Since May I have been presented with a plethora of painful truth-type facts that I have not wanted to face about myself. I have struggled to cope with these, mostly on my own, without even the help of my therapist, while living out the best year of my life. The facing of these facts, however, has made me more miserable and self-hating than I have been in a long, long time. The contradiction of these two polar opposite positions — on one hand, the best year of my life, and on the other, hating myself anew with every fresh fact presented, has created a dangerous situation.
These polar opposites have triggered unbelievably bad borderline impulsive behavior, the likes of which my life has not seen since I was fourteen. The majority of this behavior has been done mostly in secret — my journal tells no tales of most of it and I had not shared a vast amount of it with my therapist until this past week. And no, I still am not divulging here. I do not plan on ever doing so.
I am utterly mortified by my behavior over the past ten-plus years. When I have not been a shy, social phobic wallflower, I have been a loud, obnoxious, entirely too personally revealing, self-promoting, attention seeking, saying stupid things that make sense in my head but do not connect all the dots once I have spoken them because I have spoken points A and C but forgot point B — so it made sense to me but no one else and then people wonder why the hell I just told them what I did, diarrhea of the mouth sloshing, using, abusing, manipulative asshole, and I am just so, so sorry.
This is something I have suspected of myself for years but it really fucking hit home this past year. It is no longer suspected; it is the goddamn truth. So I have been trying to change, but change has not been coming quickly enough for me. Ten-plus years of super-bad, super-self-obsessed and self-indulgent behavior ingrained into your mind as your way of being is apparently not something you can just snap out of, no matter how hard you try. And I have been trying. But I forget. Like when I am really nervous, which is a lot, or really tired, or in pain, or have been drinking too much. Unfortunately, these are all times that happen a lot.
There has been nothing that has tortured me more lately than having to face myself just after the act of being a self-obsessed bitch. The thing is, I rarely catch myself in the act and so am rarely able to stop myself; it is hard to see objectively that you are acting like a fool when all you can see is your need to keep there from being silence in the conversation, and so you keep talking to fill it — no matter what shit you say, you talk, without thinking, just talk talk talk talk talk. And then, maybe as soon as it is done, maybe not until you are walking away, maybe not until the car ride home, or the next day or the next week, it fucking hits you — how goddamn stupid you were, how bloody awful and contrived and self-centered.
The first reaction to all this is Fuck, not again! I am such a fucking idiot, I can\’t believe I did this, fuck! I\’m going to kill myself, I\’m going to fucking kill myself, I can\’t stand to live like this, I\’m never going to be able to stop this cycle, I\’m never going to be able to have self control, I need to die, fuck! You lie or sit or stand there, face twitching, body flinching, stomach convulsing, mind in a state of turmoil, when your hands finally reach up to your head, grab your hair and yank it away from your face. You force yourself to breathe and you say to yourself Fuck it! Remember? Fuck it! Fuck all of them, whoever you were talking to, whoever you made a fool of yourself in front of. It doesn\’t matter. It\’s not worth dying over. Just fucking hide from the world for two weeks until you get in control of yourself but whatever you do, don\’t try and kill yourself. It\’s not worth it. Remember? Remember — fuck it!
Oh yeah, you think, fuck it! And while you do not forget about it, you slowly start to unwind and stop hitting the rewind button in your head. You try to remember good points about the evening or afternoon, focus on the positive. You try to tell yourself it really is okay. You call people and apologize if you really have to. You still hide from society for awhile, unable to trust yourself. Slowly, you are letting go of the incident. But that is okay, because you are guaranteed to fuck up again soon; there will be another occasion for you to beat yourself up over.
There are voyeurs and there are exhibitionists. The voyeurs have it easy — they just watch. The exhibitionists must produce. There comes a time in every exhibitionist\’s life where she must face the fact that what she is exhibiting may or may not be a load of bullshit not worth viewing. The only people interested are the voyeurs, and it is not that there is necessarily anything wrong with being a voyeur, just as there is not necessarily anything wrong with there being an exhibitionist, but everybody has to take it in stride.
Looking back, I think I took it too far, and I am embarrassed as to how far I took it.
A lot of lines were crossed, a lot of self-indulgent crap was produced. I think I have been better about that in the past few months, but not always; a lot of narcissistic filler still dribbled out. I am so sick of it, bored of it; I want to be done with it.
This journal started out with no readers; it was a place to pour the twistings of my head and the goings on of my days into. When people started adding me out of nowhere, it never occurred to me to change my format. Over the years I have been praised and thanked for my honesty and openness in regards to the inner workings of my head and all my various neuroses. People have told me how wonderfully insightful my writing is when I am picking myself apart and putting myself back together. This is all well and good and I thank you for your compliments — I really do — but I would like to be known for something other than my self obsession.
I have taken a bit of a silence in this journal of late, partially due to this, while I think these things over. I would like to attempt to change formats in my journal, to write about better things than just my health, music and sex, because shit, I am shallow these days in my journal, and probably in real life, too, and maybe I have just been this way, period, the last eight months or so. I think so. Yeah, there is another painful truth I would rather not face.
… I was going to write something here about how I dislike the way a lot of journals are used, but then I realized I would be alienating a great deal of people on my friends list. I do not want to write entries that I would skip over, because I find myself skipping over just about everyone\’s entries on my friends list the past few months. I do not want to be trite, but I do not want to have the appeal of a car accident any longer. I believe that is how a lot of people read my entries — unable to look away, but all the while thinking to themselves, God, this is fucked up. And you know what? It is, and I know it, and there is no longer any reason for you to know it, too.
I want to end this by quoting the song lyrics that have been in my head while writing this. In the almighty words of Gordon Gano, who has an amazing new solo album called Hitting The Ground which you should all check out:
Situation gets rough, then I start to panic
It\’s not enough, it\’s just a habit
Hey kid you\’re sick — darling this is it
You can all just kiss off into the air
Behind my back I can see them stare
They\’ll hurt me bad but I won\’t mind
They\’ll hurt me bad they do it all the time
Yeah yeah, they do it all the time
Thank you and good night.
