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This will make sense, I promise. ALSO IT'S NOT A SATANIC SYMBOL (That would be my other blog.) |
The death of someone close to you makes you search your soul like you search for rogue M&Ms under the car seat ... because dammit, you've earned a little treat after cleaning seventeen pounds of trash out of the minivan for the seven hundredth time.
That got super long and less Shakespearean than I thought it was gonna. #storyofmylife
One of the things I've been doing lately (kind of obsessively) is personality tests. Myers Briggs, True Colors (thanks, Dessa! You're probably not reading this but I heart you!), the enneagram, and my personal favorite: Buzzfeed's WHAT KIND OF POTATO CHIP ARE YOU?
If I had a flavor it would be 'Crispy Existential Crisis ... NOW WITH RANCH!'
It's like there's this deep sucking hole in my soul that needs some kind of framework to categorize all my feelings and experiences. I need to know who I am, and I need to do it now because newsflash, we all have invisible expiration dates stamped somewhere on these sacks of H20 and emotion.
So. Much. Emotion
Currently, Grover and I are eyeballs deep in the enneagram. Podcasts, books, all the free tests on the internet, blog posts, Reddit threads of questionable origin, etc.
If you're not familiar with the enneagram, it's this super cool symbol which I forget the history of. (Google it.) Each point on the enneagram corresponds to 9 different personality types. Although we all contain all aspects of the enneagram within us, the one that resonates most is our "personality," and it has accompanying values, basic fears, levels, "wings," subtypes, tritypes, arrows ...
It's complicated as shit, you guys, so here's just the basics. There are millions of resources on the interwebs if you want to learn more (watch out for the Christianese if that's not your mojo.)
Then I discovered the 'patron saint' of one's is FREAKING MARTHA STEWART.
Have you been to my house? HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Nope. No. Hard pass.
This led to some pretty deep soul searching, and also some pretty severe annoyance because I was having such a hard time finding my enneagram identity. Because identity is what matters, obvs.
That was the first clue.
Then my mom was like, "hey, I don't think you're a one" and I was like THANK GOD CUZ ONES SOUND LIKE TOTAL BUZZKILLS (but I also secretly still kinda want to be a one, because I could GET SO MUCH SHIT DONE and not feel guilty or like I'm missing something essential to being a human ... as it turns out, one is the path of integration for my number, but we're not getting into all that at the moment.)
And then I remembered how fuckin' angsty I was a child/teen. Obsessed with death, Edgar Allan Poe, death, Agatha Christie, more death. I did an entire school report on forensic entymology. I picked different types bugs out of a dead weasel BY CHOICE.
I also realized how I've always felt like the wrong social shape to fit, well, anywhere. I've felt socially awkward, weird, and unable to communicate since I was four years old.
Of course, all of this was shoved super deep down under a smothering coat of clean, controlled religiosity and all the bullshit that entails. Additionally, E also happened to be this number, and a very, VERY strong version of this number, and since this personality type is all about identity, I felt like I had to make my identity everything that he wasn't, because then I would be special.
Side note: I so wish I could talk to him about all this and give him shit. The things you don't know you'll miss. Boo.
OH AND I also just realized writing an entire post about MY FEELINGS about this whole experience is also a VERY THIS NUMBER TYPE OF THING TO DO.
It also explains the purple lipstick and the sparkly skirt and the elephant pants and the pink hair.
When I thought I was a one, I thought I was just at a super-duper unhealthy level because of those things. Because, in case you haven't caught on after reading literally any of the posts on this blog, I kind of have a small problem with hating myself and feeling like I'm just not good enough and also that I'm one big giant EMOTION, which is really helpful for self-analysis but can kind of get in the way of everything else.
Turns out, I now get to blame some of that fucked-upness on being a FOUR! IT'S GREAT! I'm still kind of shell-shocked (srsly WTF), but listening to the stories and experiences of others with this personality, there were a lot of holy shit moments, both painful and affirming. It's kind of like putting on my glasses after thinking I did a bang-up job of cleaning the floor and being like, "well, fuck." (And then I take my glasses back off and VOILA!)
If you happen to be super into the enneagram and you give a fuck, I'm a self-preservation four with a five wing (labeled the "bohemian," which yes, makes me feel very special and cool.) According to the interwebs, self prez fours can mistype as ones pretty easily.
All that to say this: YOU, TOO, CAN HAVE AN IDENTITY CRISIS! Also, the whole identity crisis after someone dies thing is normal and okay and perfectly acceptable and probably good for us all in the long run (clock's ticking, peeps!)
So, goodbye, Martha Stewart. Hellooooo, Luna Lovegood.
(WE'RE BOTH RAVENCLAWS. IT'S KISMET.)
That's all, folks.
P.S. Grover is an eight with a nine wing, in case you're wondering. We've now moved on to the difficult but important work of typing our pets, as one does.