May 18, 2008...

I have spent a weekend in quiet contemplation. I have been asking myself some rather large questions, but rather than finding answers, I’ve only found more questions.

I spent my whole Saturday morning in a salon spending a ridiculous amount of my hard earned on making myself artificially beautiful. A couple of complements last night made me feel good but in the end it was a waste of money. It didn’t change anything. I’m still me. I am never going to be a pretty perfect kind of girl no matter how much makeup I wear or how often I get my nails done.

I’ve realised that I’ve become, or maybe I’ve always been, this shallow shell of a human. I’m so caught up in looks and my surface personality that I’ve lost any depth I ever had.

People are so used to seeing my persona that no one even really realises that it isn’t who I am. I don’t even have an ‘am’ anymore. I feel that all I am is some public personality that I’ve been acting for so long that I don’t know how to come out of role anymore. I don’t have an essence.

If someone were to ask me to describe myself, throughout my life, in a few words, I’d say ‘crowd pleaser’ and ‘attention whore’. They are the first words that come to my mind. Other people often have things to say about me – nicer things – like I am intelligent, or funny, or bubbly, or confident, or beautiful. But it’s all bullshit. I’m none of those things. It’s all part of this fake me that has become me that I fucking hate. I’m not bubbly. Underneath my so called bubbles I’m staring into your soul and I’m judging you. I’m not intelligent. I have studied a lot and I have a great memory for things that I have learned and I know a lot of big words. Ask me whats going on in any country right now, and I’ll have no idea. Fuck, I don’t even know what continent most countries are on. I’m not beautiful. I pay for clothes that make me appear that way and I spend hours preening myself and covering my pimples and massaging my cellulite and trying on a billion bras until I can get the cleavage that everyone goes gaga over.

Even when me and Daddy play, and a daddy is someone who should be able to love you regardless of what state your makeup is in, I get really, really upset when I look anything less than perfect. Before a session I’ll be madly applying lip gloss and as soon as we finish I’m finding a mirror to fix my hair. Why do I have to be perfect all the time? I don’t know. Maybe because he is. Maybe because I don’t want him to be able to find a fault in me or a reason not to like me. Maybe I’m just really fucking uncomfortable in my own skin. Seems the times he is happiest with me are the times I look my worst anyway, but I haven’t got to a point I can look my worst and feel comfortable in it myself.

My shit stinks just as much as anyone elses does, if not more. My personality is made up of an overjudgemental, closed minded, childish and completely lacking in confidence extroverted attention seeking shallow bitch.

All I’ve ever done in my life is try to please people so that I can have their attention, their love, their friendship. I’ve always thought all I ever wanted was to fit in, but that’s not true. I’ve always wanted to stand out. To be the best, to be the prettiest, to be the hardest working. I’ve always wanted to be somebody to someone. To everyone. So whether to do that I’ve publicly humiliated people that other people didn’t like, or if I’ve sat tight when I felt like speaking out about something, or whatever it may be, I’ve rarely done it of my own accord. People say I always speak my mind. That isn’t true. I speak their mind for them when they are unable to. I say things other people are afraid to, but it is only rarely that I do it for myself. Mostly I do it because if I say it they will say ‘oh that pepper – such an individual! Such a strong minded girl with such confidence’ – I am a mirror for what they want to see in themselves. If what I said was disagreeable to them, they wouldn’t say those things. But I read people, I know what they want me to say and when they want me to say it and I know when it is time to sit back even if my mind would have me say something. Sometimes people need a leader, and I can be a leader. Sometimes they need a follower, and I become that. I don’t have an essence that is always me. I have no me.

I spent primary school working hard to please my parents, getting straight a's, and giving away my lunch to kids at school to bribe them into hanging out with me. I distinctly remember walking up to a girl in primary school and giving her my freddo frog, and she said 'cool thanks but that doesn't mean we're going to hang out with you you know?' and I mumbled something about how that was cool and I was just on the way to see my friends and didn't want my freddo anyway. Then I think I went and cried behind a school building. I spent year 7 at public school without any friends and helped out in the library at lunch time so I wouldn’t have to sit on the oval all by myself. In year 8 I moved to private school where I made out like I was a really sexually experienced kind of girl and had done things none of the other girls had dreamed of. I've recreated myself so many times I don't remember who the original me was, but it certainly wasn't that and it isn't this. Anyway, within a year I had been with pretty much every guy in my grade that would have me. I had a lot of acquaintances and one or two friends, but none of them knew me. I really don’t think anyone has ever known me cos I don’t think there is anything to know. All through highschool I hid in my schoolbooks and I’d make up physical ailments every school carnival to avoid letting anyone see how shit I was at sport. I’d fall ill just before camp time so that no one would see me with my hair all fucked up and my face all dirty and so I wouldn’t have to spend time living in such close quarters with people who hated me. At uni I moved into college and left within 3 months to live alone cos I couldn’t stand being around people who again didn’t like me. I never made a single friend at uni. Not one. I don’t have any friends that I’ve had my whole life apart from one whos calls I ignore and who I only pay attention to when I go home for holidays and who doesn’t know a thing about me or vice versa anymore.

Even now, I think. Why am I writing this blog? What am I hoping to acheive? Am I looking for people to pat me on the back and go 'pepper don't be so hard on yourself, you're a great person'? Or strangers to post blogs about what a great ass I have? Or other strangers telling me to keep my chin up? Why? Why do I have 71 viewers when people who's thoughts are far more interesting and profound than mine have less? Why when I stop posting pictures of myself do my blog viewers drop off? Cos no one really gives a fuck about me. People reading my blog probably think it's a days of our lives. They're waiting for the next scandal, the next fuckup, the next picture of me naked, the next time i tell a dirty story. Fuck off.

The last time I remember having a personality was when I was morbidly depressed and suicidal. At least then I wasn’t apathetic. I had friends who were depressed and we all used to hang out and complain together and we’d talk about things that really mattered, life and death and love and hate and deep, interesting subjects. We’d help eachother out, we’d tell eachother how much we cared, we’d make ridiculous claims about all the things we’d do for eachother. We’d write hideous poetry and share it with eachother and we would cry together. The only time I’ve felt like I was really being myself was when I was able to admit I was depressed and I was allowed to wallow in my own depression. Then my dad gave me a lecture about it and told me to straighten up, he told me if I smile for long enough and I tell people I’m happy then I’ll be happy. I guess even before that I was an attention seeker, I was always drunk and I was always at the centre of rumours and I was never in the shadows. But that was the time I started really faking it. I was depressed for a few years but I stopped complaining about it after two. I think I’m probably at least partially still depressed because I never really got to the core of what my problem was. The lack of a sense of self and identity.

At least when I was trying to kill myself I was doing it for myself. But maybe I was even trying to please people then? People never liked me, in fact they always hated me and made me an outcast. Or I made me an outcast. I’m not sure which. But I’m sure they would have actually celebrated my death. But in my dreams when I died I was always at the funeral, and even then, my biggest question was ‘how many people went? How many people actually cared?’ So when I tried to kill myself a few times, I always did it in softcock ways. I never tried to hang myself or got a gun. I always tried to kill myself in ways that some part of me knew I’d probably survive. It was, looking back, probably a cry for more attention. Everything in my life is somehow tained by my need for the spotlight.

So now when people want to know me, they really cant. There isn’t anything underneath my persona anymore. All I am is what you see. A messed up little girl with a fuckload of demons who’s been living a lie for her whole life and doesn’t know a truth if it punches her in the face.

But that makes me ask bigger questions. Maybe other people are the same? Maybe we are all just shallow people? I mean when I think of other people I don’t think of what their essence might be. I don’t look at someone and go, man, deep down he is this or that person. Other people are just a bunch of characteristics like I am. Other submissives love attention as much as I do. Everyone loves attention in their own weird way, but some people are better at hiding it than others. My first 18 years were denial of my attention seeking ways, the next few up til now were embracing it and trying to make it a positive. But I think the time has come to deal with it and find better, more wholesome ways to make me happy. Attention is a quick fix when I’m feeling down but it’s not permanent happiness and it doesn’t last.

My need for attention covers up my other problems. Like my lack of self esteem and my huge self hatred and my lack of personality. I can pretend to be this amazing outgoing different girl, but I’m not. I’m less than different and I’m less than normal. I’m just a nothingness. When I reached down inside of myself this weekend that is what I found. A big black hole.

All that I am is a mirror, really. I am a mirror so that the people I care about can look at themselves and see what they want to see, but they think they are seeing someone else. I’m a million different people.

I’m everyone but me.