As per usual, I’m sitting here in front of my computer with no idea what I’m going to write about. No title, no germ of an idea, nothing. I’ve been sipping coffee and scrolling through the Hellsite trying to find motivation or inspiration and nothing is coming to me.
But the whole point of my ongoing exercise is that I need to write no matter what. It’s not about “finding motivation” it’s about momentum and habit. Which is why I’m just typing this out instead of floundering around trying to scrape together some genius idea I can riff off of for 1000 words or so.
My apologies, as always, if you find your interest in reading this flagging. I just have to get something down on paper. Well, not paper, but pixels and electrons. Same thing, these days.
So… what’s on my mind? Oddly, it’s my old me.
For some reason, my blog software registered that someone was reading a very old post of mine, titled “Epiphany”, which, in my defense, I wrote over a decade ago (posted 18 September 2008); eleven years and 3 days ago as I write this. So, of course, I re-read it. And, wow, it’s a lot to take in.
The tone is entitled and bitter and angry. I’m basically tearing my friends a new one for them not treating me like I wanted to be treated. What an awful, dark mental place that was. I can remember writing that post, and the reactions of my friends to it, and having to defend what I wrote as “this is how I’m feeling lately”, but it was not a good take. I can’t imagine writing it today. Today I am grateful for my friends, and I appreciate them for sticking with me.
“Epiphany” reminds me of all the shit I’ve been through, and how I had to work very hard to keep it from turning me even more bitter. I had to express those feelings, get them down in words and sentences, translate the hurtful black clouds blocking my brain so that I could see and heal from whatever pain I had inside.
But out in the open, seeing something like this:
When I suggest, through indirect language and hints that probably only I can understand, how they can help me, they don’t hear me.
…I see the Inner Negative Voice being channeled and it makes me realize that that is what the voice says when I feel I’m a terrible friend. I see myself having en expectation (why don’t they hear me?) and a strategy (if I say it subtly will they notice?) and I’m creating a fucking test for people to pass or fail and then judging them when they don’t respond as I expect them to. It’s a horrible, transactional way to be.
The rest of the post goes on and seems a bit more reasonable. I try to make the case that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have, and that’s true, but I still come across as bitter about not getting my own needs met. How could I, though, if I wasn’t expressing them? I was hiding in a corner and hoping my friends would come and find me when they didn’t even know we were playing Hide And Go Seek.
Much better to come clean, to ask for what I want, and to accept whatever answer the universe gives me (and by “universe” I mean my friends and family, of course; the universe, my universe, personified in the form of real human people doing real human things with and without me).
Honestly, I’m still tired of going through the motions of my life, repeating the patterns. Anyone reading these posts should be able to see that. But I’m doing my best to break the patterns myself. And, again, honestly, I don’t even know what I would replace it with. What do I want? My therapist and my friends have asked me that in recent days, and I have no answer for them. Whatever epiphany I had, it did not reveal a new path. Just a rejection of the path I’ve had up to now.
My future is contingent on the choices I’ve already made, so it’s not like I can become someone completely different. I don’t want to stay here, though. I need to move forward.
Ugh. Movement. There’s a part of me that would much rather hide away than seek something new. Not sure if that’s the Inner Negative Voice or just the scared quiet child-Brian who was trying to protect himself in what felt like a random and dangerous world—the kid whose inaction and missteps created the Inner Negative Voice in the first place.
Maybe admitting I don’t know what I want is a good first step, though. Before I can move, I need to figure out where I’m headed. In the meantime, I can pay attention to where I am, and what I’m feeling, right now. That is enough.
For now, that is enough. Hello, and thank you for reading my confused thoughts. Happy Saturday.