Isn't it time I was honest with myself?

I am staring thirty in the face as we speak. in fact, I will be thirty in less than a week. In other words, as I wrote in a piece of short fiction in the fall, thirty is so close "I could reach out and pick it like a ripe plum from a tree". So now, I figure it is time that I displayed a little honesty about myself and my life and what I want and value. It's not necessarily that I have lied about these things before, I have just been unaware, and as if a single moment offers a turning-point or some false sense of clarity I wonder if I can now be honest with myself. Growing out of one's adolescent insecurities (especially ones as deep as mine) will take much longer than the ten years of my twneties.

I have never liked myself much. I probably do now, more than I have at any point in my life, but that is still not saying much. As a friend remarked the other day I wish I could unknow how meaningless I am. There are great swaths of things I wish I could change, how women are viewed and treated in the world is first and foremost among those, but smaller simpler things too. I can make an effort to do them in my own life, but mannifesting change seems like a duty, and one that I am incapable of living up to.

I do want to get my Ph.D. Very badly. I don't want to be "one of those intellectuals," you know the kind, I don't even have to say it. Flannery O'Connor didn't set Helga up for mockery for no reason at all...

I want to read more. I want to know more. I take classes every semester, I read, recently I have watched enough movies to "choke a horse" as my grandparents might say, but I want more. I want to be in every facet of culture from the most popular to the most obscure. I want to travel the world. I want to feel a part of something larger and more connected.

I don't want spirituality. I certainly don't want religion. I want something in the world to reach out and suck me in like a Hoover upright on steriods, or a black hole maybe.

I want people to respect others and the world we live in. I want to not fear disorder. I want to scream from the mountantops. I want to whisper a poem. I want to fire a gun, rock someone's world, lounge with a cocktail, dream big, live simply, fly freely, cure cancer, beat the odds, save the world, give back, pay it forward, find myself, and above all, hope always.