please, please. i’ve grown too restrained. i want to pour out a flood and i’m painfully embarrassed. please, no, i don’t know, yes. i want to erase the words that don’t make sense or aren’t original enough. i didn’t used to do that. i poured out a lot more words. i’m restrained now. more than before, and it was what i always wanted. “i”. so i have it. i can’t get away from its weight. i am shrinking.
there’s an impulse i always give into, because i see it as virtuous. it’s the shrinking from receptiveness to our inner work. it seems so tiresome to be lauded. i always see them in my head saying “i’m proud of you” and it stills my mouth. it is intolerable to please them with my floundering. i don’t understand this impulse entirely. it’s not an old one.
i don’t know that i understand it at all. what is the risk in being received? there are a thousand plausible suggestions but there’s none my intuition particularly points at.
it devalues something. when things are private and safe no one can try to understand. it might lead us to be unable to get distance from it. it’s embarrassing. guys don’t do this, don’t show you’re not one. i don’t want a fuss made over it (why?) – i don’t want i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know it’s just so shameful. privacy is the only safety. this is a new thing for me. i think i used to have no pride. certain things are available when you have no pride.
maybe reception feels like condenscension. if there were a subvocalization, it would be “i can’t stand to have you pawing over it!” you’ll decide things about me based on it. you’ll pity us.
the worst thing would be to overstate our feelings. understate is a mantra. we’ll be laughed at. no one will understand. no one will trust us again. how can we let go of the man we’re turning into?: stoic, supportive, giving. no, we don’t want to be one-sided. but anywhere else danger lies. i am still, just shaking, and there are no torrents. i can kind of see them. but it just doesn’t happen. don’t hate me. don’t hate me. don’t hate me. the torrents are unoriginal and melodramatic. i hate myself for them. i hate so much that in turn i have a torrent of rage which also must be carefully not stated, because that is just as melodramatic. but at least the rage knows not to express itself when others are near.
i used to be able to be incoherent and derivative. and how can i mourn the loss when it is making me who i want to seem to be?
edges pointed out in our therapy monday that we’ve gone unprecedented amounts of time without writing. part of that is that we go to twitter more, part is school, etc etc. but edges seems to think we’re avoiding. it’s hard, i think, because avoiding feels like the virtuous thing to do. doesn’t school matter more than anything? but it’s just by default.
it’s also hard to write because i have a reader that i’m uncomfortable with. not enough to take my whole journal down as others in my life have been forced to do, but enough to make the thought of writing depressing.
i guess we haven’t been making too much progress in therapy, except getting to know our new therapist, whom we like. another quarter is nearly over – we need to drop one of the classes. it sucks. two classes composed entirely of quarter-long group projects. ugh.
we got the unpaid, part-time internship and are starting around the end of june. it terrifies us so much we can’t think of it.
i’m avoiding homework right now. everything is so futile. we’ve had a lot of bad headaches.
of course there is strong resistance. there’s never been anything to say. what are we supposed to do about it? we care, some of us, but we are bone-weary. others, of course, actively maintain the walls. there is a sense of passionate reserve, invisible uncontrolled weeping. it’s all very victorian. not that that’s satisfying or nourishing as it could have been in times past. we were obsessed with that time when we were 12.
everything is unwise and irreversible. you don’t care so why should i say this to you? i think there are several things locked together filming over with a skin of apathy, like a chemical reaction. i do miss words. i love words. parsing semantics is one tiny thing about words, it feels like a toy compared to healing and self-expression, compared to depths (we call it deep processing but everything is relative), it is angled like a skipping stone, but it has our full focus. i think some are dissatisfied with that. maybe it’s just because we’re getting closer to our graduation. who knows. isn’t it a dream to use toys for your living? what a strange word “living” in that sense is.
i need to work, but it’s no good today. i hate being this worthless. and on top of it all i’m starting to fail inside as well as out. hence, skin of apathy.
anything but self. convince yourself you can’t afford it. convince yourself it will be better later. tell yourself this is more important, this, this, this again. above all, do not be still. do not be with yourself. do not rest. do not breathe. do not cry or break down. it will be okay later. you can put it off till later. this is now; inward will always be there. out, turn out, turn to out, whirl out. it will be okay. you can keep going this way. you have no choice.
after all, isn’t it virtuous that the inside should be a chore? it is much easier to work. look, i’ll let you clean and self-care. i’ll let you play games and read books. i’m not cruel. aren’t you happier this way? and anyhow, never forget you don’t have a choice. stay focused. you can do this thing or you can lose everything. how can you even pause? don’t forget that it is selfish to look in. it is selfish to die or to want to. so losing everything is not a choice; it would penalize those close to you, and let you off the hook. come on, it’s ok, it’s okay, i’m not asking for much, i’d never ask for more than you could do. come on, isn’t this nicer anyway? isn’t this smooth? lozenge the interrupts smooth before and after, they slip away on through, back to work. avoid them when you can, but when you can’t, let go of them. you do not want to stick to that. you do not want to hang on to that.
this is for you, you, you. this will get you where you need to be. i bend so much. you have so much. there is no point in going further. it won’t pay off. you can do it later. in the break. you’ll have time someday. you don’t now. just go, go, go. slide on, slip on, i’ll help with the corners, we’ll get through it. this isn’t counter to your purposes. aren’t you better than you were? isn’t it better to be stoic, doesn’t it feel masculine? i thought that’s what you wanted, what you liked. just go.
heavy head, hollowed out pain, i have a second-to-last therapy appointment in a little bit and i don’t want to go. what’s the point? what else is there about the leaving to say? it’s over and we want to cauterize, harden, not feel and explore. that’s that. so you don’t care, there’s no one professional to care any more. so that’s that. yes i know whatever cognitive distortions bla bla blah. i’ll have another, i’ll do work, okay, whatever, you aren’t leaving because you don’t care, whatever, okay. it costs too much, though. i can’t care that you’re leaving, i can’t. and what is it i’m supposed to do, anyhow? i don’t know how to be how to be good on this one. how to be model.
there are two people in our life. we are too broken for one and not broken enough for the other. it feels cold inside. we’re not grand and i can’t see how it matters that we are having a hard time. i don’t have the energy to churn or be a white flame. it’s winter, the sleeping season, the dead season, and there are so many reasons to deaden. but we feel ourselves losing them and that pierces the armor. but even then, what? how do we be what they want? i’m not sure what we’re doing wrong but i know it’s something. i’m not sure that there’d be any way to do right, but there must. cold with fear. we’re going to lose them in so many ways.
dull and dead and cold, so what do you want? what now? what then? why are you here? what am i supposed to give? so you’re leaving. so that’s that.
i don’t know how to approach. their silence, intense and compressed, living as a stone in the belly or the throat. it radiates, it has gravity, and it tamps me down so i am slinking towards them, slow, on the ground, chest hugging stone. and even that only gets me so far. no closer. no farther.
is it weather? is it only feelings? it is somewhere we do not know how to go. except them.
can’t get towards it, but also nowhere away. hurt beyond hurt, shock beyond shock, so stunned they can pretend not to be. sounds, smells, movement are an affront & a threat. we bring them out of the close, dark places into the brilliant, searing, unconcerned world. and my head aches, deep & low & tense everywhere. nowhere away. and my chest aches, short breath, slower and lower with each one. shaking like a background, like inhabiting a vibrating world and then suddenly removed. your frames are no good here. words are no good here, but someone told us we get at those wordless places, worldless places, better than anyone. how can we not try? but oh, how sour the notes sound, every approximation like a loud, flat horn or a wide, bright cymbal. everything’s stopped.
they are as serious as children, literal and present. any gesture to them is wrong. there is no holding and no light. no gentle touch. no casual thought.
& the hurt is low, & there’s nothing else. there’s no-one, no-one, no-one. there is no away.
there is an assignment we would like to do. our brain feels sleepy and unwilling. i know that insiders are scared. i also know that we might not be in the best shape cognitively for unrelated reasons. everything interacts. our body hurts.
it is okay to be scared about doing this assignment. i know that it feels like we might do badly, we might do it wrong, we might fail to properly engage with the material. this fear is here; i know we can’t just wave a wand and make it go away.
too, though, we are safe from repurcussions. the worst that will happen is we get a poor grade. no one will judge us or censure us for it. there is no shame in the way we think; it is not inherently wrong or different. it is all right to go slowly and gather up our analysis bit by bit. it is not beyond our grasp.
we are doing a lot. we are not bad because it is difficult or painful.
our schoolwork is between us and the teacher. we do not have to let anyone else know how we did. and the teacher does not disapprove of us, but even if she did, she could not hurt us. the very worst case is that we are not able to get this degree. no one will punish us. no one is allowed to hurt us. we do our best, and let go.
i’m thinking of the tao suddenly – such is the way. do your work and let go. i never thought of it as a gift. but it is. it is not just about refraining from bragging or feeling superior. it is permission. do without claiming – do and let it go. god, i never saw how freeing that was.
browsing through, looking for passages about work, i also saw the idea that great deeds start small. yes, chunking is a very known and acknowledged part of the repertoire of doing or studying things, but i can still find new meaning when i think about the tao.
so we can do a little, rest. we can do it without being conflated with what we’ve done. we can think for the pleasure of thinking, not worrying about implications, applications, grades. we can do this.
nobody in our system believes all of this.
in therapy today, we talked about school. about how it’s terrifying to do our homework and how we are constantly too overwhelmed to do anything. having that conversation with my therapist always feels like a fight: she suggests that the scared kids shouldn’t be the ones doing the homework, we explain they’re NOT and that doesn’t take away the fear. i wish i could choose to just have matt with no baggage at all, or cynthia, to do the homework. i can’t. i am bound to my system, there are no breaks.
it seems like it’s definitely about fear of doing poorly. and the more poorly we do, the harder it gets, so we do even worse. i don’t know what it would be like to just think or create and not be constantly judging possible reactions and adjusting. i feel like i’ve been trying to drive down the freeway with the emergency brake on. trying to work through oh god i don’t have the energy for this anymore. sorry. the end.
