Personal Journal

Reflections and Inspiration

I knew it would happen when I joined this site. It's why I avoided other authors so religiously, like they were a disease. And they were, and are. They threaten me because I think I know I am nothing, and when I see someone that deserves my esteem, it only serves to hurt me, because I remember that I do not deserve my esteem.

I have been reading AdrianaCB today, and she's good, oh so good.
I wonder if all the gift god has given me is to recognize talent. If I go further with this thread in my mind, I will begin martyring myself as if in effort to solicit external validation. The only thing worse than picking on yourself is having to be saved from yourself by someone else.

Oh, lord, this vicious cycle returns, and 10 months of therapy are rolled back to the day when I screamed at myself that I'm a fraud while crying like a child because I knew that it was fucking true . All that therapy was an attempt to bring these two sides of myself together, and it seemed to have worked.

My body ripples with waves of heat as I write. Inside my head are combatants that war within. If I just hide from myself, I won't hear them, and without me to hear them, they won't fight anymore. How can I possibly be sane saying these things? How can this not be some psychological illness. How can I be all of these separate entities - the failure, the coward, the critic, the persecutor, the shaman, the soldier, the healer.

I do come apart sometimes. It's not without its uses. I come apart, and some impartial entity presides over the rantings of each individual insane element, and sorts through it and makes order of it, puts it back together, tries to make order out of the needs of the various parts, and move on with this life. Then I play a video game and everyone is forced to shut up.

Psychotic Thought Disorder, not otherwise described, according to the DSM IV.
My skin is on fire, I'm hot, and why on earth do I write this stuff where someone can read it. Well, it's not for you, it's for me. I knew this would happen; that's what I wrote about this morning when I wrote about Rex and Jen, and not being able to stand the sound of my own thoughts.

I haven't come apart like this in quite some time, really. Not since I was working through my need to get out of my marriage. Look, anonymous reader, my journal is mostly about dealing with my own thoughts. Maybe when I get better I'll be able to make eloquence out of it, or maybe that's not my lot as a writer. I can't imagine that reading me isn't a view to a circus freak's mind, sometimes.

I'm losing focus, because the arbiter over the pieces is putting it back together and refocusing me toward some sense of focus. Be efficient, be effective. Don't scare people. Don't draw attention to yourself. I hope no one reads this, and I'm not inclined to re-read it, either.

It's necessary to explode for me, however. I've spent years hemming myself into an image of what I ought to be. It has left me capable of wondering what I am, exactly, and makes true in ways that are uncomfortable to deal with the realization that in all too many ways, I am nothing.

When I am threatened, the stress can disintegrate the facade. What is me, the undercurrent that stays rational through it all, sorts it all out again and makes order of chaos.

I am reminded that I need not be false. All of these months since the separation are aimed at making myself authentic, of being true to the pursuit of my goals. Of staying in touch with the realm me, and acting out of the center of that self, my self.

I think no one on earth can psychologically punish himself as cruelly as I can. No one in the list of past abusers can hurt me the way that I can. That there is a feeling of pride in that, in feeling as though I've accomplished something through the achievement of this, leads me to feel inhuman.

Why? Why would I have set out to do this to myself? The tinkerer inside wishes to learn the answer and rebuild the puzzle, but that isn't necessary (is it?). It is enough to realize that I want to be true to myself and move forward as a whole person.

Sometimes the barriers which protected me in the past, now obstacles, resent not being valued anymore. The cruelty I invested in them I no longer allow outside (or at least I try), and so it lashes out within.

This is such as it is, today, a bit of a breakdown, from which I am recovered. It's not the last, and I'm sure that they will weaken in itensity in good time.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn