(no subject)
Today has not been a bad day, but I don't think it's been a good day either.
Spending the whole day cooped up indoors is incredibly bad for my self-esteem. Also probably for my health - possibly my mental health as well! I'm having a bad case of feeling-like-a-failure, in all areas of my life. I don't know what I think I ought to be doing, but I have the strong impression that it's something more than I am doing.
Most of all, at the moment, I feel like a failure romantically. I'm not sure why. This time last year things began to become clear and about three months ago there was some scintillating, all-embracing beauty in that clarity. Now everything just seems to be stagnating. Or maybe that's just this case of doom, gloom and other things ending in oom.
I've read that some people are always apologising in their diary entries for speaking about themselves or for not writing enough, so that their guilt becomes a sort of back-drop to the account of their lives. Suddenly the impulse becomes clear: I want to whinge on about myself because the expression of these things is helpful. Then I want to apologise as well, for daring to take up my reader's time with my own petty concerns. All of which fuels the underlying self-pity, by diminishing myself as much as possible in my own eyes - a brutal sort of emotional masochism, but I bet it's far more wide-spread than most people realise. It's the impulse to resist all praise, to brush away compliments and continually play yourself down. On one level you are asking for more compliments, but since you know that you're going to refuse those as well you aren't actually looking for the satisfaction of others thinking well of you. You're addicted to denying your worth. I can think of a handful of reasons off the top of my head for it - the strongest is the defence mechanism: if I make myself small, then the bad things can't see me. Also, there's control. If I deny other people the power to make me happy in what they say about me, then I control my emotional state and emotions are scary because they're powerful.
It's like being able to control the way that you react in an emotional situation - or when you're hurt. When I was at secondary school and couldn't prevent myself from crying irrationally in the middle of lessons I used to hide in the toilets - or in the library - or in books - or on the internet. But the place I was really hiding was the inside of my own mind. Now I am happy whenever I'm told that I'm brave or that I can withstand pain. If I fall over and graze my knee - which I did a week or so ago - I ignore it. Partly common sense, of course, since a graze gets no better for being salved and plastered and molly-coddled. Partly the knowledge that, although it hurts a little bit every time I take a step for the rest of the day, I'm not limping.
I still don't know why I used to have irrational fits of tears. I suspect - strongly - that it represents some sort of clinical depression. I can remember it happening many, many times back into my early childhood. I don't know when it started. It hasn't really stopped, although now I have enough understanding of myself to talk myself back into a good humour.
So here we are, a little trip around some of the darker corners of my personality. I've never consciously hidden this sort of thing from myself or from others. I don't like hiding. Not for the sake of those about me, I hasten to add, but because being open panders to the desire to be recognised and respected. Also because open expression is a test of fire that makes me stronger - it is all about me, you notice. I bring out deep, dark secrets and share them with others for very self-centred reasons; not that that is necessarily a bad thing, because the impulse for self-improvement needs tools to work with if it's to have any effect on the self. I may be overly self-analytic, but I've been sitting in a small room for a long time so I think I can be forgiven. I just pray that I'm never imprisoned without human contact for any length of time - I've no worries about keeping myself occupied, but the post you'd get when I was finally let out would be the mother and father of all lengthy analytical posts.
ælfgifu
Spending the whole day cooped up indoors is incredibly bad for my self-esteem. Also probably for my health - possibly my mental health as well! I'm having a bad case of feeling-like-a-failure, in all areas of my life. I don't know what I think I ought to be doing, but I have the strong impression that it's something more than I am doing.
Most of all, at the moment, I feel like a failure romantically. I'm not sure why. This time last year things began to become clear and about three months ago there was some scintillating, all-embracing beauty in that clarity. Now everything just seems to be stagnating. Or maybe that's just this case of doom, gloom and other things ending in oom.
I've read that some people are always apologising in their diary entries for speaking about themselves or for not writing enough, so that their guilt becomes a sort of back-drop to the account of their lives. Suddenly the impulse becomes clear: I want to whinge on about myself because the expression of these things is helpful. Then I want to apologise as well, for daring to take up my reader's time with my own petty concerns. All of which fuels the underlying self-pity, by diminishing myself as much as possible in my own eyes - a brutal sort of emotional masochism, but I bet it's far more wide-spread than most people realise. It's the impulse to resist all praise, to brush away compliments and continually play yourself down. On one level you are asking for more compliments, but since you know that you're going to refuse those as well you aren't actually looking for the satisfaction of others thinking well of you. You're addicted to denying your worth. I can think of a handful of reasons off the top of my head for it - the strongest is the defence mechanism: if I make myself small, then the bad things can't see me. Also, there's control. If I deny other people the power to make me happy in what they say about me, then I control my emotional state and emotions are scary because they're powerful.
It's like being able to control the way that you react in an emotional situation - or when you're hurt. When I was at secondary school and couldn't prevent myself from crying irrationally in the middle of lessons I used to hide in the toilets - or in the library - or in books - or on the internet. But the place I was really hiding was the inside of my own mind. Now I am happy whenever I'm told that I'm brave or that I can withstand pain. If I fall over and graze my knee - which I did a week or so ago - I ignore it. Partly common sense, of course, since a graze gets no better for being salved and plastered and molly-coddled. Partly the knowledge that, although it hurts a little bit every time I take a step for the rest of the day, I'm not limping.
I still don't know why I used to have irrational fits of tears. I suspect - strongly - that it represents some sort of clinical depression. I can remember it happening many, many times back into my early childhood. I don't know when it started. It hasn't really stopped, although now I have enough understanding of myself to talk myself back into a good humour.
So here we are, a little trip around some of the darker corners of my personality. I've never consciously hidden this sort of thing from myself or from others. I don't like hiding. Not for the sake of those about me, I hasten to add, but because being open panders to the desire to be recognised and respected. Also because open expression is a test of fire that makes me stronger - it is all about me, you notice. I bring out deep, dark secrets and share them with others for very self-centred reasons; not that that is necessarily a bad thing, because the impulse for self-improvement needs tools to work with if it's to have any effect on the self. I may be overly self-analytic, but I've been sitting in a small room for a long time so I think I can be forgiven. I just pray that I'm never imprisoned without human contact for any length of time - I've no worries about keeping myself occupied, but the post you'd get when I was finally let out would be the mother and father of all lengthy analytical posts.
ælfgifu