(no subject)

I wonder sometimes what I’m doing, in a very general sense. Like a lot of other questions, it’s easier to answer in the negative than the positive: I’m not in school (and when I was, it was pleasure and fear based); I’m not in a career path in which I either take great satisfaction or reward, nor do I feel that what I do makes much of a difference; I don’t write. Sometimes, it feels as though I spend all my energy staying where I am. I don’t mean that out of a sense of fighting current, really; I think I mean just the literal.

I have a collection of habits that I no longer care for (finishing a sentence with a preposition is not necessarily one of them). I hide myself compulsively; I’m really tired of that one. I am not so sure that I am such a terrible thing as to be shunned by all and actually cast out (which is why I have historically chosen to remove myself; it’s better to leave than to be thrown out). There are still moments in which I feel “wrong”, and by consequence “bad”, and with that comes a great deal of guilt and repression, and even though I know that it’s not real, that it’s not so, I still cringe at the hint of the lash, though it’s been years since I’ve actually felt it.

I don’t like the way in which I interact with most people. I am tired of trying to wrap myself around a seed that others give me that is acceptable. Yet at the same time, I do not (necessarily) want to bring ruin to the constructs in which others choose to live, to rain fire down upon their preconceptions, and to force them to live exposed. Well, OK, there are days when that’s just what I want to do, but I understand the impulse for what it is, and doubt I would act on it. I want to be able to look another in the eye and not flinch, not pull down the mask of cool distance and politesse, nor feel the need to fill an awkward opening with safe, meaningless chatter. I want to be able to speak (It always comes to language with me lately) directly, without obsessive worry as to the effect my speech may have on another’s opinion of me.

I don’t think that I want others to be complicit in my construction of myself, or of my reality. I’d like to think I’m honest enough to use what I discover, and incorporate it without losing myself. I also don’t think I want the license to do whatever, whenever, wherever with no consequence. I guess I feel like I want what to me it looks like most people have; the ability to be, without obligatory deception, fear, or a near schizoid loss of self.

I think I’m taking this dissatisfaction as potentially a good thing, I just hope I can get past it all.