I’m trying to be new.

A good friend of mine who also writes for the blog Black Girls Like Us refers to the last ten years of her life as “the vault.”  The stuff in the vault doesn’t get brought up, or if it does, you’re not allowed to feel any kind of way about it.  It’s like evidence inadmissible in court.  Yeah, it’s there, but it can’t be used against you.  I don’t know if both good and bad are in the vault, mostly bad I assume, but the metaphor is a powerful one.  It’s really stuck in my mind.  What are vaults?  Visually they’re pretty arresting.  Thick titanium or some other intimidating alloy, complicated locks, frighteningly secure, made to hold much more than that of a safe, and far more inconvenient to go digging around in.  You can almost forget about what’s in the vault once it’s in there, and even why you put it there.  It frees up your brain to think of other things.

I do not have a vault.  I carry anything I’ve ever said or done good or bad, what other people did about it or felt about it, with me everywhere all the time.  You might say I’m a hoarder.  Why?  The same reason why people hoard in the natural– you never know when you might need it.

I might need that scenario that happened when I was 16 because if or when it happens again, I can compare the two incidents and maybe get further to the reasons why I do what I do, so I can learn and thus grow.

I’m obsessed with self-improvement.  I was thinking today that a good bit of my life is devoted to it.  Immediately after that I was trying to think of ways to remedy that.  If there’s a way to stop doing it I haven’t found it.  But I’m thinking about this vault.  And I’m thinking, what would it be like to put everything in a vault and just… Because it’s not like my techniques have really helped me.  I don’t know that any self-imposed behavior has actually helped me.  The things that have helped me have almost always been external.

This whole job thing that happened, for instance.  It still sucks.  But I’m going to be fine.  Mostly because I’ve been through similar things before, and I just have hope.  That has almost nothing to do with my self-improvement system.  The frustration of each circumstance was because I didn’t have control over anything.

Forget a vault, I think it’s time to take all this stuff to the dump.  I don’t think I need it at all.  I think perhaps at some point, someone said, “If you don’t understand your past, you’re doomed to repeat it,” and I took it and ran with it.  Context is one of my strengths, after all.  I’m also strategic.  I think I’ve tried to use my strengths on myself too much.  Maybe any is too much.  In fact, it might be that I think that I’m only entitled to try my strengths out on myself.  People give you funny looks and get all out of shape when you try your human stuff out on them.  They like when you can make them laugh or be otherwise moved, do something for them, and…I don’t know.  Answer their questions or something.  Actually, they don’t always like the last one.  So I try these things on myself to try an help myself.  After all I know me, I understand me well enough, I know where I’m coming from.

A lot of it’s fear.  Fear fear fear.  Fear is stupid, in theory.  Fear in the moment, however, is a door that’s always open, a light that’s always on, an option that is always…ALWAYS available to you.  You can always run away, always say nothing, always lie, always do the easy thing.  It’s a choice that you know will always yield, often immediately.  Like everything else, there are consequences to fear, but they are often far less complex and/or abrasive for you.  Judge me if you want but I, for one, like that.  Fear might be the only thing that gives me that.  Fear is addictive.  Or at least… a force of habit.  It’s sad really.  Because fear was once my worst enemy.  And now it is an ally of sorts.  Fear is really desperate for me and longs for me.  Fear has been after me.  I don’t know why.  Seriously fear, just like, let it go.  It’s so tiring.  But I don’t know just what is responsible for that.

I’m trying to be new.  I was thinking about the fact that a lot of my interaction is just me mimicking other people.  I’m not actually interacting with you necessarily, just recreating a scenario that I saw or was once in, one that I think you would understand and/or appreciate.  It’s me offering something that is perhaps familiar, but is not actually me.  Sometimes I am actually myself and there’s a noticeable difference.  If I were to make a vault, this would all have to go in it.  This whole “self vs. semblance of self” thing.  A couple things have happened lately that made me think of how I’ve been shaped through life and I’m an unsure person.  I’m unsure of myself.  It’s a permanent place that I’ve made to make things easier.  If your personality is strong enough, you could probably get me to tell you that the sky was some other color, either because I’d just concede or I’d be partially convinced.  I generally don’t like it because I don’t think it’s a good thing.  And I don’t think it’s a good thing because I feel like one of those paper table cloths at Macaroni Grill.  Everyone just draws on me, just draws whatever, frivolous or not.  And I offer them a blank spot on me because I feel like I can spare it.  And maybe I can, maybe I can do that forever.  But then I see that other people are drawing on themselves.  And then I’m angry.  It’s not fair that you get to define both yourself and me.  People don’t see it, they don’t see it a privilege to get to draw on themselves, nor a they feel like it’s not okay to draw on someone else.  I see all these other people with fully formed personalities and traits and identity, and I think “I want that but I was denied that.  I’ve got all these other people’s graffiti on me and I don’t feel comfortable.  I’m showing you me, telling you about me, but I’m just showing all the things other people have written.  Is that me?  I don’t think it’s me.”     Unless everyone else is right about me.  But should I be putting my faith in other people?  If I told you what I’m really like you would laugh.  I would laugh.  Because it contradicts what’s already on me.  It’s too late for new graffiti.  It’s been years and the graffiti has already made a pattern.

Could I really be new?  A brand new tablecloth for me and only me to write on?  Or maybe not even me, not anybody to write on?  No evidence for me to consider, really a new person?  A clean slate?  My God.  My God that would be… beyond anything I could ever think to ask for.