032.
Basically, if I could stop thinking of myself as a bad, bad person and other people as (simultaneously) potential threats and accurate judges of my character and worth as a human being, I might be okay. There's so much I don't do because I'm afraid that everyone will hate me, or just be angry at/scornful of/bored by me. When someone acts as though they like me and find me a good, interesting, competent person, and when I realize that they are able to accept, though perhaps not necessarily condone, my worse behavior as a part of my whole, complex character instead of seeing it as an indication of what an awful "true self" I'm hiding, deep down (the way I tend to, myself)...I mean, I blossom, actually. In a way that's not ghoulish or disconcerting, like the way I can act outgoing when I'm basically frantic and desperate and trying as hard as possible to find a persona that will get other people to like me, or else frantic and desperate to stop caring.
I was thinking again, feeling sorry for myself, that I didn't have any goals or plans or dreams, that I didn't have any future. And then I realized that there are a lot of things I'd like to have or do in my life, actually, and many of them might not be easy or quick things, and I might not be able to do all of them, and certainly some are more feasible than others, but they aren't all like "GO TO THE MOON" plans, either. I just cast them aside a lot of the time because...well, essentially because I either give up before I begin and assume they're unrealizable because I'm somehow a specially sucky person who can never, ever, ever succeed or be skilled or do the right thing in any way (in spite of actual real-life evidence to the contrary), or I imagine that other people would think my ideas are silly and weird and self-indulgent and not worth bothering with. But, like, even if that were true, why should I not do something that I want to do and that doesn't really hurt anybody just because maybe somebody somewhere might want to make a face like a snooty rabbit about it? I'm not being quixotic on their time, but on mine. They don't have to do things I like to do if they think those things are stupid. I don't know. And I succumb to inertia. And why on Earth do I assume that, because some people I have met have disliked me, most people I meet are going to dislike me? By that logic, I could just as well assume that everyone is going to like me, since some people I've met have liked me...and it isn't as though I even think that people I don't personally care for are bad, so how come I feel like if someone seems not to care for me it means that they think I'm a terrible person and that their thinking so means I am a terrible person?
Okay, here's a secret: sometimes I fantasize about living in sort of a co-op house (like you used to) and...just having friends right there, you know, and being this part of a community where I fit in and help out and my natural abilities and such are considered useful and important, and no one much begrudges the things I can't do or am not interested in, or my weirdness, and maybe I can work out a way to practice/learn trapeze aerialist tricks or something, and in my head I'm sure it's all very unlike the way any living situation of that type ever has been or ever will be in real life. It's idealistic as hell. But the point is that I don't even like to admit to having this fantasy because it feels like something that I can't ever have anything even close to, ever, at all, even though it's far from literally impossible or anything, it's not going to the moon or going to Hogwarts, and...I just get sad and frustrated. I'd probably fuck up and get kicked out within a month. If I got to belong to a place and people, you know.
I've had an all right day, though. I had trouble sleeping last night, and my sister decided to talk to me about the real and serious issue of chronic sleep debt in the morning, because obviously I just decide, consciously, to lie awake for hours and wake up at the crack of dawn sometimes. For kicks, you know. I will talk about the actual all right bits of today, the cool and happy bits, in a different post, perhaps; they'd seem odd to stick on the end of this one. I'm trying not to be gloomy, but I don't always try hard enough, I guess.
I was thinking again, feeling sorry for myself, that I didn't have any goals or plans or dreams, that I didn't have any future. And then I realized that there are a lot of things I'd like to have or do in my life, actually, and many of them might not be easy or quick things, and I might not be able to do all of them, and certainly some are more feasible than others, but they aren't all like "GO TO THE MOON" plans, either. I just cast them aside a lot of the time because...well, essentially because I either give up before I begin and assume they're unrealizable because I'm somehow a specially sucky person who can never, ever, ever succeed or be skilled or do the right thing in any way (in spite of actual real-life evidence to the contrary), or I imagine that other people would think my ideas are silly and weird and self-indulgent and not worth bothering with. But, like, even if that were true, why should I not do something that I want to do and that doesn't really hurt anybody just because maybe somebody somewhere might want to make a face like a snooty rabbit about it? I'm not being quixotic on their time, but on mine. They don't have to do things I like to do if they think those things are stupid. I don't know. And I succumb to inertia. And why on Earth do I assume that, because some people I have met have disliked me, most people I meet are going to dislike me? By that logic, I could just as well assume that everyone is going to like me, since some people I've met have liked me...and it isn't as though I even think that people I don't personally care for are bad, so how come I feel like if someone seems not to care for me it means that they think I'm a terrible person and that their thinking so means I am a terrible person?
Okay, here's a secret: sometimes I fantasize about living in sort of a co-op house (like you used to) and...just having friends right there, you know, and being this part of a community where I fit in and help out and my natural abilities and such are considered useful and important, and no one much begrudges the things I can't do or am not interested in, or my weirdness, and maybe I can work out a way to practice/learn trapeze aerialist tricks or something, and in my head I'm sure it's all very unlike the way any living situation of that type ever has been or ever will be in real life. It's idealistic as hell. But the point is that I don't even like to admit to having this fantasy because it feels like something that I can't ever have anything even close to, ever, at all, even though it's far from literally impossible or anything, it's not going to the moon or going to Hogwarts, and...I just get sad and frustrated. I'd probably fuck up and get kicked out within a month. If I got to belong to a place and people, you know.
I've had an all right day, though. I had trouble sleeping last night, and my sister decided to talk to me about the real and serious issue of chronic sleep debt in the morning, because obviously I just decide, consciously, to lie awake for hours and wake up at the crack of dawn sometimes. For kicks, you know. I will talk about the actual all right bits of today, the cool and happy bits, in a different post, perhaps; they'd seem odd to stick on the end of this one. I'm trying not to be gloomy, but I don't always try hard enough, I guess.