"just to make somebody proud"

first, and most importantly, the email from the food bank farm reads like porn.

i'm happy, in a weird unsettled way. it's like there are plates spinning in the air, and i'm happy because they're spinning and they're pretty, but i know that it's all going to crash down at some point, and it's going to be messy, and that doesn't take away from the happy, but it makes it different.

and i've been lead to understand that, sometimes, is part of depression or part of how i taught myself to make sense of the world when i was little, if the two are actually things that can be separated. and i can sit myself down as say that not every good thing is followed by a bad, the world isn't out to get me, and i can remind myself i don't subscribe to a belief in a god, fate, or an afterlife, so even if i think that the world is waiting for me to relax so it can fuck me up, i don't really believe in a "world" with an agenda, therefore my belief that something i don't believe in is out to get me seems a little...foolish.

and i paint myself into a corner because either A) more bad stuff happens to me than is statistically probable, so, by extension, i must deserve bad things or B) exactly the same amount is happening to me as happens to everyone else and i'm just not dealing with it a rational enough manner. i can make myself the villain of every single play. and i know that the logic is childlike, but when i dig down to try and find out what i believe and why i believe it, childlike is pretty much under every rock i turn over.

which isn't to say i can reconcile my emotional state and my intellectual ridicule of said state. i keep getting back on my feet, dealing with the mono and the impending oral surgery and my asshole parents and the dead laptop and extra-expensive work on my car and the fact that the housepainter friend can't/won't reschedule and needing to buy new glasses and having to put plans for vacations and furniture still further in the future, the absence of one old friend and the presence of someone who i don't have a noun for yet, and i'm still afraid that the next disappointment is going to knock me down and i'm going to stay down.

and i feel the need to mock my own fears, and my own sadness, some grade school economy of pain, where i preempt the potential 'at least you have X, or don't have Y' comments, because i am full of unadulterated joy for large parts of my life, i'm ecstatic to have enough money to participate in the aforementioned farmshare and to eat well and buy expensive clothes for period weddings, i've got most of my health, i've put aside almost all of my selfdestructive behaviors, and hell, i'm literate, which is pretty much enough a blessing to counter anything, and that's more than enough, but that doesn't make the fear go away.

but that doesn't mean that i've figured out what to do with all this anxiety. sometimes, i wonder if being with Light has exacerbated it, that the knowledge that i can be anxiety-free about one thing means that i notice now not-free i am in almost every other venue. and i've had this longing somewhere in my bones ever since coming back from san francisco, and i know i keep mentioning it, but somewhere inside me, i'm pointing a big finger westward and saying "i want that" and i can't recreate it here, but i'm trying to find pieces of it. i know that in part, it's internal, and i need to know how to be that calm surrounded by other stimuli. i told tulip i assumed people disliked me until i was given proof to the contrary, and sadly, this isn't true just of strangers. it's weird how having no self-esteem somehow serves to convince me i'm the center of the world, and everytime someone doesn't respond or seems unhappy, i assume it's something i've done. it's exhausting, and useless, and i need to learn to move on, but i don't seem to be able to, and even my therapist tells me to simply try to believe differently, and it's all very grrr sometimes. all my answers seem to boil back down to forward motion, which makes sense, but i'd still like a magic wand (or pill) where i just got to start believing that people like me for reasons outside of how useful i am to them. harder than it sounds, though.
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"just to make somebody proud"

first, and most importantly, the email from the food bank farm reads like porn.

i'm happy, in a weird unsettled way. it's like there are plates spinning in the air, and i'm happy because they're spinning and they're pretty, but i know that it's all going to crash down at some point, and it's going to be messy, and that doesn't take away from the happy, but it makes it different.

and i've been lead to understand that, sometimes, is part of depression or part of how i taught myself to make sense of the world when i was little, if the two are actually things that can be separated. and i can sit myself down as say that not every good thing is followed by a bad, the world isn't out to get me, and i can remind myself i don't subscribe to a belief in a god, fate, or an afterlife, so even if i think that the world is waiting for me to relax so it can fuck me up, i don't really believe in a "world" with an agenda, therefore my belief that something i don't believe in is out to get me seems a little...foolish.

and i paint myself into a corner because either A) more bad stuff happens to me than is statistically probable, so, by extension, i must deserve bad things or B) exactly the same amount is happening to me as happens to everyone else and i'm just not dealing with it a rational enough manner. i can make myself the villain of every single play. and i know that the logic is childlike, but when i dig down to try and find out what i believe and why i believe it, childlike is pretty much under every rock i turn over.

which isn't to say i can reconcile my emotional state and my intellectual ridicule of said state. i keep getting back on my feet, dealing with the mono and the impending oral surgery and my asshole parents and the dead laptop and extra-expensive work on my car and the fact that the housepainter friend can't/won't reschedule and needing to buy new glasses and having to put plans for vacations and furniture still further in the future, the absence of one old friend and the presence of someone who i don't have a noun for yet, and i'm still afraid that the next disappointment is going to knock me down and i'm going to stay down.

and i feel the need to mock my own fears, and my own sadness, some grade school economy of pain, where i preempt the potential 'at least you have X, or don't have Y' comments, because i am full of unadulterated joy for large parts of my life, i'm ecstatic to have enough money to participate in the aforementioned farmshare and to eat well and buy expensive clothes for period weddings, i've got most of my health, i've put aside almost all of my selfdestructive behaviors, and hell, i'm literate, which is pretty much enough a blessing to counter anything, and that's more than enough, but that doesn't make the fear go away.

but that doesn't mean that i've figured out what to do with all this anxiety. sometimes, i wonder if being with Light has exacerbated it, that the knowledge that i can be anxiety-free about one thing means that i notice now not-free i am in almost every other venue. and i've had this longing somewhere in my bones ever since coming back from san francisco, and i know i keep mentioning it, but somewhere inside me, i'm pointing a big finger westward and saying "i want that" and i can't recreate it here, but i'm trying to find pieces of it. i know that in part, it's internal, and i need to know how to be that calm surrounded by other stimuli. i told tulip i assumed people disliked me until i was given proof to the contrary, and sadly, this isn't true just of strangers. it's weird how having no self-esteem somehow serves to convince me i'm the center of the world, and everytime someone doesn't respond or seems unhappy, i assume it's something i've done. it's exhausting, and useless, and i need to learn to move on, but i don't seem to be able to, and even my therapist tells me to simply try to believe differently, and it's all very grrr sometimes. all my answers seem to boil back down to forward motion, which makes sense, but i'd still like a magic wand (or pill) where i just got to start believing that people like me for reasons outside of how useful i am to them. harder than it sounds, though.
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