discoveries

#1 - kimmy at the bar while i'm working. she seems stoned, or slightly dazed with drink. talks effusively of this new thing she's discovered - well, it isn't new, she admits, and then confesses to being a 'fucking hippie' before swiftly describing the dichotomy between 'fucking hippie' and 'fucking punk hippie' - it's that the energy you give to the world comes back to you, that if you put out nothing but good energy then the universe is somehow, inexplicably bound to reflect and reciprocate nothing but good energy back to you.

without calling bullshit, i agreed with her, because i do in a way, and only in certain moments. this leads me to believe that there are different values of this mysterious quanta called 'energy' ... not, simply, as believed prior, an absolute binary state.

#2 - same goes for happiness. i have been spending the same amount of time at the bar as i always have, yet now and lately i am more cogent of when i don't need another. perhaps this will change. despite the nascent alcoholism and the curtailing of such (unless i'm a total hypochondriac and this is normal behavior) i am content around the edges. this, as always, leads to a sort of spike in my heartrate - i at once begin to question the fabric of my daily life. the apartment i have lived in comfortably begins its second year, and almost directly at the outset of it i am driven by this odd impulse to make it live-able. before this anniversary, i had done small things - in fits, and spurts. i constantly add books to my collection. i acquired a desk. then i painted a chalkboard on the wall. most recently, i added a full-length mirror & a rug. my seemingly noble goal of becoming 'upwardly mobile' and 'forward-thinking' has disintegrated, i've left it behind, mingling with the desperate dust. so now i'm here, aren't i? i'm here at this place of happiness. i have a stable, respectable job. i am far from poverty. i have steady social contact. hell, i'm even proximally linked with most of that in social media! so it seems i should be content.

perhaps this is human. perhaps the reason i am dissatisfied with contentment is that i secretly am not. perhaps the reason all of us feel this vague dissatisfaction with our lives is because this isn't how we were meant to live. i can't shake the feeling that this, all of this that has grown up around us, all of these walls and cities around us and these roads paved through it all ... i can't help the feeling that it isn't how it should be. that i'm a stranger to this type of life. i feel protean. people i say hello to freely on the street one day become people that i avoid the next -- and not out of fear, or dislike, but rather a kind of laziness which causes me not to want to have to interact - at all! yet it is impossible to avoid that when you are out of your house. hell, it's even impossible in your house. always running into ghosts. i find myself often wishing i were invisible.

#3 - i've been writing a lot more, yet it's all nothing. natalie goldberg says "keep the hand moving." i do that. but it is always the same story. boy is lonely, neurotic, and possessed of some very bizarre idiosyncrasies. meets a crazy girl while drinking in a bar. then i never finish it. the other story i'm always writing is crazy boy walks down the street towards his home, drunk. i feel like i'm just jerking off with this shit, lately. putting what i wish would happen on the page, and then putting what always does. not a day goes by i don't think about calling the counselling center and signing up again for a new counsellor. which of course means paying them the debt i owe. again. i don't know why i just don't do it.

hesitation is my curse.

#4 - no, that's it.

three-thirty in the morning: stoned.

lately i keep tripping over myself. in the worst ways possible. choking on myself. about to say something, then it refuses, changes its mind, dives back down into my throat & burrows miserably inside of my chest.

can't sleep, tonight. killed time by watching various episodes of stupid television on the stupid internet. no attention span for a movie, or a book. even a short story. so i get high & blur out to comfortable idiocy. the saccharine moments, enough to bring tears to my eyes. maybe that's the weed. it reminds me of vomiting, the way my mouth fills up with saliva & these needle-like jabs of pain.

then, it all kind of stops. even this, right now, at the time of. present moment, though i am describing it in the past tense. this has been the refrain of my brain's song, lately: extended flights of emotional frenzy, punctuated by

"wow, this is stupid and dramatic. i am stupid and dramatic. over-emotional. i am damaged. this is self-pity." sometimes, brief chords of "i'm a closet egotist whose veneer of insecurity and humility is wearing thin." or "i actually think very highly of myself and suffer from delusions of grandeur."

then it goes away, swallowed up by the miasma again.

and my phone is ringing now. well. vibrating. there's a text message. an incoming call i have to let ring itself out so that they don't know i'm ignoring them. this happens so often lately that i wish i wanted to smash it. "i want to see you again" only it's not "you," it's "u" and that awful silence in the car the next morning. it's not just that - it's everyone i ignore. i am becoming something different suddenly. this is a very strange time, and keeping my face straight is suddenly an incredibly taxing exercise. i want to talk about it, i want to feel totally comfortable and just - say. i want to be able to say how i feel when i feel it. it's funny, because the more i find myself needing to speak, the less i do, and the pain of unsaid words just sinks into the lining of my stomach and fizzes acidly. i want to say everything, but there isn't an everything. there's no end to it. and it's worse when the silence happens. you know that. it's not that there's an end, it's either that you felt bad for as talking as long as you did or you felt that it was time for someone else to have a chance to open their mouth.

i am a mumbler, and people don't hear what i say sometimes. i am frequently interrupted, though maybe it's because i interrupt frequently - although i can't be sure of that. to be honest, there's very little i feel i can be sure about. what's nice is that T. is coming home this weekend. although i find myself lately trying to lower my expectations so that i don't find myself disappointed. don't think i can really handle that on top of whatever else.

so then work becomes an issue. maintaining my false - whatever it is - to the door, to the patrons, to my co-workers. feeling ashamed of the lie. but how do you ...? you "leave that emotional shit at the door." dr. f. has told me that i am too extreme, that i gravitate to extremes like an out-of-control see-saw. my words, not hers. it hurts when she tells me things like that. they stick in my brain. partly, this is a good thing. i am made aware of it. i can try to avoid that kind of behavior. unfortunately, most of the time it isn't apparent until hindsight kicks in. there's the challenge: discovering what elements trigger the recognition of the pattern, and applying them to foresight. attack the problem at incipience. kill it at the root. but being made aware of other things isn't what i need. i am already far too aware, though i feel i look without actually seeing a lot of the time. i talk without considering what words will fill the space, and with the motive that i know i should talk because i'm being talked to. without much regard for what it is i could possibly have to say, my diction becomes fumbled & my consonants a boggy glop of drymouth noise.

some days i don't use my voice until the sun sets. i didn't notice that until the other day when someone said "hi" to me on the street, and when i tried to say it back, nothing came out. like those old nightmares you have as a child, when the monster's getting you, carrying you agonizingly slowly past your parents' dark bedroom (you can see the red LED light of their clock, on the nightstand) and you scream with no sound, and they can't hear you, and you're doomed.

i would like to be approved of. i would like to be validated. i would like to approve of myself, and validate myself. i would like to believe it when someone likes me. i would like to be able to trust myself to like someone.

there is no way in hell i am ever going to get anything done with this yoke around my neck. maybe i should salinger off to the woods. but is isolation...?

what it boils down to:

the phone won't stop ringing. well. vibrating. and i haven't listened to the voicemails yet. i haven't been eating regularly and i have been consuming an incredible amount of alcohol on a nightly basis. it's not any one thing. it's everything.

and as we all know, there's no end to everything.