(no subject)
I think I mentioned the bugs in the basement phenomenon I've been having to deal with lately. Last night our local "hellmouth" apparently decided it was time to release all of the denizens of the underworld in some sort of basement apocalypse, as two centipede-spiders (I'm not sure of their actual name... they leave a large mess when squished), several beetles, an army ant, and Shelob herself all decided to make an appearance. It's been raining heavily lately, so that may have contributed to an exodus from outside. Only 2 wounds suffered on my legs as I scrambled to grab my trusty tennis shoe, Sting, in order to do away with the spider.
I'm so funking tired. California trip in about a week and a half and right now I'm really not looking forward to it at all. It's been nearly a year since I've seen Mom and Dad. Part of me wishes it would be another year. They've been at it (fighting) again, according to Mari and it's had the side-effect of making our own household a bit gloomy. I'm not sure whether or not to tell her what happened 5 years ago. In some respects she deserves to know, but given the fact that the baby is only about 4 months away, I really do not want to give her any reason for concern. I hardly ever call home. I should, but I think if I did it would only serve remind me of everything I try so clumsily to forget... things that I ought not to push out of my mind, but I do anyway.
Damn me. Why, oh why, Gregory, must you make things that don't need to be so hard?
Why is it so hard for me to love myself? I think that's rhetorical, though, as I pretty clearly know the answer. There's a sort of paradox at work, I think, because it's hard to love those in life who hurt us and I am probably the #1 source of pain in my own life. My decisions. My actions.
Perhaps I should see myself as fortunate in that regard. There are many people in the world whose #1 source of pain is someone or something besides themselves -- a lack of food or shelter due to no fault of their own... a genocidal majority group bent on killing the minority. Many people die before they can even perceive the pain inherit in their lives. So, really, what am I complaining about? You might say it's a blessing to be one's own worst enemy. The key to my own happiness, largely, is at hand... within my grasp. Why don't I use it then?
Forgiveness. I think I need to learn to forgive myself. That isn't to say I ought to accept the pain I've caused myself or casually let myself off the hook for a lifetime of inaction. But I need to see that for all of my poor decisions and laziness and time-wasted in self-pity, that I am a good man... that my cheesy fantasy about being this beautiful entity of light and energy just below this shell of mulatto... that that perception is in fact true... that I am the most beautiful and worthwhile human being that I will ever know and even if I haven't been very good to myself or faithful when it comes to building my own life these past several years, I am deserving of forgiveness and I am deserving of happiness.
To date, though, I haven't been very good at this. It's an odd cycle to lambast oneself, feel simultaneously angry and ashamed and inclined to withdraw into oneself, and consequentially do nothing to fix the problem, setting yourself up for failure the next time.
There is another way, though... the same way I have learned to forgive other people in my life. I understand the lessons of Siddartha's river... the commonality of human experience. But I am not yet willing to immerse myself in this truth. To know that I too am part of the river and to let go and forgive myself. Secretly, I am afraid of it. I am afraid that through such an act of self-forgiveness I will not only accept my faults, but that I will become them. That I will "let myself off the hook." That forgiveness will become complacency. That I will become "typical" and "common" (discovering that, in fact, I have always been). That I will drown in the ordinary and the expected. That when I die, within a few folds of the water and a swirling eddy, I'll not simply be forgotten, but I will have never mattered. And, you see, this is how I justify holding myself apart from the crowd... not joining in... not-so-accidentally sabotaging my chances for happiness. By doing things like talking to myself outloud whenever I get the chance and not opening my umbrella when it rains. Even if I'm really just being antisocial and melodramatic, I can at least pretend that these things somehow make me unique. I fear that, in the end, I will be an easy to deconstruct collection of well-documented and categorizable behaviors. That understanding me is simple. I fear what will happen when I face my own imperfection. I fear that I will see myself for what I am not. That I am not an overman.
Hmm... I think I have come up with my next pretentiously ironic internet handle: "weak nietzschean." Yay.
I'm so funking tired. California trip in about a week and a half and right now I'm really not looking forward to it at all. It's been nearly a year since I've seen Mom and Dad. Part of me wishes it would be another year. They've been at it (fighting) again, according to Mari and it's had the side-effect of making our own household a bit gloomy. I'm not sure whether or not to tell her what happened 5 years ago. In some respects she deserves to know, but given the fact that the baby is only about 4 months away, I really do not want to give her any reason for concern. I hardly ever call home. I should, but I think if I did it would only serve remind me of everything I try so clumsily to forget... things that I ought not to push out of my mind, but I do anyway.
Damn me. Why, oh why, Gregory, must you make things that don't need to be so hard?
Why is it so hard for me to love myself? I think that's rhetorical, though, as I pretty clearly know the answer. There's a sort of paradox at work, I think, because it's hard to love those in life who hurt us and I am probably the #1 source of pain in my own life. My decisions. My actions.
Perhaps I should see myself as fortunate in that regard. There are many people in the world whose #1 source of pain is someone or something besides themselves -- a lack of food or shelter due to no fault of their own... a genocidal majority group bent on killing the minority. Many people die before they can even perceive the pain inherit in their lives. So, really, what am I complaining about? You might say it's a blessing to be one's own worst enemy. The key to my own happiness, largely, is at hand... within my grasp. Why don't I use it then?
Forgiveness. I think I need to learn to forgive myself. That isn't to say I ought to accept the pain I've caused myself or casually let myself off the hook for a lifetime of inaction. But I need to see that for all of my poor decisions and laziness and time-wasted in self-pity, that I am a good man... that my cheesy fantasy about being this beautiful entity of light and energy just below this shell of mulatto... that that perception is in fact true... that I am the most beautiful and worthwhile human being that I will ever know and even if I haven't been very good to myself or faithful when it comes to building my own life these past several years, I am deserving of forgiveness and I am deserving of happiness.
To date, though, I haven't been very good at this. It's an odd cycle to lambast oneself, feel simultaneously angry and ashamed and inclined to withdraw into oneself, and consequentially do nothing to fix the problem, setting yourself up for failure the next time.
There is another way, though... the same way I have learned to forgive other people in my life. I understand the lessons of Siddartha's river... the commonality of human experience. But I am not yet willing to immerse myself in this truth. To know that I too am part of the river and to let go and forgive myself. Secretly, I am afraid of it. I am afraid that through such an act of self-forgiveness I will not only accept my faults, but that I will become them. That I will "let myself off the hook." That forgiveness will become complacency. That I will become "typical" and "common" (discovering that, in fact, I have always been). That I will drown in the ordinary and the expected. That when I die, within a few folds of the water and a swirling eddy, I'll not simply be forgotten, but I will have never mattered. And, you see, this is how I justify holding myself apart from the crowd... not joining in... not-so-accidentally sabotaging my chances for happiness. By doing things like talking to myself outloud whenever I get the chance and not opening my umbrella when it rains. Even if I'm really just being antisocial and melodramatic, I can at least pretend that these things somehow make me unique. I fear that, in the end, I will be an easy to deconstruct collection of well-documented and categorizable behaviors. That understanding me is simple. I fear what will happen when I face my own imperfection. I fear that I will see myself for what I am not. That I am not an overman.
Hmm... I think I have come up with my next pretentiously ironic internet handle: "weak nietzschean." Yay.