Chapter 142: Beyond Imagination

I’m not really sure where to go with this blog tonight, but I didn’t really want to allow myself to skip another day. Yes, last night was the first time I actually fully skipped posting a blog. I mean, I did post something but it was the first time that I actually didn’t do ANYTHING. There were a couple times in the past where I didn’t REALLY write a blog, but I at least wrote a little something or did a video blog or something. Yesterday wasn’t a particularly uninteresting day, but it wasn’t an interesting day by any means, either. One thing that did happen yesterday that I wanted to make mention of was Nate’s BlogTV chat last night, which was pretty interesting. Whitney was there at the house hanging out with Nate, April and Devin and made a few appearances on the cam and, for one reason or another, I was just feeling really bitter towards her. I don’t mean genuine bitterness or anything, but a little bit upset. I haven’t really heard from Whitney much lately. That is a bit of an understatement, honestly. Whitney and I used to have hour-long, if not longer, phone conversations at least once a week and would text back and forth every single day. We also made it a point to see each other, along with Nate, every other week or so. I haven’t actually seen either of them in person in like 5 or 6 weeks now. That’s not really a big deal, honestly, because I haven’t exactly put in the effort to try to get together either, although I have tried a couple times I think but never followed through on those attempts. The past few weeks, though, it just seems like even something as simple as a text message has become scarce. It’s kind of normal from Nate, he doesn’t call text me often and I have always just figured that is just the kind of relationship we have, but Whitney and I have a very different relationship than that. We used to be in contact all the time and suddenly it’s changed. I don’t like it. Still, I can’t blame all of it on her. It is just my natural way that if people are not contacting me, I won’t contact them. It’s how I’ve always been. That is no excuse, of course, and doesn’t make it right. Initially, I was deliberately not contacting her because she is in a new relationship and very into that, as most people are when things are new, and I figured it’d be best to just give her space and let her come back when she wanted to. I think I got used to not being in contact with her and have just kind of continued it. I guess I’m still waiting for her to come back. The question becomes whether or not I will still be waiting when she does come back. I like to think I will, but I suppose it depends on how long it takes and what happens between now and then. It just upsets me a bit because I was very intent on hanging on to my relationships with my friends and they all pretty much seem to be crumbling around me and leaving me with fewer and fewer people to even talk to. In fact, when I think about the people I could call simply because I need someone to talk to or whatever, the list is pretty much down to one – my Mom. Honestly, where I’m at right now in my life I don’t feel like I have the option of “just calling” anybody else. I mean, the just calling without an excuse just because I want to talk or am feeling alone or want to share my ideas or anything like that. I really feel like I just don’t have anybody to talk to anymore and I don’t like that feeling. I am not sure how exactly it happened, but it feels like everybody in my life has just somehow kind of dissipated from being my friends. I mean, they are all still my friends but the closeness in my relationships has become non-existent. I don’t know how to fix that. I have a really bad tendency to consider things to be “beyond repair,” and I have always been one to let go of things too easily. I don’t want to do that but I don’t know how to move forward otherwise.

While I was talking to Nate in his BlogTV chat, we also got into a discussion about how much he wants to be famous and do what he loves, so he can be able to wake up in the morning and say that he loves his life. I said I hate my job but I love my life, and he questioned that. He didn’t believe that I really love my life but that I tell myself that I love my life for what it could be or something along those lines. I explained to him that while I may not love everything about my life right now, I love the person that I am and that allows me to love everything I am doing right now because I know that it is leading me to better things. That is absolutely true. I remember RuPaul used to have her own talk show on VH1 back when I was a kid in the mid-90s that I absolutely loved. At the end of each episode of this show, Ru would say, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else?” I know it is a cliché and surely RuPaul didn’t originate it, but she is the first person I remember hearing it from and it really stuck with me over the years. Not to say that I have loved the person I have been all my life, as evidenced by so many of the ways that I have treated myself over the years. In fact, it has taken me an extremely long time to get to this place. I can remember so many times throughout my life when I have felt like there was something terribly wrong with me, back in my later teen years, and even felt completely worthless, after a very dramatic situation with my mother back in 2003 that kind of led me on a bit of a tailspin that I don’t really care to go into right now. Even as recently as 2006 when I was suffering from a pretty severe eating disorder, desperate to lose weight and become acceptable to the world. After spending so much of my young adult life dealing with the fallout from an abusive relationship, drug use, eating disorders, a bout with self-injuring and a severe identity crisis, I have managed to come out of it all being completely in love with the person that I have wound up as. This is the first time in my life that I have really felt like MYSELF and not like I was playing out some role. It’s funny because for as long as I can remember I have been told by various people in my life that it was so great how I was so much myself no matter what, and I suppose that was true – I was always the version of myself that I was at the time. Right now, though, is the first time that I have really felt like every part of me is completely genuine and organic. This is the first incarnation of myself that I feel like is actually who I want to be. This is the first time in my life that I genuinely feel like I am the person who I have been striving to become for the past 26 years and I am extremely proud of that fact. For that reason, I can honestly say that yes, I absolutely love my life right now. Because I have managed to get to this place, I have absolute confidence that I can accomplish everything else that I am dreaming of and, like RuPaul said, now that I love myself, I feel like I am finally capable of truly loving somebody else. I do love the people around me. I get really frustrated sometimes because I feel like I am in this thing alone, at moments like this where I feel like I could list the people I have to talk to on one finger, but I have to remind myself constantly that I love these people and I know that they love me, as well. Perhaps they just haven’t figured out how to love themselves yet… or perhaps I just expect too much out of people. At the same time, though, I don’t think a phone call or a text message or actually hanging out every now and then is too much to expect out of people. I’m being too harsh here. I understand that everybody is living their own life and I know very well how life can get in the way of relationships and friendships and such. I just need to be more patient with people, I suppose.

So, I woke up at around 2:45pm this afternoon. I got up and ate a can of Spaghetti-O’s and watched “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.” Jamie Oliver, also known as “The Naked Chef,” filmed this documentary series in the city of Huntington, West Virginia, which the Center for Disease Control has determined to be the most obese city in America. Jamie Oliver is trying to start a “Food Revolution” there by changing the way that the people in this city eat, mainly focusing on the school system in the area. The series is produced by Ryan Seacrest Productions and I think is doing something really amazing for that city and for our country by exposing what is going on there and making attempts to change it, plus televising the whole experience as an inspiration to the rest of the country. I really feel like this is a wonderful thing and I am extremely pleased with the amount of positive programming that is making it’s way on the air recently. Between this, Jessica Simpson’s “The Price Of Beauty,” and Lisa Kudrow’s series, “Who Do You Think You Are?” it feels like there is a shift being made in television programming. Don’t get me wrong, I understand it isn’t a huge shift at this point but the way to get more good, positive, inspirational programming on the air is by watching the few things that do make it on the air at this point – the higher the ratings this type of programming gets, the more networks will feel the need to provide more of it. Don’t get me wrong, I love reality television and the sex-filled teen dramas that fill up the CW’s schedule but I have lost a bit of interest in them because I have come to notice more and more how much of a negative influence these things are. I feel like right now in this country, and in my life personally, there isn’t a lot of room for negative influences. I don’t feel like I have the time for things that aren’t going to inspire me in some positive way. Like the lyrics to my favorite song from the band Vedera say, “Throw away all your thoughts if they aren’t moving you forward.” That has really become my philosophy in life right now and I am trying really hard to make sure that every part of my life, every action I take right now is moving me forward somehow or helping me to grow, whether it is personally, professionally or creatively. Anything that isn’t helping me in that way, I am simply better without. Fortunately for me, there is PLENTY to be inspired by out there right now, and “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” is one of those things that I am finding extremely inspiring, although it would probably be better if I didn’t sit around eating Spaghetti-O’s while learning about the perils of processed foods.

After I watched “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” I watched the one new episode of Oprah that aired this week, which happened to feature Jamie Oliver, as well as the producer of his series, Ryan Seacrest. I have always kind of liked Ryan Seacrest, in spite of all the shit that Kathy Griffin talks about him. I attended a couple of tapings of his back when he had his daily talk show, “On Air With Ryan Seacrest,” to see Kylie Minogue appear, (one of the highlights of my life was being in her presence,) as well as camping out in front of his studio to see Britney Spears. I’ve just always kind of liked him. After seeing him on Oprah, I am kind of in love with him, though. I just find him really inspiring. His work ethic is amazing and the fact that he has a hand in so much of the happenings in Hollywood is absolutely inspiring to me. I used to always find it really inspiring when people were driven enough to get famous by any means necessary, like Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith, but I have come to find it so much more inspiring when people are driven enough to get famous and gain recognition through actually putting in the work to get themselves to where they want to be, like Ryan Seacrest did, or like Oprah did, or Madonna, or Barbara Walters. Those are examples of people who struggled and put in the blood, sweat and tears required to achieve something truly great in this life. I think this is why they have all managed to maintain something their prominence and status, whereas people like Paris Hilton have kind of faded out a bit. Plus, all of those people are highly respected for the works that they have done and continue to do. You know who else is like that? Tom Cruise, no matter how much I hate to admit it. I am not a fan of Tom Cruise and his Scientology propaganda, etc., but I read the book “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography” by Andrew Morton, and despite being highly creeped out by the Scientology aspect of it all, I was also really inspired by the lengths that he has gone to in order to achieve and maintain the career that he has. Good for him. Scientology may not be as bad as it seems, honestly, but I don’t trust it by any means. Still, some of my favorite celebrities are Scientologists, like Lisa Marie Presley, Juliette Lewis and Kirstie Alley. All three of those are people who I was extremely surprised to hear were a part of the church, because they just don’t seem like the types in comparison to like Tom Cruise or John Travolta. Why am I talking about this right now?

I filmed a few more pieces for my YouTube series, which is shaping up nicely thus far. I am a little concerned about what the editing process will be like because this is going to be a group of smaller pieces put together, which I have absolutely no experience with. I’m not sure if the video-editing program I have is able to trim pieces off of each piece or not. It seems like it would be silly if it didn’t, but I just don’t know if it does that or not. Hopefully I will get the last segments filmed tomorrow and can start the editing process tomorrow evening and hopefully have the video posted Monday or Tuesday. We’ll see. I’m really excited to get this series started, though. It has been a lot of fun so far. I am really enjoying working on it. Speaking of YouTube, I spent a little chunk of time today watching makeup tutorials on there and tried out one of the looks I say, which was inspired by Kelly Rowland’s look in the video for “When Love Takes Over,” her single from the David Guetta album, “One Love,” and one of my favorite things that she has ever done. The makeup look she has in the video consists of gold, black, silver and a gorgeous hot pink. I didn’t have all of those colors, particularly the hot pink, so I improvised using white, black, silver and the closest thing I have to a hot pink, which is kind of a dark fuschia. You will actually be able to see this look when the video gets posted, although I don’t know how well it came across on the camera. I also spent a little time window-shopping for makeup online and have pretty much decided that Nyx Cosmetics is my new favorite line of makeup – their stuff is all very affordable but also very high quality and stays on better than the Maybelline Eye Studio stuff that I have. I have every intention of ordering some stuff from them when I get paid next Friday. Doing this makeup look also reminded me of something else – Kelly Rowland is an extremely talented vocalist and highly under-rated as an artist. I spent much of the rest of the day listening to her albums and kind of re-discovered this song that I absolutely loved from her first album, “Simply Deep.” The song is the last track on the album, called “Beyond Imagination,” which kind of relates to where I am at in life right now – the chorus of the song says, “I’ve got to go, to somewhere beyond imagination, I hear my tone, it says I am alone.” The song ends, though, with the repeated line, “I hear your tone, you’re not alone.” It’s true. I needed to be reminded of that today, and as I have been writing this blog – I am not alone. No matter how much it may feel that way sometimes, I am not alone. There is love all around me, sometimes I just need to look a little harder to find it. I am not alone.