I should listen to myself when I say I'm tired.

Here’s the thing. I’ve always been billed as smart. I’ve made good grades, been able to apply recently-acquired skills, explain things to others, juggle multiple things at once, blah blah blah. It’s just who I am… it’s a part of me that I don’t really think about. When people have commented on my intelligence in any way, I’ve shrugged it off, smiled, and said that I really don’t see it. And that’s about as honest as I can be. It’s not false modesty. Or just modesty. I genuinely don’t see it. I’m sure that’s some balance between seeing myself as ‘normal’ because I’m the only me I have to compare to, and having my lack of intelligence constantly reinforced as I grew up. I feel grossly inferior to those around me frequently, and I have little faith in my own abilities.
Yet at the same time, I find myself in grad school, bored out of mind and not learning anything. I’m not reading for class. I’m not prepping for quizzes. I’m waiting til the last minute to write papers. I’m not challenged, and I hate it. I feel like I’m wasting my time. And I realize, as I think about it, that I think I’m being lazy and disengaged because it’s the only way I’ve found to add a slight level of complexity to what I’m doing. I can’t get myself to care other than when I absolutely have to. And then I work simply out of necessity. It’s incredibly frustrating. I hate feeling like I’m not learning. I love learning, but I think I hate school. And somehow my screwed-up brain processes this as my being stupid. Shut up, brain.
I don’t want the people I care about to feel ever that they are inferior to me, and I definitely never want them to think that I think that. Because I don’t. The people I’ve kept in my life are there for a reason, and they all bring something into my life that means a lot to me. I don’t ever see myself as superior to the people I care about. They’re my peers. My friends. Knowing that I’ve ever made someone feel that way hurts me deeply and makes me feel like I’ve failed them. For someone who is supposedly smart, I really am an idiot. Or maybe just a really bad friend.
I know I’ll figure it all out eventually, and as much as I hate where I am right now and want to throw in the towel, I don’t think I’ll actually do it. I’ll just keep skating by and trying not to let it eat away at me, until I reach a point where it doesn’t anymore.
22.2.13 9:50am

Comfortable.

It's been an interesting couple of weeks, full of travel and rest, illness and stress, oscillating between all four in a frantic zig-zag pattern not worth outlining.  I guess that's the holidays for you.  So the holidays were good, family is good, vacation was good.  Back to life and work and school and all that jazz.  Cue Catherine Zeta-Jones.  Happy 2013 y'all.  Now that that's out of the way…

I've achieved a sense of inner peace that I don't think I've felt before.  At least, I haven't felt anything like it in quite a long time.  There's been a lot on my mind the last couple of months (because having a lot on my mind is so rare for me, I know), but it seems to have finally settled down a little bit.

I have had to come to terms with a lot of things about myself lately.  My morality, my sanity, my mortality, and faith.  Not in a religious sense.  We all know where I stand on that.  My faith in others (and my faith in myself).  I've confronted my ability to trust my own judgment, and my ability to keep things to myself.  I've questioned how much people really need to know about me, and whether it's better to save people from pain or let them cope with it on their own.  I've thought long and hard about what I want to do with my time and how I want to spend my hours, days, and years.  I've had to face a lot of questions about how I interact with other people and my inability to trust....anyone.  A lot of this was happening on a partly subconscious level.  I think that's the only way my brain knew how to process it.  If it had all been conscious, my body probably would have shut down.

But yes, a lot of thinking, contemplating, judging, and hypothesizing.  And it feels really good to feel like I know where I stand now…to have made a decision, reached a conclusion, and felt it resonate in my gut as well as my head.  To feel like everything is in sync again and to not feel a disconnect between the signals in my body.  To know what I want and what I have and to be content with it.  Feels good.

midnight musings

I've known it for a month or so now.  I've fought it, denied it, repressed it, hated it, and ignored it.  But that's becoming harder and harder to do.

I can feel it within me, carving a place inside, making itself at home.  It makes me nauseous and tired, but I can't sleep.  It makes me angry, and it makes me ache.  Sometimes it feels like my entire insides are being consumed simultaneously, and I just want to crawl into a ball and give up on everything.

The denial comes back sometimes, and then I feel it rear up again, reminding me of its presence.  Sometimes it's down in my gut.  Sometimes it's in my chest, compressing my lungs and making it impossible to breathe.

I keep debating whether I should tell anyone, or if I should just see how it plays out.    It could just go away, after all.  Or so I've been deluding myself.  It could just fade into oblivion.  I could wake up one day and be all better.

I don't want it here.  I want it to just go away.  It'd be easier if I could just accept it, being content with the possible changes in my life, and move forward.  Move past it.  But I literally hate  it with every fiber of my being.  I'd do anything to just make it all go away and go back to how things were.  But I don't know how.

I don't want anything to change, but I'm terrified that if I tell you, it would.  I don't want you, or anyone, to treat me differently.  I hate the way this makes me feel.  If I could wish it away, I'd have done it back when I first found out.  I don't want anything to change.  I don't want the things I've talked about to become could-have-beens and impossibilities.  I don't want to have to abandon the things that make me me.  But I don't think it can just stay the same.  Not now.  Not anymore.  It kills me to say that.  But this is killing me anyway.

18.12.12  12:33 AM

Somehow, he's done it again.

I'm in kind of a bizarre headspace tonight, and I'm not entirely sure why.  Well, I have a couple ideas, but nothing I feel like writing about just yet.  My brain feels like it is simultaneously working on overdrive and not working at all.  I'm on the verge of crying, which means my temples are pounding, my throat feels constricted, and my eyes are unintentionally squinting.  You know exactly what I'm talking about if you've ever experienced it.  And I hope you haven't.  It's pretty miserable.

It all started when I was reading, and if you know anything about me at all, you know that there's only one author who pretty consistently inspires me to think and, consequently, write.  If you don't know who I'm talking about, shame on you.  His name is probably in the last 10 posts over a dozen times.   Anyway, he was describing how he had a girl in his life who he had probably loved in the past, and woud inevitably love in the future, and how they both still knew they would never be together.  And somehow, this got me thinking about my childhood home.

About six months ago, I was eyelid-deep in the hunt for a place to live in Milwaukee.  I was spending the better part of my days looking at listings, for weeks.  I started dreaming about browsing Craigslist and Hotpads, and would wake up disappointed that the perfect apartment I'd found was only in my head.  In all this research, I happened across a random website where you could look up property values.  For fun, I searched the house my parents used to live in - the one I refer to as my childhood home.  I found it, and saw that it was currently on the market.  The site was even kind enough to link to the listing, complete with a plethora of pictures of my house.  But it was not my house.  I was angered.

Sunday Morning Ruminations

You know, there are a lot of things that I don't understand in this world.  Racism, for one.  Sexism, homophobia, why our government can't get their shit together…all on the list.  There's one thing in particular, though, that is on my mind right now.  If you are doing something that makes you feel miserable - particularly, if it makes you feel bad about yourself - why do you continue to do it?

We've all been put in situations where we had to choose between the lesser of two evils, and we find a way to justify our decisions, to cope with the outcome.  But when you find yourself continually doing something that you feel bad about…something that you know is wrong and you are having problems coming to terms with it…stop doing it.  And for the love of God, if it involves lying to other people, that's just another reason to stop.  Lies beget lies, and add to confusion, frustration, distrust, and anger.  It's just a disaster waiting to blow up in your face.

I am writing from personal experience, indirectly.  The person who inspired this will know, but I'm not going to go into details out of respect for said person. I think/hope I can explain my own confusion without giving away any details…

A person has to be able to live with their decisions.  We can't escape them, most of the time, and God knows we remember the stupid shit we do better than we remember the positives in our lives.  So if we consciously decide to continue doing something stupid, or something we know is probably not right, we have to find a way to justify it.  And when we can't justify it, we develop a disconnect between our actions and how we feel about ourselves.  The action may make us feel good, or feel loved, or feel worthwhile, but internally we are tearing ourselves apart because we know that we aren't doing what is 'right'.

Now, I could go into a whole rant about who defines 'right' and 'wrong', and I would probably completely annihiliate most social norms in the process, but frankly it's not worth the time or energy.  Let's just assume that there is some sort of common ground as to what is 'right'.  For example, cheating on your taxes, cheating on your significant other, killing somone…all probably 'wrong'.  Being honest when you fuck up, trying to avoid harming other people, paying back your student loans, probably 'right'.  Ok, got that out of the way.

So.  When we do something contrary to what we believe is 'right', it generally leaves us feeling not so great about ourselves.  Sometimes we can justify the action if it only happens once.  But when it happens repeatedly, the disconnect between what is 'right' and what we want to do continues to grow, and spread, and it eventually manifests into a fabulously overwhelming self-loathing.  We hate what we are doing, but we don't/can't/won't stop doing it.

This is what I don't understand.  If I hate myself for doing something, I'm pretty likely to say "Hey, Amber, stop being a moron and you'll feel better".  I hate the overwhelming feeling of hating myself for something I've done.  It is only made worse when the action is continued, and situations only get worse when ignored or built upon over time.

I can hear you saying "Amber, Amber, Amber, not everyone will start to hate themselves and feel miserable when they do things that aren't right.  You can't just assume that, just because you feel that way."  This, reader, is where you would be wrong.  The people who don't feel some level of guilt - that will grow into hatred - when they continually do something that goes against their fundamental moral principles, well, there's a term for them.  Sociopaths.

What I'm describing here isn't some hullabaloo I just made up so I could sound smart or moral.  It's basic psychological theory, derived from countless research and case studies, and only reaffirmed as time has passed.  When your outer/physical/momentary needs are not congruent with your internal/emotional/long-term needs (in this case, when your beliefs about how you should behave are being entirely thrown under the bus by your actions), you breed your own neuroses.  Ignoring this - or even worse, accepting it - is what causes self-loathing.  The only way to reestablish some personal peace is to find that congruency again.

So if you're doing something that makes you feel like a horrible human being, you should probably, ya know, stop.  The people who are willing to accept self-loathing are literally feeding into their own neuroses, developing their own psychopathologies.  Even if the action they are doing makes them feel slightly better, the hatred of the self will eventually win out.  And if you're doing something you know is 'wrong', and it makes you hate yourself, and you decide to continue doing it anyway because you don't mind the self-loathing…that's a whole  'nother topic I could go into.  Perhaps at a later date.

Maybe this makes more sense to me because I've studied the psychological theory behind it.  Maybe it's just because I'm weird and approach things differently from other people.  Maybe it's because I actively avoid making decisions nowadays that I know I will not be able to live with.  Who knows.  It just shows to me how much I really don't understand why some people do what they do.  Why is it ever a good idea to do something that you know - KNOW - is going to make you miserable?  Any momentary happiness will be overran by the lingering misery later on.  It's just not worth it.  Not to me at least.

9.12.12  10:25am