I remember thinking yesterday while sitting on the bluffs if you could shame yourself into love. Specifically self-love. My reasoning was because I know that a lot of my motivators in life have been shame, as in hating myself enough to make a change about something. Or at least leveraging that as much as possible as motivation, but with running recently I learned that it isn’t meant to be something agonizing where I tell my mind to ignore it, but something I can continuously enjoy. The problem is that kinda goes against my motivation method of constantly attacking myself in my head telling myself how much I want to change, and how I should be ashamed of who I currently am. I’ve seen people talk about this sentiment online, and I do think you can somewhat shame yourself into the direction of self-love, but eventually you have to learn to have whatever you’re doing be fueled by something sustainable rather than something you’re running from.
I finished charging my car late at night for the cheapest rates, and so I got some food at Jack in the Box. Afterwards, when I went to throw out the trash, the misty night looked absolutely stunning on my car so I recorded a quick 360 around it, and I’m not ashamed to say I uncontrollably moaned. I just kept giggling and twitching to myself because of how fucking beautiful the car was. I drove home with the windows down, and hearing the motor whir felt like witnessing mecha-godzilla tower above your skyscrapers. That combined with a heated battery and a full charge, and I again felt fight or flight while accelerating way too fast in a foggy night. I am happy.
I weirdly don’t feel much of an urge to talk about my birthday, which I guess is a good sign. For once I didn’t get violently depressed for it which is huge! I ate the cookie that A got me and I didn’t want it to end even though it wasn’t like delicious or anything. There’s also the fridge magnet that she gave me that says “You are beautiful” and she wanted me to actually put it on my fridge, almost like an affirmation. I also keep seeing the flower bouquet S got me on my bookshelf, and I weirdly feel kinda overwhelmed by it all. Part of me just thinks that I don’t deserve it. It’s a weird little voice in my head that keeps saying that, and I feel like it’s just some part of my mind trying to keep things as status quo to avoid the unknown. But I think the unknown, in this case, is much better, I’m starting to finally feel like I’m someone that can be liked/loved. I think the big thing that made it click for me was realizing that I don’t need to constantly be doing something or actively trying to provide ‘value’ to be lovable. Even in a fully selfish way, sometimes it’s more than enough to just have someone make some time and space for you to exist. I’m grateful to have F as a friend since he actually helps me understand myself a lot better. He’s got a lot of problems and isn’t a great friend by normal standards, but he reaches out to me and makes time just to be in the same space together which is something that means a lot to me. It’s nice to have someone you can just relax around and not be alone with. And that’s enough for me to love him. It really is that easy.
I’ll write about this properly tomorrow (I hope), but today was the first birthday I wasn’t depressed for. A brought me multiple sweet presents, and also made me an incredible painting that embodies my pinned post about what I love about art, in her own unique way. I’m so grateful for her. She even had S come over, and S gave me the first (real) flowers I’ve ever received! They’re beautiful to look up at. I feel loved. I’m so grateful that I met A, and I even get to call her my girlfriend now. What an incredible birthday.
I thought about someone growing up with a strong community and network, and then eventually their life changing to one with less. I could feel that fear of doing something wrong, and messing up your once shot at life. The fear of doing something wrong or bad for fear of ruining the rest of your experience. And this made me write down: there will always be anxiety in new or change.
The whole reason I thought about this was because I was just perceiving the feeling of my fear of change. But in writing that and reading it, I thought of parallels – and I thought about how people react to change. Imagine you're in some single player story game, and you just did something completely new. Depending on what kind of game it is, you may feel afraid of ruining the run or getting a bad ending. But there could also be someone who sees it as exciting, living without fear of a “bad ending” but rather wanting to see where that went. And then they're excited. I think the willingness to be content with the experience of a bad ending is a power by virtue of always having succeeded. Imagine you threw away your life into a pit of addiction and an early death. I'd argue you could see this and think this was a success, since you got to experience an incredibly unique experience. Unique in the sense most life's will have a lot of things – almost everyone's going to feel the experience of running, their first love, getting hurt bad etc. But most won't feel the nightmarish descriptions of addiction. And so that's an incredibly rare experience! Yes it was horrible, but if I'm consistent with how I see life (the point is to experience as much as you can) then this was an incredible life. In this lens I think I am free from discontentment, since am I not leading a perfect, exploratory life?
Bright and early this time so that I can finally catch up on my debt of introspection. I've never written my post first thing in the morning and so I think the nature fit will be a little bit different because I know that I got a lot more depressed later in the evening when I have less energy. Oh yeah and also the title is just a miss heard lyric that I thought was kind of cool.
I got a little bit confused recently about who I am because of all changes in life. I feel like I've lost the stability that I used to have because I feel a little bit all over the place and I just generally feel this kind of fear of the unknown or unpredictability I guess. I need to remind myself that this is probably due to the fact that my social battery needs to be recharged a little bit more and treated a little bit more kindly. On Thursday I went out clubbing for a friend's birthday and we were drinking a lot, and then on Friday we went to a rave and we were drinking a lot, and on Saturday I finally said fuck it and I did not go to the social since I just wanted to stay home and play games with friends. Speaking about those friends, I'm still incredibly excited for our trip to Japan, but I'm also very stress right now because no one has stepped up to fill the hole made by me taking a little bit off the gas and not planning every single part of the trip. But now we are just going 15 mph on the highway because no one else is fully stepping up. This is really stressful and it also kind of makes me feel like shit because I feel like I make myself someone who's easy to take advantage of, similar to the group project that's happening right now. It feels like everyone else is saying they don't care and someone else will take charge, and if no one does I'm not sure what will happen and so I feel like again I have to take a lot onto my plate. I don't want to reach someone that always is forced to do extra. I guess I wish part of me have enough of a backbone to accept mediocrity or something of the sort.
Taking a step back I always feel like there is some part of me that I wish I could change or that I wish wasn't that way but at the same time I think they are relatively benign and it's kind of naive for me to think that they're self-isolated contained traits. I think if I was more masculine and someone that people fear more, I would also be someone that people felt comfortable around less which is something I really do value. I think there are silver linings to everything and they aren't always things that I consider and so I just take it for granted. I often wish that My parents let me have a little bit more of a normal childhood, and that I was able to have these regular experiences but also I think as difficult as it is it is much easier to learn how to be normal compared to learning how it feels to not be. I've met a handful of people that have had similar experiences and I feel like I've been able to empathize a lot better because I can somewhat relate. I just what I'm trying to say is I am glad I am who I am.
Today was the gymnastics / powerlifting social, which normally would have been amazing since I’m part of both of the clubs, but since I’ve gone out and drank the last two nights in a row I just want to sleep tonight. I bailed on the plans, and got to take a calm day to myself, where I caught up on some work and played games with friends. I’m ready to sleep.