Archive for May, 2010
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.
