Life brings only good experiences. I am open to new and wonderful changes.
Before he even left, I started to prepare myself for what might happen. i realize now that i had been preparing for years, but this extra care did help. i bought books, a new yoga DVD, new underwear that he’d never seen or touched. and i bought a panda planner. seems overkill for someone who doesn’t work, but i wanted to plan the shit out of my breakdown/breakthru, whichever came. one of the sections in my daily pages is for an affirmation. the above is my affirmation for today.
I have a hard time with things like this. i am, like most people are im sure, of two minds. the skeptic and the believer. throughout my life i have veered between the two. in my childhood, very young, i remember thinking about this and deciding that i would be a believer, a daydreamer, and a romantic. or that i would fake it as much as possible. that’s pretty gross, really. one of my earliest memories is being 4 years old with my sister and a neighbor girl named Sandy. we were romping in our backyard with our dog, a boistrous yellow lab who had an irrepressible taste for stuffed animal guts, when I got it into my mind to climb to the top of the shed. i convinced sandy to join me, but my sister chose to stay on the ground reminding us every few minutes how stupid we were and how much trouble we were gonna get in. it was central california, it was twilight, and the sky was the palest blue with streaks of faint salmon pink on the horizon. from our roost on the shed we could see over the fence for the first time, and the neighbor’s yard was beyond disappointing. but i spied a streak of vapor in the sky from a plane — early chem trails no doubt 😀 — and i decided to have fun. i pretended it was an alien ship coming for us, coming for all of mankind. i remember deciding to act this out. i really got myself worked up. my sister was used to my nonsense, i believe she was an early prototype for squidward, but i got sandy really riled. we screamed and spazzed out on the top of the shed, and i grabbed sandy and told her, “this is it sandy, we’re going to have to jump we have to it’s the only way!” she said “you first.” and so i jumped. and sprained my ankle pretty bad. had to go to the hospital, etc. that’s why i remember it, i think. the pain. pain really seers things into our memories. at least some version of the experience.
I was a lonely, self-aware, observant child with a precocious streak that i had trouble controlling, even in dangerous times. i decided in high school to go along with the christian god thing. especially the exorcisms and demons and eternal torment. i was terrified a lot, and had some very weird experiences that i really can’t explain except to assume the power of imagination of a very troubled kid. once i was kicked out of my home and exposed to different types of families and people, i was graced with the distance i needed to look at my childhood objectively and see it for the balogna it was. and everything fell away. all the lies. not just the ones others told, but the ones i told myself. and i shed those lies only to live within the confines of new, deeper, subtler ones.
Cold Son* sings:
you will have your freedom then, and a brand new cage for you to be in.
I still lie to myself all the time. i keep realizing it anew. it’s so crazy. because i work on myself constantly. it’s a personality tick– i notice a problem or a weird thing, and i can’t stop picking at it until I’ve got a huge painful mess. i have been told by more than one therapist that i am “remarkably self-aware”. and yet i constantly deceive myself. and the strange part is, i somehow know it at the time. its like a shadow knowledge. later, once something is fully revealed, i see that shadow very clearly and know that i always knew. i see the mechinations of my duplicity, but at the time im oblivious. this way i can partake in my bullshit wide-eyed and innocent.
this is the two selves. the conscious and unconscious? i started by talking about how skeptical i am of affirmations, but how i also think, “fuck it, why not? brainwash myself? im in! if it’s not me, it’ll just be somebody else, right?” but ended up talking about the see-saw dynamic of the conscious/unconscious. i guess the correlation is that i felt like an idiot while repeating my affirmation today in the car, like a real robot dumbass. “life only brings good experiences” is some seriously twisted philosophical shit. and you have to truly believe in life to believe that.
but the truth is, im of the mind that life isn’t all that. like, take it or leave it. am i glad i was born? meh. am i afraid to die? well, sort of, the pain part, the horror, that effect on my fam, but being dead? fuck it, i don’t care. people die in so many jacked up ways. i hate knowing how people die, because it colors their whole life, this morbid wash just seeps into everything. all my memories of them have that gory factoid shitting on the whole scene. i hate that. and death is so unfair — diseases, car accidents, random crime, purposeful crime, stupid decisions that everyone makes, but for some ppl? bam they’re dead — that’s some bs! some ppl get taken out young, some die at the worst times and other people just go on and on with no explanation. to me all this says is that death is a joke. i don’t believe in an afterlife. but when death is such bs like that, makes you not even believe in life. what’s the point? why try? there’s nothing to hold on to. ephemera, man. energy candy.
OK, i’m ranting and not saying anything. basically, the affirmation annoyed me, but i did it anyway. i’m doing all this “stupid” stuff anyway. i’m torn because i believe both– nay, i believe neither. yeah, i’m just going thru the motions pretending that something’s happening. or will happen. or whatever. same thing as me on the shed trying to make things matter. same thing as all the roles i inhabited with passion and the games i willing played with my ex. thinking it was going to make a difference. were those “all good experiences”, Louise Hay? she would say yes, i know. but i feel like i’m just killing time, waiting for what? idk
wish i could express myself better today. on a positive note — no contact with him in two days so !
*this is a goddamn beautiful song:
Pro-Tip: best way to listen to it: earbuds, swings, twist around the chain as much as possible, close your eyes and lean back as you untwist and retwist and untwist again and again. open your eyes if the sky is beautiful…sighhhh so good
Station H 