sweeter than honey

I've been trying to read more this summer, with mixed degrees of success. I used to be such an avid reader as a kid, I'd zoom through a book in an afternoon and have a new one to read by nightfall. I missed those days, being able to consume literature and stories at the drop of a hat.  i always tell myself that, by the time summer comes around, I'm going to read more because I'll finally have the free time to do it, but something or another always get in the way. The days get too hot, I let myself become accustomed to sleeping all day and lounging around rewatching old TV shows at night. I want to go out, see my friends, the sun shines too brightly, I fall asleep every time I get halfway through a book and then can never find my place, I don't have enough money to buy the books I want....the list of excuses has lasted me years.

This summer - well, as of a week or two ago, I suppose, so about halfway through summer - I've decided to put an end to all that, and just...read. I can't complain about how much I miss reading if I don't do it, right? And for the most part, I'm having a genuinely good time. I guess I'll say all around I'm having a good time. Even with books I don't particularly care for, just the act of reading again fills with so much joy. I've missed it! I've missed reading, and falling in love with characters and passages and staying up far too late because I need to know how the chapter ends. I don't have the same speed I did when I was younger, but even slowly trotting through books is a blessing for me. I'm glad I have the attention for something, anything.

My one - well, I wouldn't call it an issue, but the one...disturbance? question? unsettled piece of business I've come across through all this is The Virgin Suicides, a book I finally got to read after promising myself I would four years earlier. I'm not sure if it's this anticipation building up that left the book feeling so....lukewarm in my hands, but there's this undeniable sense of disappointment when I finished the book, a sort of "....oh. that's it."

I think I was hoping for more of a focus on the girls, and less of a focus of the boys focusing on the girls. I understand why, of course, it was written the way it was - ultimately, the book is about the way men idealize women until they're nothing more than empty shells of people on to which they can project any fantasy they so desire. This becomes especially apparent towards the end of the novel (I'm not sure if a 26 year old novel warrants spoiler warning, but I'll try to avoid details regardless). Anyway, the theme of the novel - the fact that the Lisbon girls are just girls and not mystical entities - is something that is obvious to the readers (I hope) from the beginning, and to the narrators of the novel at the very end. That's all fine. My problem lies with everything leading up to that realization.

The perverse, invasive language in which the boys discuss the Lisbon girls is...difficult to sit through. I know that's the point of the story, but it doesn't make me feel less sick to my stomach upon reading it. The idealization of them was apparent in the language used to describe them, calling them goddesses and a single form and paying more attention to the way they moved than what they had to say. Again, I know that's the point - that they were voyeuristic teenage boys that never really grasped that the Lisbon girls were real, but it didn't change the fact that I was reading a story told from the perspective of voyeuristic teenage boys that never really grasped that the Lisbon girls were real. It was difficult to stomach. 

And I think this is where I'm at a cross roads, because I don't think I particularly enjoyed the book, but I think that's why I liked it. It was a terrible reading experience, seeing the way these boys thought about these girls and knowing it was far more universal than just these particular characters. It made me feel ill knowing young girls were treated like this. But knowing that - that it was real, that it wasn't just the twisted thoughts of one author but rather a retelling of a real epidemic - made it so much more important to know, to share. The mere fact that it upset me so much makes it so much more poignant in its message. The book left me asking: are stories meant to be digestible, or are they meant to be powerful?

I still haven't come up with an answer, of course, and I still have no idea how to feel about this book, but I'm very glad I read it.

I feel like, especially lately, there's this ever-thinning line between pathetic and relatable. It's more socially accepted to be bad at things, to fail and show it off, because then other people can feel less bad about how often they fail, and so on. To err is to be human and all that. the more we progress, the worse the world becomes, the more is it okay to be a bit of a disaster.

you're allowed to be a hot mess, and in some cases it's even celebrated! i think it's seen as honesty in a world of deception and lying. there's a blurring of friend and celebrity with new additions to social media like youtube and twitter, and so online content creators often feel like they exist in an odd in-between state. growing up in that culture, it was very difficult to navigate, knowing that these people had never met me and relied on me for their income and so of course were not always honest with me (as is the nature of a modern person in capitalist culture). however, there was still a sense of closeness, a bonding felt between me and this person who will never know anything about me that made me feel like i could trust them, even though...well, i don't know if i could. i could trust them as well as i could trust any other stranger, i suppose.

but none of that is particularly related to what i wanted to talk about. my biggest concern today about the thinning line between pathetic and relatability is that i'm not quite sure which side i fall on.

i like to think i'm decently self-aware. i'm good at noticing my shortcomings - my tendency to give up whenever i face even the smallest sense of hardship, my love of self-sabotage, my ability to spiral out of control at a moment's notice - but i've never been able to tell what other people think of me. i want to say that that's something that doesn't matter to me but, unfortunately, it does.

i think it ties in not valuing what i think of myself. maybe i think i dress well, but how do i know if that means i dress well objectively? i think i have good taste in music, but what if it's really terrible? what if i try to talk to someone and casually mention a song i think is really good, and they wrinkle their nose and tell me how terrible that song is, and how i have terrible taste in music, and then i'm crushed, and i realize everything good i've ever thought about myself has been a lie, and that i'm worthless and no one will ever love me, and then i'm forced to die?

i don't exaggerate when i say i can spiral out of control at a moment's notice.

i'm someone who was never formally taught a lot of things, so i've been spending the better part of my adult life stumbling along as i go and hoping i figure things out here or there. this, combined with the fact that a lot of my comedy relies of anecdotes and funny stories about myself, leaves me in constant fear that i am doing things terribly. that i'll be telling someone a story about a time i made a huge mess in the kitchen, and isn't that so funny and relatable? and they look at me weirdly and tell me that, no, that's not relatable, and only a child would make a mistake like that, and i shouldn't be proud of being so incompetent.

i suppose that's my real fear. being incompetent. or perhaps it's being too incompetent to know when i'm being incompetent. or maybe failure in general. i'm not sure. the more i think about it, the less self-aware i think i might be.

p.s. this was absolutely brought up by a kitchen disaster.
p.p.s. i couldn't figure out how to make the dry rub stick to the tofu, and they ended up coming off in the pan. i'm not sure if that's relatable incompetent or pathetic incompetent.