dear shadow, alive and well

i'm not sure whether i want to be more or less like my mother. i'm sure that inevitably i will end up being more like her than i will ever fully realize, but if i had the choice, i'm not sure which i would choose.

i think my issue here is that i that i am able to see in myself the negative qualities that she possesses but not the positive ones. it's hard to say whether this is because i focus on faults more than i should (a quality that we share in different ways) or that because we are mother and daughter, i am not able to see the positive traits we share, since we don't always interact in a capacity that reveals them to me.

i will admit that an irrationality and impulsiveness of mood, which i can hardly tolerate in her, is something i unquestionably share. she is a harder worker than me and is able to take pride in a job well done in a way that i do not. i also wish i had more of her "joie de vivre," per se, as i love those times in which our family becomes effortlessly fun - kevin has inherited for sure, but that is also partially because i sometimes think he and my mother are nearly one and the same. mimi is like her in a different way, but i think this is because it is so easy to see my grandma haha in her. and of course my mother and maternal grandmother are going to have at least a cursory resemblance of disposition.

the reason i write this here is because i find it difficult to accept how well my mom knows me and can read me. i have such a need to be independent, even though i am not very good at it. honestly, she knows what mistakes i am going to make before i make them and what i'm going to succeed in before i do. i have such a drive to please her because somehow when she is happy with me, i know i can be happy with myself.

when i was a baby, so the story goes, someone told my mom that there had never been a mother and child so bonded. in a way, i think we still are - i think i might kind of be her shadow, the parts of me that come from her change and fluctuate all the time and in different settings.

i want to belong completely to myself, but i know i will always, at least a little, be a part of her.

remember walking on the first time

some of this is moving over to

cultivatingsprezzatura.wordpress.com

but some of it is staying here

and this is going to rebecome the brigid word vomit and badly written anecdote world.

i need to go make a grocery list. and get my haircut. and go to the dentist. i'm going to be a whole new girl.

the questions of a thousand dreams, what you do and what you see

I'm not going to lie to you. At least not here.

And here's what I'm not lying about: I am not a very interesting person.

That's not to say I'm not slightly strange with an embarrassing propensity to do bizarre things with little impetus - I am, and I do. But these things are not inherently interesting, nor am I very good at telling stories.

So this is just a quick disclaimer: I do not promise to entertain you. I do not promise to say anything worthwhile. I do not promise to be deep or wise. I do not promise that there will be good stories.

I have a feeling that this will end up rather like the many tangential, one-sided conversations (read: rambling monologues) that are rather typical of me. Such is life, you know.

Such is life.