Hey, dropping this here to say that I'm not dead, just rethinking this site. I feel a redesign is an order, because as my mood improves it feels wrong to be writing in the same place as my older entries.
Sometimes I wonder if I want people to dislike me. Like it's some subconsious need I try to fill.
I have this obsession with Doing Something, but I never know what that Something is supposed to be. I'm doing it right now though- I can't sit still during my video lectures for class so I end up doing like five different things in the background and never fully focusing on one thing because in the back of my mind I know I Should Be Paying Attention, but just sitting there and listening drives me crazy because it's not an ultra dense information flow. Sitting down and listening to someone talk is just too SLOW for me, my brain NEEDS to be stimulated six ways from sunday otherwise I'll get this obsession with Doing Something and can't sit still or pay attention to anything and it's driving me extra double insane.
I have the worst takes, they just appear fully formed inside my mind. I'm like the Oracle of Delphi if she was actively trying to tear down Greek civilization and also had a twitter account.
Honestly writing in this journal has been better therapy than seeing an actual fucking therapist and I don't know if that's a compliment to journaling or an insult to my therpaist. Probably the latter.
Isn't it weird how you can read biographies? Especially the shorter ones, you'll read a person's entire life story, albeit abridged and trimmed of everything not "noteworthy", but a whole life, condensed onto words in a page. Something you can read in its entirety in maybe a week if it's a book, maybe a few minutes if it's a quick wikipedia article. Years of life, experience, fear and love, trimmed and transcribed for consumption. Think about everything that's lost. The little in-between moments, the quiet mornings, the throbbing pain of old scars, the home-cooked meals that sit with you for hours. The things that make a life feel alive. Gone, except for perhaps a small example or footnote. Instead it's cut away for accomplishments and works. Indeed, you can work your whole life to produce an opus that will cement your place in history, but what is the shape of that place? Is it the shape of a human? Someone who walked this earth and felt its sun and breathed it air? Or is it the shape of your work, the thing that you gave to the world? Who are you, then? Is it a crime to be cut down like this, to be boiled away until these essentials remain? To have your flesh and light and love stripped down to a few short sentences? Or is it just, to give breath to the things that are truly exceptional, and let the ordinary fall away?
Isn't there worth in the ordinary? I like to think there is. But maybe it's best that those moments be lost to history, and be kept with you. Maybe it's better that they remain private, personal things. Maybe some things are too precious to be lost to the history books.
I don't know if it's normal, but reading my writing at different times and at different headspaces feels like reading a biography written by someone who only knew me through one specific avenue. I just think, "No, you don't get it! It's not like that- it's like this! You'd never understand." And yet, I'm yelling at myself. What does that mean?
Sometimes I feel like there's two of me. Me and myself. I'm me most of the time. I'm me when I talk to friends and solve problems and drive to the grocery store. I'm me becuase I'm more developed, more cognizant, more aware, more present. But myself is also there. Myself doesn't talk, myself mostly observes. Myself feels like an outsider, someone that should be shunned, pushed away and sometimes better left ignored. But I am still me and myself. I can't be one without being the other.
I'm most aware of myself in transitional times. I'm in many spaces where I shouldn't- or normally arent. I feel something then that I don't feel anywhere else, and sometimes I like to see if I can't grab that feeling. Tug on it and see what's at the other end. It feels like communing with myself. It's unsettling, and uncomfortable, until I'm not me anymore and myself is up at the front. Myself drinks it in. The smells, the sights, the feeling. The texture is most important. What is the floor like? What is the temperature? How does the wind feel on the skin? It's never a place that's familiar. Maybe me is drawn forwards with familiarity, or maybe myself recoils from it. Maybe there's a third force, the force of presence, of awareness, that drives itself down like a wedge, with myself on one side and me on the other.
There was a thunderstorm tonight. It's not a new thing. This is my childhood home, there have been many thunderstorms here. I've grown used to hearing them from inside these walls, because that was where we were supposed to be. But tonight I was alone. I went outside. Most of the rain had gone, and the wind died down. I asked the sky for a show. Lightning, like briliant white branches streak across the sky. Flashes contine for some time. I feel a tugging at me. My heart speeds up, and my breathing shallows. I should be inside. There's so much I need to do. I shouldn't be out here. But no- I'll never get another experience like this one. This is my chance. I stay. I feel the ground beneath my feet, the warm rainwater still puddled on the concrete patio. The wind brushes past me. It's soft with moisture and pushes my hair. My heart slows down and my breathing steadies as I forget myself. I lose myself in that moment. Just for breif seconds, but there I am. The trees crowd away most of the view. The branches are silohuettes. The rustle of the leaves is sharp and clear, the sound of the tires rolling across the highway is muffled and distorted through the forest. Lights dance across the clouds. I turn. I see a sight I've seen many times before. The hall leading to the houses's front door. Many people have passed through that door. Between it and I are the kitchen and living room and stairs and foyer and hall and the last twenty years of my life. And yet I'm viewing it as a stranger. Someone who never lived there. Someone else. I stand for a second. The scene inside is static. A single light is on, barely illuminating the hall, yet my mind fills the rest with the life I've lived seen from an angle I'd never been able to see. It's empty and quiet. It's over. Gone. It's just me now. Me and myself.
I tried to get a picture, but by the time I found my phone the neighbor's garden lights had turned on. The glare was in the perfect place to sully the view, and in it I could see my body's silohuette, a ghost.
There is a certain kind of peace in going into the world alone. No considerations to worry about except for your own. It feels intensely personal, even in a public space. To be at once completely exposed and fully inside your own head. It's the one way to truly be able explore both the world and yourself, I think.
Huh. A full month, and change. Doesn't feel like a month. This summer has been all kinds of weird. And not in the good way. Part of me just hopes the rest of it will go by in a flash, but part of me will mourn the loss of my last summer before I graduate. It was going to happen eventually, I guess. And there's worse things to have to mourn.
Honestly I feel weird about putting up that last journal entry. I worry people are gonna read that and think I'm a monster, or that my sister is a monster, or that my parents are monsters. Fact is we're all humans. Fucked up, confused, poorly equipped humans. I wish things were as cut and dry, black and white as they were. That I'm some kind of crusader pushing back against the night that is family. I mean, I am totally distancing myself from my extended step-family (I've got family on my mom's side but I barely see them) at the earliest possible convenience, but my immediate family is different. They're ultiamtely good people, and we grew with eachother. I can't cut myself off from them. I mean, I can, but not without losing a huge part of myself.
To anyone who's reading this: Growing up is hard. It sucks. The people around you are going to do it at different paces. Some won't do it at all. This can be a good thing, but usually it's a bad thing. A hard thing. But you get some cool stuff out of it. I'm closer with my mom, which if you knew what growing up as me was like, you'll know that's a big step. Maybe I'll be close with my sister. I honestly don't know if I want to be. Ultimately, I just don't want to have to change myself to accommodate her.
Okay right in the middle of writing this she came in and shared some conspiracy theories she believes are truth because she heard them from some rando in the army. I think I've said enough about her. Even if she is my sister she sure as hell isn't living in my head 24/7 rent free. I've got other stuff to think about.
I actually did almost overwrite my journal while making this page.