My Superpower Revealed

Ew. I just reread, nearly twenty-four hours later, the post from yesterday. Ew. The resistance to it is stronger now than it was earlier. It isn't that it isn't truthful, I don't think. I'm not sure what my problem is, but there definitely is one of some kind.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter because the importance of last night's post isn't the contents, but the fact that I posted at all. I wrote.

I have not written in a long, long time. Well. Since November 1st, which is a really long time for me. I went through a period (ending last night, apparently) after I quit RPing when I could not stand the thought of writing out anything. I guess I'm still suffering from that. After all, it was writing that made me miserable* in the first place, and if I'm writing then I'm not out there living life, right?

But I can't deny that writing is a huge part of who I am creatively, and since I am a mostly creative being, that makes going without it something like going without food or water or sex. Probably more like going without sex than the other two, really.

So I may be a little rusty. Forgive me. I don't know who I'm talking to, really. Forgive me, Vanessa. Oh, hey, Vanessa, you're forgiven. Of course, I say that, but I'm totally still judging myself. Oh, me. When will I ever learn?

What's exciting about last night's post is that it whetted my appetite. All day long, I thought about what else I could write about and invented funny things to say or had an idea and immediately wanted to put it on here.**

I guess I needed a release.

I have a teacher named Ken -- Physical Acting -- who is a very wise man. He told me the other day that maybe my vice of making up someone who is like me but lives a different life, of pretending to be other people to escape my own problems, is like my superpower. He compared me to Cyclops of the X-Men. Cyclops, as a teenager, suddenly had these eye-beams that shot out at everything and destroyed whatever he happened to have in his field of vision. He couldn't control it; it controlled him. And then one day Professor Xavier came along and was like, "Hey. Take these rose quartz sunglasses and put them on. Not only will it keep you from destroying everything, but the chicks dig 'em. Especially Jean." Xavier then went on to explain to Cyclops how eye-beams are a sometimes power just like cookies are a sometimes food. Cyclops wears glasses to function, but he still whips them off and shoots shit up with his eye-beams sometimes whenever the situation calls for it.

These were not Ken's exact words for his metaphor, but I embellished. The point is, I can't expect to completely disregard my superpower, my vice, my coping mechanism, and suddenly demand to live a healthy life. Sometimes a healthy life demands coping mechanisms, superpowers, vices. So this is a good place to start.

Writing. But for now, I'll just write for me. About me. My thoughts. That way I don't fall into the trap that I'm only just now beginning to really get myself out of. From which I'm only just now beginning to extract myself. Can't end a sentence in a preposition. Or use sentence fragments. Or begin a sentence with a conjunction. Whoops.

Even if I'm channeling everything into acting right now, I still need a release valve to let off some of the pressure so I don't explode. Okay. Too many metaphors now.

I plan on doing this very frequently and I don't plan on holding much back, so buckle up, ladies and gentlemen.





* The writing isn't what really made me miserable, but I associate it with it. Also, my good friend Anxiety was pretty successful at convincing me that if I started to write or journal or something that I might fall apart entirely or have to deal with things I don't want to think about at the moment. So far so good, though!

** I did not actually put most of these thoughts and funny ideas in this entry. Except where I talk about how I immediately wanted to write again.