what remains unspoken

I've realized something. I've been realizing it for a while, but now I have that perfect "could google it, but realistically, what would even come up?" description in mind that leads folks around you to recommend that you talk to a therapist.

Which I'm going to do. Which, hopefully, will be a great outlet for this phrase, this frustration, this feeling.

(Even though nothing a therapist says will change anything about the people around me, and my lack of opportunity to communicate with them despite any possible available tools, I have to be willing to let myself change, don't I?)

I'm not missing out on my own life just because I don't have the tools to get myself up and moving. I'm missing out because I don't want to be living my own life, half-formed and boring and devoid of the traditional cornerstones that belong to the lives of my mentors, my idols.

(I don't want to live among twenty-three-year-olds! I hate twenty-three-year-olds! They suck!

Imagine having to prove myself to a twenty-three-year-old. A twenty-three-year-old can say "I disagree" in the darnedest of places.)

I work in public schools. Check. But it's not a tough district; my principal isn't an idiot, and my boss isn't a level of asshole-ish that can easily be communicated (especially not when nobody knows why he's behaving this way and it's impossible to explain it to them even though I know). I don't have war stories. The kids just don't come in from recess, sometimes.

I play in every orchestra that'll hire me, and I sit up front and I get paid and I make my presence known. Which I'm not supposed to do, because it's brownnosing and sucking up and straying away from grumpy and set-in-my-ways, but I'm not sure I mind that part.

I critique the conductors. I have to. I have to drink the haterade and I want to.

I just want to go with them. I just want to be with them. I just want to be an integral, unforgettable part of their lives, because I don't actually want to be living my own.

But - this is the crucial but - because they see me as an individual separate to them, with agency and autonomy et cetera, they don't see me with this crippling need to be included, to be afforded, to be special.

(What do they think of my chihuahua-kneed aimless humming in the backseat, there? Don't they know? How could they not know?)

I'm not special. I'm no one at all. Have you seen them? There's dozens of former students.

But I'm me. I'm Rosie, or not even. You have to ask for what you want. You have to make your presence known. You have to make yourself indispensible.

To yourself. Not to them. To yourself.

And I'm not.