2003-12-31 - 10:19 a.m.
Diaryland Survivor Immunity Challenge
You have the chance to go back and fix the one great mistake of your life - to undo the one thing you wish most of all you had never done. What is it, and why do you want to change it?
So yeah. Just like the Godfather, "once I think I'm out, they pull me back in." So I'm competing for diaryland immunity yet again. I feel like I'm in a bind. Because if I win immunity and get back in the game, people might think that the judges gave me immunity out of pity. And if I lose, I'm a two-time loser. So the message of today's immunity challenge – Love me, don't judge me.
For longtime readers of Verucaamish, you know that I don't have many regrets. If there's one message I've said over and over again (other than FUCK YOU BUSH), it's that I never would have gotten to where I am now if it weren't for some major fuck ups. A couple of entries ago I wrote about my various relationships and how they ended, each in their own bizarre way. With each, I learned more about myself and how to let another person in my life. Would I trade the life I share with mr. activision now for having the knowledge to not fuck up a previous relationship? Nope.
So I'll break a rule in the immunity challenge and undo something about past self as opposed to undoing an actual event. Props to Mousepoet for the format of my IC. I never claimed to be original.
Dear Verucaamish Growing Up,
Could you trust that you are interesting and worth knowing on your own terms and not because of some impressive thing that you did or said you did? Because there's a whole lot of embarrassing shit you pulled that probably had a lot of your peers thinking "BULLSHIT." It's funny how the very way you were trying to make people like you caused people NOT to like you. Odd how that works.
Here's a list of things you are going think back on and cringe. REALLY CRINGE.
1. Going to Bobby C.'s fishing party-sleepover and pretending to meditate because you wanted to be Cynthia Nixon in Little Darlings who drank ginseng and had flowers in her hair. These guys were going FISHING. It's all about audience young padawan.
2. Blowing in Jason H's ear during dodgeball. He wasn't even all that cute and the bruises took a week to heal. Wait until college and there will be a whole club of guys whose ears you can blow in.
3. Pretending like Steve R. wasn't your friend because the popular kids were picking on him. Because the opinion of the people who were ripping on your friends and stuffing them into trash cans was worth more than your friend who let you play Dig Dug on his Atari when he wanted to play Jungle Hunt. NOT.
4. Going into the closet with Joy D. during a birthday party and then agreeing to tell everyone you made out instead of the truth, which was that you were helping her choose a dress for her cousin's wedding. You don't want to hear "Joy and Veruca Sitting in a tree…" for the next six months, do you?
5. Lying to all your friends sophomore year, telling them you were friends with Prince Felipe of Spain and would be going to Greece to spend Easter with the Spanish royal family. Did ANYONE in this universe believe that? Infants without the power of speech rolled their eyes at that lie.
6. Getting stupid ass drunk at your first college party and parading your drunkness around the dorm as if it was some badge of honor. There's a difference between funny and pathetic.
7. Cooking a whole turkey dinner in Lancaster and then throwing a hissyfit because noone helped. Dude, you could, like, ASK for help as opposed to pouting about the fact noone read your mind.
So think of the cringe-worthy embarrassments you avoid when you value yourself on your own terms. Otherwise you just pretend it's funny and pass it off as some amusing tale of whimsy but come on, it's pretty damn humiliating. What's worse it's humiliating yourself while pretending to be someone else (like the best friend of the Prince of Spain).
More than that, please realize things get better. Please realize that once you do get over yourself and just be YOU, some people like you and some people don't. Value the people who do and treat them right and blow off the people that don't.
