When I stepped outside to go to work this morning, the day hammered me immediately with a visual metaphor. As I faced north, I could see the beautiful orange sun rising in the east, cascading its light on the Philadelphia skyline, while in the west the dreary gray clouds that have pounded us with rain for the past five days were finally receding.
I could only hope my mental clouds would follow suit, as yesterday was no better than the day before, or the day before that.
Friends, when I spoke of My Mental Event Horizon, it was truly cautionary, and I've found that I didn't heed my own warning. Saturday, my disappointment of a day lost with OAOA catapulted me across that line where it was too deep to pull myself back out of, and now I'm in real trouble.
The past three days have been entirely unproductive and way too introspective, in a bad way. I've got this filter on my brain that isn't allowing me to see anything that's good, and it's evaluating all that's bad, over and over, going way back into my past and finding the worst of it.
This is my modus operandi: Find reasons to invalidate myself...seek others to re-validate myself.
Fuck, that is a crappy MO.
I can't let go of my past. (Okay, I don't want to let go of my past). I've been attempting to do so for the past decade, but the longer it takes, the more "past" I have to make up for, and I can't keep up. For whatever reason, I feel like I have to redeem myself for all the mistakes I've made, all the people and things I've lost, and all the damage I've done. And that's what I spent all last night thinking about...what's gone wrong in my life and why I haven't been able to fix it. And while I'm still trying to fix problems from 10 years ago, more problems keep piling on.
There are five people in my life that don't won't allow me to speak to them, two of which probably wish I was dead. Four of these people used to be my closest friends, people I grew up with, and one of them is Firefly, the most epic lover of them all.
What I can't figure out is why...
I mean, I know why. Intrinsically, I know what happened, but I don't understand why I wasn't given a chance. A chance to talk things out, a chance to change. Maybe I was given the chance. Maybe I was given multiple chances and I didn't even know it. Was I really that horrible? All I ever strove to be was a good person, so why did my best friends commit mutiny? What did I do that was so horrible?
It's haunted me and continues to haunt me. I keep asking myself if it really matters, though. Maybe it was just time for change, time for new best friends to enter the picture, which they have. But have I changed enough to not make the same mistake again? Why do I believe that if something was good in the past, that means it's sacred forever, even if it went sour?
Even the best of people are hated. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, The Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King...hated. And I'm no where near the level of wisdom and compassion they had, so it should come to no surprise to me that there are a few souls who wish ill upon me.
Ugh, my nose is running like it's getting paid for it, and I'm stuck in a rut, while in 11 hours I'm meeting Pam for the first time. I should be super excited and all I can think is "What am I about to subject this girl to?"
I gotta get my shit together.
One thing did occur to me during my long state of introspection, one enlightening idea. If my negative thoughts, my worry, my anxiety, my regret, my guilt and resentment, if all that crap can physically make my body feel a certain way...a bad way...then the opposite must also be true. When someone does something nice for us, or we succeed at something, or the object of our affection tells us that they love us, we fill up and feel fantastic. But they aren't making us feel that way, we ourselves are. Our own bodies are creating the sensations that are making us feel good...it's only because in that moment we believe great things about ourselves, due to some external stimuli, that we attribute it to that stimuli. The fact is, I should be able to make myself feel good at any moment, just like I can make myself feel bad at any moment.
Instead of waiting around for something to make me feel good.
11 hours. Here goes nothing.
-Spontaneous K
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