Hey, Kimmie. I decided to take a peek at some of the comments in my blogs before I start getting ready to go to work today, and I saw your post.

I beg to disagree, Kimmie. I am NOT an ideal anything. What you read in my blogs are the parts of my life that are the easiest to share: mostly inconsequential things - those things that aren't the substance of who I really am. My posts account for maybe only 60% of my day-to-day, and they are largely about the more superficial (it's the only word I can think of that fits) parts of my life: clothes, office relationships, work, the mundane minutiae of life like going to the bathroom, wrestling with the printer, arguments with people, et cetera. That's all I can write about otherwise I might give in to my own personal sadness.

Rarely do I write about those parts of my days and nights when the monsters come out, or when I am wracked by so much doubt about my present and my future that I contemplate ending it all, or to want to rail blindly at unthinking and inconsiderate people and fight about inconsequential things just because, or to wonder about the impossibility of a future with a partner-in-life, a family.

Or, the worst, to wallow in self pity (The "woe is me" syndrome, I call it).

I realize, as Americans, we are raised to be individualists, where we are taught to believe that one person can make a difference. There is, however, a dark side to this individuality - the danger of thinking that the Me is the most important, or, to the more narcissistic amongst us, to behave as if the world revolves around the Me, and that it is my god-given right to be happy and fulfilled.

The cruelest of lessons that I have learned is that the world is here IN SPITE OF ME. It is a seductive pipe-dream to think that, simply by existing, I have a right to expect that I will get what I want. Thing is, I have learned in my almost thirty years, that people do not always get what they want. We are only promised the ability to pursue happiness, not happiness itself.

I resist the American thing to do - which is to complain or call the cops (figuratively) when things don't go my way, sue someone's behind off because I think I was wronged, or to demand, like a petulant child, that it is my right to get what I want. I have learned, painfully, that I cannot hold my breath and expect to get what I want.

I have learned that everything I will ever have that's of value - an identity I can live with, a position in society where I am not an outcast, a love I can share myself with - are things I can only get for myself.

Whatever mild successes I have had was borne of a desperation that is too ugly, or too pathetic for me to depict in a public blog, and I will not do that and have people think badly of me. Those nights when the monsters come - those are for me to wrestle with alone.

I do not write about everything in my life, and I do not intend to. (And for those posts that I wrote that are tinged with the shadows of my monsters, I apologize)

More than five years ago, when I transitioned, I I did so to get rid of my papier mache mask, but I only found out that there are other masks to peel away, and while I labor to do that, I continue on with the struggle to find the Me in my dreams. And in the meantime, I fill my life with those inconsequential bric-a-bracs of a regular life: wake up, have breakfast, work, jog, drive my car, computers, phone calls, conversations of no consequence, relationships hardly more than acquaintances. And I do this with the hope that I will accidentally trip over another relationship, insight, knowledge, whatever that brings me closer to my own brand of happiness.

Please, please think of this when you read my little fluff-pieces, and not put me on a pedestal.

To see the rest of Bobbie's "Working Girl" blogs, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs
To see ALL of Bobbie's blogposts, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c
To see Bobbie's stories in BCTS, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot