Journal Entry

Almost 2008

It's almost 2008, just a few more days. Years are really rolling away. And I don't do...whatever it is I'm supposed to do. Another year gone, and things don't make any more sense, maybe they make less sense. Have I settled into a pattern? Maybe I have, a pattern of avoiding things.

It's been done so often, I feel I can barely see it anymore. I have a steady hum of anxiety sounding continuously in the background. The anxiety of a person who knows they've done wrong and are waiting for it to catch up with them.

But to turn, and to do right... I don't think it would just be an action, it would have to be a whole state of mind. And I don't know how to create that state of mind within myself. It couldn't be... just wanting to change, for a moment, a few minutes, and then being pulled back down into my familiar pit. How do you capture a desire to change, and make it really stay with you?

It really does seem like I'm caught in a trap. What a horrible way for a person to feel about their life. Work feels like a trap, home feels like a trap.

It seems like there are so many possibilities, things a person COULD do, if they put their mind to it. But when I take a moment to consider some option, "What if I were to do this or that?" I think it will all come back to... this horrible thought: that my life is hanging by a string and could end, unceremoniously at a moment's notice. When I try to formulate some plan, that is what it always comes back to. The seeming foolishness of making some elaborate long term goals for myself, when I could easily be snuffed out in 5 minutes.

Maybe most people are never even pestered by that particular sort of thinking. But I am, regularly. Like, my fragile little life is trembling in the balance before my very eyes, a breath, a whisper could blow it right out, it's not a stable, dependable thing. A sudden turn of events could end it at any time. And by laying low, barely making a blip on the radar, I'm getting by, escaping notice, not singling myself out. But if I suddenly change my course, pursue something new, or bold, Death will catch a glimpse of me, It's attention will be gotten, and may decide to swoop in and mow me down for being so presumptuous. Isn't that a bizarre way to feel? Now that I look at it, I see it is. But if i'm honest, I know I really feel that way, if I give the thought words.

Then sometimes I think I should just give up. or, well, not give up but... just give in, stop thinking, worrying, struggling, and just sit back and let Life shape me, even if it shapes me into something hideous. Because thinking and struggling seem to yield nothing, as yet.

But I don't really want to do that. And yet, I don't really want to think and struggle hard enough to see some resulting action in my life, so that just leaves me in some horrible, lukewarm middle ground. Too lazy and afraid to become a saint, but also too lazy and afraid to become a really spectacular hedonist. Sitting in the middle. Indulging in a bit of both sides now and again, but unwilling to plunge headlong in either direction.

I'm festering in an antechamber instead. Playing house in a waiting room. Too afraid to go through the door, so I set up, throw together a makeshift bed on the floor, a kitchen, and just camp out in an area made for only passing through. Why am i so screwed up?

I'll feel an honest thought, what I think is a truthful thought, difficult to do, but... honorable. Somehow, I'd be physically able to go to my husband and just open my mouth and tell him the truth, about so many things. About my feelings of apprehension living with him, about not being honest with him to begin with, that somehow I'm not really who I have acted like I am. That I somehow believe that I need to have a life that is more spiritual and less materialistic. It's hard for me to get down to the real point of what i'd be trying to say, but it runs along those lines. It's difficult for me to express without becoming muddled, but basically that I believe I'm supposed to be.... different. A better, more selfless person than how I behave, and I just have to get to it, somehow, no matter what anybody else thinks....

And, the thought will be there, it appears, and then a huge flock of opposing thoughts converges on it and pecks it full of holes strips the meat right off it's bones, in a flurry of flapping and screeching. just tears it to pieces. It seems possible for a moment, and then suddenly it seems false and preposterous.