We hold people to certain standards in society, often wrapping our worth into how much we conform and comply with those pillars of perfection. We make decisions based on what other people may think instead of what we really feel is right. We do things because we are supposed to and not because we really want or desire to. And I am no exception to this rule, although I like to think I have made great strides in learning how to unravel all of that for myself. I am by no means finished.
I used to hold on very tightly to the ideals of what a good woman should be, but after a while I just started to feel like a phony, like I was putting on some persona or mask of what other people wanted me to be. I felt that way because it was exactly what I was doing. I was acting, and unlike that One Act play I fucked up in high school, I was actually pretty good at it.
It’s exhausting trying to pretend to be someone you are not. I would find myself craving vast amounts of time alone, mostly because it was the only time I could ever truly be myself. After I left the restaurant industry I sort of went into a hole. I detached myself from everything and everybody that I knew, minus a few very close friends and family members, people I knew I could count on for support. There were things that I just needed to figure out and deal with on my own. It was a very lonely place to be honestly. I realized how much I needed a community of people in my life. I just needed a different way to get it.
I began sharing things online, things I was learning along the way, things about healing and life. I wanted people to know that they weren’t alone in their struggles. Some people questioned my openness about how hard I fell and others thanked me for it, telling me how much they needed to know that someone else felt that way too. We tend to think that everyone else must be doing so much better than we are, but from what people tell me, we are very much in the same boat. We are all trying to make our own way in this world.
My way has never really been that linear path that society tells us we should go on. Mine has had hurdles and spirals. It’s had leaps and fallbacks, much like anyone else’s. Nothing has ever gone in a straight line, at least nothing that I can think of. Some of that is due to the choices that I have made along the way, like choosing to stay in the restaurant industry instead of entering into the corporate world or choosing to do sex work or choosing to take pole dance lessons. Some of that is because of choices that other people have made, and that is something that I think we all need to come to better terms with. Our choices don’t merely affect us. They ripple out and into the world around us, for better or for worse.
People have recently been telling me how happy and joyful I am, and that is something else that I have learned. I choose to be happy by making an effort to find those small joys in life. I choose to have people in my life that lift me up and support me, some of them coming from the most interesting of places.
My hope with all of this, with all that I do, is that my lust for life and my kindness ripples out into the world. That’s why I do the things that I do. I too am still trying to find my place in it and I am having one hell of a time fucking around and finding out who I am. I’m rather beginning to like her.
Mad love, Jenna
