Friday, August 8, 2008

The Bad

I've been sorta lonely, lately. I think I've been noticing certain moments more than others, and those moments are the ones after a night of fun or I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep, thinking to myself. It's the times when I really am by myself. Sometimes, I'm so busy I don't have time to take notice. But, at other times the feeling asserts itself enough, and I can't help but pay attention.

I realised tonight that I define everything in my life by what I see wrong with it. Everything is a sum of it's faults... The things about it keeping it from being perfect in my eyes. I spend too much of my time worrying about stupid little things that keep the world from being perfect, and I forget to notice how wonderful it is. Maybe I'm expecting too much from people. It seems like everyone should actually want to change the world for the better. But most people just learn to live with what's there. That's almost sick. It also means I'll never notice anything that really is near perfect. Or maybe I will, but I'll never quite be able to deal with it.

Any way here it is, "the bad"

I'm quick to criticise others, but I'm even quicker to criticise myself. I hold pretty high standards for people around me. I feel like I'm like that because I have a certain sort of vision of how I'd like things to be. I try to mold things to be that way as much as I can, but sometimes that gets in the way of my own enjoyment.

I am always hungry for more. I am not completely satisfied with what I have, know, or accomplish. [sigh] I never am. It's a bit of a curse. It certainly gets in the way of relationships. I am not quite a perfectionist because I don't believe in perfection. I believe that something can always be better or worse.

I have self-destructive tendencies. When things seem to be going as well as can be, I start getting failure anxiety... I start worrying that maybe I'm not doing things how I should be, or maybe something terrible is going to go wrong. It's not so much that I'm pessimistic about things... I just start getting this slow, creeping feeling like I should just give up altogether... That there's no use to it at all. I worry that I might one day just go nutso and try to just destroy everything I love.

My heart is caught in a net of contradiction. ahaha. That's so melodramatic. I can't seem to let myself feel what I think I should feel. And it's because I'm afraid it'll sting me later. I should just let loose and be free and wild (in ways deeper within myself) but I guess maybe the time for that has passed me by, or maybe I haven't found it yet. There will be a time when the winds will blow and I'll hear the call of love thumpa thumpa in my ears and I'll know it's my time to heed that call and let go of myself and my theories of emotion.

I live in a mental monopoly.

I'm impatient. If an answer doesn't come to me right away, I give up or just try to force an answer. Whatever answer.

No matter how many people I come into contact with on any given day, I almost always still feel sort of lonely when I go to bed. If someone else goes to bed with me, I sometimes feel even more alone.

I think it sucks how people flip out so easy about the smallest things. I mean, it's sort of funny sometimes, but even laughing at really dumb people gets old after awhile. I know that sometimes I'm guilty of doing this. It's mainly because I don't let big issues get to me, so to make up for it I overreact to the smaller ones. I just wish people would use a little common sense once in awhile before they flip out.

Don't you hate it when you're playing a game with someone and they get all frustrated and decide that they don't want to play anymore? If you're lucky, the loser will just slink away and go pout in the corner with the music on really loud or something. If you're not lucky, the game board or controller might get tossed in the air, possibly throwing little game pieces all over the place, too. That's crummy.

Why is that people have to be so selfish? Case in point. When you're sitting in a long line of cars, waiting for an accident to be cleared up or whatever, everyone patiently waiting, why do some people think they have the right to just take the other lane (in this case into oncoming traffic) and truck on ahead? Do they think the whole line of cars is just sitting there for no reason? Do they think they're going to stumble upon some secret path and make their way onto freedom in the way of the open road? Do they consider for a moment the fact that they will undoubtedly hit the same obstacle blocking all of the other cars? Then they also have to turn around in a very narrow space, or back their way back to the end of the now longer line. Causing a little bit of headache (and amusement) for everyone else involved. I just can't figure some people out.

I had a phone call from a childhood girlfriend earlier. Once upon a time she had so much pent-up pain and anger in her than she couldn't deal with it and she cut herself as some sort of release. Overall, she seemed to be doing OK now, but it still made me think about some fucked up stuff. I was thinking about the amount of pain in the world and how one little sliver of pain can shoot through and sour a whole lot of love. It's similar to when you're mixing paints. It takes a whole lot of white paint to lighten a color up, but it only takes a little dash of black to make it darker. Pain is like the black paint. A little bit of it can really fuck up your day.

That sounds like an awfully poetic thought, but I try to stay away from things like that because they remind me why it seems reasonable to be depressed, angry, and dissatisfied all the time. If I have given off a type of depressive air; no I'm not depressed or anything like that, just mulling over some circumstances that make up life, my life.

Something I can always take comfort in is that fact that no matter how messed up the rest of the things in the world get, there will always be more good music for me to find and listen to and ingest. There will always be new moods that I haven't experienced and new feelings I have yet to explore. On top of that, I can at least hope that there will also always be new people for me to explore and discover. As long as I have continuous new input, I can manage to almost forget about everything I don't like to think about.

Heather

6 comments:

Jonathan said...

This is a very deep post.

"I spend too much of my time worrying about stupid little things that keep the world from being perfect, and I forget to notice how wonderful it is."

Same here.

"It seems like everyone should actually want to change the world for the better. But most people just learn to live with what's there. That's almost sick."

I think a lot of this comes from the idea that one person can't make a difference. People don't realise that a lot of others want to change the same things that they do, because nobody talks about it or takes the time to actually organise anything. So nothing happens.

Brian said...

I can't seem to let myself feel what I think I should feel.
This sums up a lot of my life. I wasn't living, I was monitoring life to see if it coincided with what I thought was living.

Jonathan said:

It seems like everyone should actually want to change the world for the better. But most people just learn to live with what's there. That's almost sick."

I think a lot of this comes from the idea that one person can't make a difference. People don't realise that a lot of others want to change the same things that they do, because nobody talks about it or takes the time to actually organise anything. So nothing happens.


I disagree with you oh great Quetz, or at least have another point of view. I want to effect change when and where I can but I also want to live in the moment. I don't want to be doing what I think I should be doing (my 20's). Life's short, trite as that sounds it's true. You can spend it wondering what or how life should be, or you can live it as best you can. For me that means accepting I won't be a superman or super anything but I will be Brian and I will not toe the line because it's easy. This is a large part of the reason why I don't talk to my mum, or 2 brothers anymore. I'm not sad about that (how could I be sad about being me?), they gave me a choice, fit into the family by their rules and let them shit on me, or estrange myself. Easy choice to make.

Ignore the above, unless you are Brian English it won't make a lot of sense.

Billy said...

What do you want and how can you get it? (you dont need to answer that here)

I used to find myself caught up in being defined by others. I'm realising that it is better to concentrate on making most of situations and not lamenting what I dont have. I also try not to let other people affect my mood. The only person I can control is me, so I try not to worry about whether others share my values or not. If I can influence them, that's good though.

Like Brian says, ignore the above unless you are me - I would have in my early twenties :-)

Laurie said...

I certainly can't give you advice on how to live, think, feel, Heather. All I can affirm is that life IS beautiful, and worthwhile, and challenging. And you learn how to live, anyway. There's no menu you can "select a life" from. We don't have as much control over life as we think we have. I'm hungover, this is probably utter dribble. I'll stop.
L.

Anonymous said...

This is the first I've seen of your blog and wow, what a doosey of a post.

Like Laurie, I can only offer my way of living and also like him say simply that I enjoy life, people and the world as they are.

Do I strive to improve myself and the world? You bet and I'll continue to put as much energy into those goals as is proper for my abilities. Still I learned (a very long time ago) to let go of expectations for everyone and everything except for myself and what I can control (not much).

You have much to be proud of in yourself and I hope I can impress upon you the importance of being at peace with both your perfections and imperfections. In my experience, if you embrace both the rest comes easier.

-- Gregg Townsend

-blessed holy socks, the non-perishable-zealot said...

grrr. Git some followers.