want to let the world know that they're the only person you want to be with for the rest of your life? Absolutely. I'm not the heartless bitch people think I am when I say that, I am female and a hopeless romantic after all. I think marraige is wonderful- if it's for the right reasons. I don't want to get married because I'm afraid of being alone for the rest of my life. I've had to spend the past 24 years with myself, and I'm okay with hanging out with me. We always do what I want to do, eat what I want to eat, and never get forced or guilted into doing something I don't want. See? Doesn't sound so bad, huh? I'm not saying I don't get lonely, but that's why I got a cat. He's a wonderful cuddler and he never talks back or tells me I'm a lunitic for talking to a cat. It's really a win/win.

I never married my Barbies when I was little (if I did, they usually got divorced because Ken's an asshole and could never keep it in his pants... HELLLLOOOO therapy!). I didn't plan my wedding when I was 13 down to the bridesmaids and cross them off my list when they pissed me off. I did dream of finding a man who would look at me the way my Grandpa looked at my Grandma. I wanted to find a man that would see me and emmit love so the whole room could feel it. That's what I want in my life. I don't want a husband, I want my "soul mate" I guess. I want someone to love that when they get sick, or hurt, I feel it burn inside me because their happiness makes me happy.

I may have gone a little too far there, but it felt right so I kept typing. Back to my original point: The whole title thing is something that wars inside of me. It's because of the world's view on how things should be, and my view on how I'm okay with the way things are. It's hard to break free of society's standards because they're everywhere. For a while I thought something was wrong with me because I didn't think like my friends. I'm sure my mother wanted to drown me after I learned the word "why", because I wanted to know everything. I have always wanted to know how something works, why it works that way, what happens if you change this about it, why does that happen, etc... It's just who I am and how I've always been and I love that about me. I can't have someone tell me something and not question it. Questioning everything is probably the only thing that has kept me sane over the years I've been alive.

I'll leave it at that for now.
Sweet dreams, internet.
-Shelley