Can a Person Change?

This is a bit of a diary-style entry, but I am faced with some interesting questions and choices and I need to write about them.

I find my plight and need for writing, which may be the same or similar to other writer’s, is the flood of thought, whether the words come in the form of a light drizzle or a storm, I get no release until I unleash them. It minimizes the buildup and evens me out. But the torrent is never ending, and I get backed up again. Writing isn’t so much a choice as it is a necessity. I’d be a criminal without it.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I am taking inventory. The most pressing questions are about this documentary. I play them over and over again in my mind. “Does anyone really care to see a sex worker as a human being?” “Will Jonathan [my filmmaker friend] appreciate what it’s about as it unravels?” “Will this care I have for women like me somehow make up for my failures as a mother?” And then there is the face that stares back at me in the mirror. “Can I search myself without cutting into my psyche too sharply?” I find my assessments are too cold sometimes, unforgiving and relentless. I want enlightenment but I don’t want to turn into a boring old bag, either.

I hate the lines between male and female, porn and mainstream, art and the absurd. I like that Sasha Grey is a natural woman without (at least from what I can see), obvious surgical enhancements. It’s nice to see someone who does not denounce their choices, make room for new choices. The blur of a line is a wondrous thing. I wanted to feature a few gay men in my documentary, but there is some disagreement on that. I’ll revisit the possibility later. I don’t see the line. It’s there, it’s been pointed out, but I still can’t see it. Porn is porn. Everyone involved faces the same issues to varying degrees. Porn star = male and female performers both gay and straight. Male and female performers both gay and straight = human being. All encompassing. Why is this so clear to me? Why is this so darn clear to me! (btw, Darn = boring old bag)

I think a person can change. It may be the only advantage I have – no ties too strong to keep me from chasing The Ideal. I have no faith I am bound to observe, no rules to adhere me to an inheritance, no parent expecting me to carry out the family plan, no long ancestral shadow to sink into. I’m chasing a phantom spirit that insists I be as pure as I possibly can be, even though my instinct is to drink ‘fire water’ and beat myself into some unmovable object until I’m bloody. I suppose that is my long ancestral shadow…

But it’s all a process, right? Part of growing up? Figuring it out? Another year and I’m still here. I should have died of an overdose in 1997, but I forced myself to wake up every time I nodded off at the wheel and then I stared at the living room ceiling for four hours, talking myself awake, ‘I’m not going to die like this, I’m not going to die like this, I’m not going to die like this…’ If I’m still here I must be doing something right, right? I can change. I. Can. Change. Why do I need to change? So I can be a boring old bag. Ugh!

– Julie Meadows