Performance

“All the world’s a stage and all its men and women merely players” - William Shakespeare

When I was in the 9th or 10th standard, now it is hard to tell because all I can remember is the classroom where I performed “All the world's a stage” in front of fifty or forty nine students. I was scared. Frightened and completely out of my comfort zone.

The weird thing is, I love to act: to make silly noises, to get lyrical, to perform and for me like a drama sequence: all life is a performance. However, at 14 or 15 I was scared out of my wits to say those 20 lines poem in front of a classroom. I don’t remember why I memorised it. It was an audition for something maybe. I never really got picked.

You know how the prettiest girl is also the most intelligent girl and is the house captain. She got picked. Of course, me trying for years at end to be as good as them wasn’t enough. Though, those feelings have been there for so long.. in me, I have never addressed them. Never addressed how insecure, and how ugly I was. Also, how insecure and how ugly I am now goes unaddressed as well.

Both of those are untrue because I am fucking awesome.

It was truly the insecurity that made me ugly more than anything else. I thought of myself as ugly so I didn’t care to dress or be myself. I suppose everyone goes through that in adolescent but, I was so jealous. Fuck, I was so jealous. I am still so jealous. I am jealous of the girl who got it all then. She also still has it all. At least according to her Facebook, though those are deceptive.

Sometimes, I wonder what my school friends think of me. Twenty nine year old me, when most of them are married and some with kids. I don’t care. It’s true. I really don’t. If you can believe it, I care more about making an API call 100ms faster more than I care about what my 14 year old classmates think of me now. I got thin and beautiful for a while (in terms of body anyway), and I couldn’t feel like I was the whole world. Like, I expanded into the universe.

Today, I have gained a ton of weight and I expand my entire universe. I am all that matters. No size. I know I am beautiful. I know my biggest performance is living me. Odd eh?!

FYI, note to future self: this is written on a 4€ bottle of wine so… it’s probably rubbish.

It’s odd though, I have never been completely honest about hating myself as a kid. I did. I hated how fat I was. At how miserable I was. I had dreams of love and stuff but I knew they never came true. So stupid, but in 11th standard, I actually thought that someone was in love with the fat, dorky me.

I think it is only when I loved and lost enough that I faced myself. I started seeing me in a mirror. The real me.

It is weird, but I know I cannot be loved.

Not the way I want to be, and not the way I deserve to be.

When I was in the 11th standard, I used to write love poems: they sounded the same but they were for another guy. I’d call him Mr. P but there are too many Mr. P’s in my life.

Someone told me (in 11th grade), my love was real. It will find its way. I believed her. It was real, then and now.

I am only very good at one thing. It is at loving.

I love love and I love to love. All of it is so great. The fact that you can hear a smile in a trans-continental phone call. That to me, is love. Ah, I have been in love a few times. All those times by frequent opinion it has not been love. If it isn’t love, I want to know what it is.

It isn’t the timer on my pizza (yes, that went off) but also, it isn’t that. The butterflies, the long gazes, the waiting around for a signal, the gnawing feeling you get when you can’t see someone for months.. what is it if not love? Maybe, just strong infatuation. See, I can answer my own questions. I am clever.

“He was a man. Just a man. Yet, you always knew he'd succeed. He made you be what he wanted you to be.” - Hero of Ages

Oddly, I am better off having loved than not. They all made me better. They all, in any case, made me me.

Maybe, all my life is a performance. A performance that I finally enjoy. Let it play out. I like the villains in this story now: the woman who manipulates the only man I love, the man in my life who wants me but I don’t, the man in my life who made a good story, the many men I fucked up bad with. OH let it play out.