21/07/2021

It’s not even 9am and I’ve already cried myself into a hot bath.

03/06/2021

Finding silence. Why find silence?

To not be trauma’s counter but to step completely outside of the trauma itself so as to not be a survivor or a preseverer through anything at all, but to just be. I’m done collecting artifacts and reasons and evidence as these experiences are not badges to pin to the lapel of the uniform of living.

28/05/2021

What, in all that has changed, has remained the same?

Quite likely that in which has always scared me still remains. Beyond that, the introspection and the self-preservation. But we’ve become wiser. What self-preservation looks like now isn’t what it looked like then. And then there’s the need for love. And then there’s the difficulty of committing.

As one possibility stands in front of the other both appear as what they are. One does not overshadow the other and both imposing figures stand tall and seductive in their own respective ways; seduction still remains seduction and I remain easily seduced. But now I write to remind myself of the choices that have been made and every reason for making them. I’m not so sure why I feel so different one moment to the next, but I capture resolve as to hold onto some kind of identity - an identity that goes beyond singular metamorphosis. An identity that is as old as time, so that when black turns white I can remember that black still exists. You often don’t know what moments of the past take claim in the present, and where the novelty starts and stops. It’s the patterns that give us hope. We are a pattern of expression encapsulated by flesh and bone and we live in the idea of a need. Needs to be met at any given moment or we will fall through the floor into an underground so deep and dark there’s no hope of return. And so we chase the need, we need the need; we need to be chasing after something in the very direction that takes us so far away from the end.

What if I wasn’t a pattern and I started every waking moment void of precedent? It is the shadow parts. The new provides relief, while the worn-in only reminds. Each soiled shoe carries the stains of past happenings.

13/05/2021

You’re leaving this place again. You’ve said it before - that every time before this has been a reckoning of sorts. You’ve been running, and every time before this with a certainty that wouldn’t let the head turn back.

Now it is different; the head is looking in three different directions all at once. I know there’s some analogy there but I don’t know enough mythology to say which it is. I’ve been sitting on this decision for months and I’ve talked about it with anyone that’s willing to listen, and yet now that the decision has been made it is like I never had a single thought about it. Now it just seems like I’m leaving beauty behind and I’m just facing the consequences of the decision made now.

12/05/2021

I think you triggered my abandonment complex.

07/05/2021

Maybe I just start here then carry on.

It’s tough business trying to write, especially when there hasn’t been enough time to respect the process. And did you know I’ve been thrusted back into memory once again? I’m getting tired of writing about the same thing; I honestly feel tired of myself. What do I have to say? A bunch of bullshit about love or grief, the same crap I was writing about a year ago; pulling life from the same well.

What do I want to say yet again? That I miss you, like I already told you plus all that lies behind the words that mine as well of been uttered at you when the feeling of the whole damn thing is hardly an utterance at all. They say be mindful of the medium, and so what did I do? I whispered my cries. The sadness within transmuted into a soft touch of the hand; it wasn’t a reflection it was a transformation. There’s the reality of it and then there’s some objective in sight. Or is it my experience of it, and then reality itself? What keeps our thoughts in our heads, or our words different than our feelings? Why do we paint our experience yellow when we know it to be red? Why do we call it love when it isn’t, and don’t say anything at all when it is love?

Some say it’s a gestalt. My experience is not a singular isolated entity and what I want and what I mean is hardly ever the full story. But what keeps us from putting it in the story at all? We fucking lock it up somewhere inside, and for what? When we want to be, see, feel; experience something that isn’t us. We live as clothes on mannequins, an interface on back-end code, as cream in coffee; a vacation never left, while the spouse and kids are at home wondering when you’re going to come back.

---

If I want to say anything to you at all for what do I want to say it for? That’s what this is right? My experience, and the intent of bringing my internal reality to the surface - for why else do we even bother without intent? Or is it what the Buddhists call suffering? Are they saying internal and external life should not be separated? I’m not there yet, so what do I do with these feelings of mine? What are they trying to tell me? Dreams, dreams... they’re like dreams afterall.

Are they saying that I’m still not certain if I really should be abandoning the idea of coming home even though the timing isn’t right? Or rather, that I still want to come back at all. Or that I believe the fact that I’m still often sentimental is fucking ludicrous.

And so I cry. Why the fuck I’m crying now, 13 months later, is beyond me. I don’t trust it, I don’t trust me, but it’s there all the same and it’s so fucking stupid to everyone around me - but it’s there all the same. It’s probably so fucking sick seeming but it doesn’t feel sick or wrong - it’s always felt right. I know it’s right. But I’m afraid of having too much confidence in something when it’s possible it’s delusion. Delusional people feel confident in their realities all the time despite them being so far from the outside world and they have no fucking idea. I’m afraid: what if I have no fucking idea?

This is the scariest truth to live.

06/05/2021

It started off being a child just like any other child. At points I have examined child behaviour as indicators of trauma or just plainly being fucked up, but when you call it what it is - it’s getting acquainted with existence.

I wondered just like any other kid: what made me special? What were my special talents; did I have any? Surely I was adopted, wasn’t I?

If I recall correctly a lot of the beauty in being a child is the freedom to be bored. You are bored all of the time with very little alternatives in most circumstances. You don’t have a precedent index for what to do and you just sit around making it up. I’d create pretend classrooms with pretend assignments, I’d design dresses like I was some prodigal fashion designer, I’d write songs and poetry. It wasn’t a matter of what I should and should not be doing, I’d just do whatever it was I wanted. It was liberating in a sense because it didn’t involve a path of playing to strengths, or addressing weaknesses. I guess it was just what they call imagination.

I’m hardly familiar with what imagination is now. Plainly, every hour is a checklist. It is being inside a box I’ve constructed with definitions, numbers, theories; rights and wrongs. The space outside of it is the space to be, but I am not even sure it is safe and I think that’s what keeps - not even just me, but most - afraid. What is my truth and does it live inside the box or outside of it?

29/04/2021

Anxiety. I feel it in my chest this morning. It’s like a friend that starts hanging around due to some circumstance, and every time you’re with them you have to remind yourself that it’s only for a little while and soon they will be gone so there’s no need to do anything about it. Sometimes though, when they’re standing there in front of you, you can’t feel the future and all you feel is what you feel right now - on the edge of your seat, wondering if you’re able to still keep it together like you somehow always manage to do. When the feeling starts to creep back around, panic always comes with it; “no I don’t want to feel this again, why is it back?” Why is it back? I wonder. Is it food, or is it emotional, or is it spiritual; is it hormonal, am I just tired? It’s the same type of feeling that comes around when I’m really hungry, or like the first sounds of my period about to come on. I just feel nasty inside, I feel full of hate.

15/04/2021

I’m writing to you from a place of anger, sadness, and fear. I am choosing to sit with these feelings rather than judge myself as a distraction from the matter under the facade of positivity, anti-rumination, or even gratitude. The fact of the matter is I feel sad, angry, and scared. It’s of no surprise that it has come through journaling recollections of past experiences with mom while growing up. The memories, in particular, are of those of being in the car with my stepdad as he drives around town, bar-to-bar in search of my missing mother. Another memory I’ve been recollecting is being 22 and trying to put my mother through rehab. That was the same year I got the shingles. I’ve been thinking a lot about victim mentality and how I might have a piece of that in my own narrative. I know it is there, but I am not familiar in the ways it exists quite yet. But I also struggle because I know these are valid experiences to struggle existing with. I clearly have not put it all behind me. I can still be transported back to my younger self, feeling as if I was experiencing the situations in the moments they happened.

Yesterday I almost came apart. It’s been a few months since this has happened, and I was feeling very positive about the sense of stability I was maintaining. Seeing my mother two nights ago moved me to my core. The reason I recall all of these memories now is so that I know what I need to bring to the table in therapy. This week it’ll be stories from mom.


31/03/2021

Maybe it is to a fault that I become sentimental. I don’t want to act like this life that I have lived isn’t without meaning. It is almost ritualistic in a sense. I am 28 years old; I have lived 28 years. I think about those 28 years a lot, and how they lead to now and what they might amount to tomorrow. Though really I think about what yesterday means for tomorrow; how likely my next relationship is to fail, and if I will spend most of my days feeling happy. What does that mean for today then? A calibration of being and desire. I desire that I feel the heavy weight of happiness often, I desire to love and be loved. When I look to yesterday, I might find all the ways in which I chose to feel sad or chose not to let love in. When I look to yesterday, I might see all the ways in which I found love. I stand between the two different realities, all at once, all of the time. How the now of right now collects to be yesterday after being the pixels of tomorrow. Are the possibilities that I see when I go to sleep only the matters of my dreams or do they become to be? Life doesn’t pass me by in the way in which some talk about it, I see the threads move as time and space weave together. Sometimes it feels like I stand and observe the time and space that is as I weave through it.

Once before the frames per second of life became almost zero - as close to zero as it gets before water turns to ice - and life was happening to me and all I could do was watch. The observer in me wondered that if I were a part of this life, and life was happening, how could I be the one to observe it? What was the separation? What allowed me to be something but also stand outside of my very existence to watch it happen? But then the frames sped up again, and one second to the next was no longer a point jumping to another point, but the rolling wave we know it to be; the we who only know the doppler effects of time rather than time itself. But then I wonder if maybe it is the doppler effect of experience? As time and space stand still as a permanently fixed function and it is the I that moves forward with the motion of decision, and decisions turn to experience, and experience turns to a decision, does each other decision made outside of my experience move forward with me? Does time happen to us, or do we happen to it? It’s funny how a point in time is also experience, and we can be back there when we choose to be. They say that we don’t know time travel, but I’m still back there in front of you watching you smile, and feeling what it feels like to smile back. The wave just gets distorted through my decision making motion, the waves and troughs nearing further and further away. But even with the distortion, there is still an I that can back there through experience and feel the weight of my 28 years that lead to now.

29/03/2021

I feel disconnected from myself. What is it to be me is a distant echo already long reverberated by distance. I am catching the subtle tones of now; sounds warped and elongated, though the texture obscured by the nuances of pitch and punctuation remain. The only shred of confidence that I can have is that I am given a semblance of what I am and what I be by the feeling felt when the soundwaves hit my ears. The vibrations my soul elicits my body to produce so that the body in turn can receive the aching message. The soul that needs to escape only to be let back in. To be astute is the hour of now so that there is any chance of tuning into the frequency. She lay so far away that any subtle interjection remains lost, and as such I must wait for her cry. The cry I’m hearing now is that of distance. Mind and body remain on the forefront while she’s waiting in the distance, alongside the rest of love. It’s a conflicting endeavor to leave the soul behind while survival kicks in and life can no longer favour desire. Dollars remain to be made even in the light of fulfillment. But if I could only lay in the sunlight without the need for food or water I would just stay here in contentness until there were no more rays to feel. Time pushes the mind and body forward stretching the distance—dissonance—between that which remains outside. Far along the race now I grieve for my time, rather than their time, that ticks to the gravity of the heart. The heart that carries you around and where your memory lives in the moment of my clock rather than theirs. Their clock that has no space for you or I, and by that same very stroke, love. I miss love—no I miss being loved. Because the loving never stops, but it is the being loved that stops and starts again when the hour switches to my clock rather than their clock. In some ways, I hope that when that clock starts again, it’s a minute devoid of you so I can know a new kind of love rather than the kind rooted in abandonment, tied to desire. With every hour that passed I called to you and I met the same distorted reverberation through distance that I hear now in the times of abandoning myself to tend to the financial debts. And while I know you have your own debts to pay, love pervades the debts. It lives in space protected from the taxes of being, and it sometimes pays our debts. In fact it is the only reality it cannot touch and while the burdens accumulate day by day irregardless; it is the only relief. And so I kept turning to be relieved, walking into a door that was shut without a new door open to walk through. I turned to the only love I had left that was so very buried within, that I had to dig every morning just to feel it at all. Now I hear the echoes of the only love that I have left, but I haven’t been able to step through that door yet.

***

What do I want to say?

I don’t think it is isolated self-obsession, but rather a starved frenzy induced by never really being seen. I know this is why I don’t just feel a sense of implosion, but do implode in the wake of being vulnerable. I scream as the exposed root becomes touched. A sensation that knows no tolerance. Now I pay for intimacy to build intimacy as I tread through the desert, searching for water only to see signs of life and run.

07/02/2021

I want to be seen and understood so badly that I put everything on loud speaker just hoping that others will pick up the frequency and listen. There is knowing oneself, and then there is eroding the extra parts that need not be. Now it is time to come into the external from what lies inside. It has long been a question of choice rather than coming to be. Before I am developed, I am to say what “I” is and what “I” ought to be.

Forms are laid out in front of you and you must choose to fill with limited experience to what lies before you. You are unaware of the option to be, and to bleed on page with the direction of natural forces.

Everything is about choices. Choose who you will be, not be what you are.

06/02/2021

It feels like I am drifting; sometimes like I am falling. I am suspended in mid-air being pulled towards something. I do not think the direction matters, what matters is that I am by no means grounded. At times I am afraid of the feeling. Other times I just observe. I am curious about what it is that is pulling me... It is as if I am stretched out; one side held by my family, my routine, and the need to be a part of regular existence. On the other side, it is an elusive beckoning. I can’t seem to reconcile trying to be in two places at once and feel I must break the tension on one side.

I nust open up what lies inside before I have my child.

05/02/2021

I feel that my second phase of “coming to awareness” is trying to become more aware of my unconscious psyche. The first phase was the confrontation of my conscious parts of self. The next step of this journey, at some point, is connecting to my body and perhaps the relationship between body and mind. That guy talked about his releasing experience as being orgasmic. When I do have advances in becoming more connected to my physical form it often feels like an erotic experience. And perharps this manifests itself in those who really come into their sexuality quite loudly and boldly. In some cultures there is a tendency to view matters as permanent and static, but really instead of an identity it’s just a natural part of the development process. Further I wonder if the vocabulary around becoming connected with your physical form is highly sexualised due the value our culture places on the body, and that’s why we describe our expanding awareness of physical sensations as sexual. Perhaps this is really what Freud was fixated on. The physical sensations manifesting as psychic activities, never quite reaching the awareness that it’s only one form of the psychic experience. Perhaps Freud was really on the path of the mind+body connection rather than a purely psychic one.

27/01/2021

january 27: time

I wonder... if I didn’t have so many pictures, if I didn’t have instantaneous access to the music that I listened to while walking those streets, would I be stuck in the past as I am now? Time has moved forward, but I’ve remained elsewhere as a fragmented self navigating these streets trying to pick up what time left behind. This digital world is an archive, promising you that you’ll never have to forget. But perhaps it is this very creation that’s further fragmenting time, creating a new truth; you can never just be whole in one place at one point in time.

23/01/2021

why there is such a commitment to get to know myself now I am not so sure. I do keep experiencing that the more I recognize and name all of my fragmented bits, I can see others in the same light. I don’t really view anyone as a whole, cohesive person anymore (they are selfish). I see tendencies, intentions, and set backs. I experience my own set backs all of the time. Moments where I’m too lazy to do the effort it might require to do the selfless action, and instead am self-serving; times where I’m heavily judging another to stay at a distance and avoiding intimacy because intimacy is a taxing experience.

22/01/2021

I wrestled myself on this mat all night. The other day I said that this mat in this room was my safe place. Oddly, it’s in the same place I fantasize leaving.

20/01/2021

repeat this: I will not continue to choose what will not choose me.

19/01/2021

The narratives we create about other people may just really be a form of our fear of intimacy. It’s much easier to see people as simulated background noise.

***

It seems that eventually one is forced to really confront that they either should commit to working on something (and to which has value) or to have no aim at all. One could choose to have fleeting aims; whimsies that satisfy the present but aren’t meant to stay around for too long. However, one who lives this lifestyle soon enough learns what it means to really know something. Eventually one might come to feel that they know of many things, but nothing all too well. Eventually one might believe it feels good, just as it does to be free, to have some grounding; a home if home just means to recenter.

novelty exists in some novel where events just keep on happening; the falling together. eventually you’ll want to submerge in the events of the heart rather than peering out through the lens of cognition where understanding can only be hindsight. hindsight that eventually conveys what the heart feels, usually when it’s too late. what it means to choose, or to be chosen, not just once but in the same light that comes when the sun sets and rises every single day. in knowing events unfold in space and time as they always have and always will, and some events play on repeat so that they no longer occur but instead just simply are. you’ve done, you’re doing, you’re going to do, and you are.

you’ve done, you’re doing, you’re going to do(you are).

***

We cannot be afraid of getting hurt as a consequence of living, but instead we can work to manage the hurt when it arises. If opposites are contingent on one another then the dualism of love and pain must be true.

Are there only some of us who possess a strong memory for faces and shared moments? Those who have resonated through experience seem to echo through every crevice; persisting as to not be forgotten. While others seem to erase the experience of time, or at least those who fill the time.

***


05/01/2021

Regardless of the eating disorder, dieting still helped saved my life. It was the catalyst for gaining my worth; all the praise I was given, and the sense of control it gave me over my health. It would later plant the seed that I could take care of myself in all the ways I needed somebody else to. The biggest hurdle was wrapping my head around letting go of the person in whom I shared the love I had of life with. Little did I know... I was really just a pet. But the amazing thing is, and I mean truly, is that I figured it out. And it came to me clearer and clearer over the span of half a year, until really it was just a matter of protecting myself until I could make the jump. Remember when he showed up at my house, tapping on my window? One way he kept control was by keeping me in a state of anxiety and endless reactions so I could not begin to process. It was when I had the time to process that I gained my strength. And even to a man that can be evil, I still showed incredible love. He would be looking me in the eyes, as straight of all dead faces, and lie to me as I wept and begged. He is evil in at least a few ways. Sick at the very least. I will come unhinged with power when I see him. I will not be afraid. I could ask him, with a smile on my face: “have you gone to therapy yet?”; recounting the days when he told me he had. He had done the work. And that therapist of his, well... she couldn’t believe how I could be treating him the way I was treating him. I was cruel. That is his fake, fabricated, therapist.

You want to know why I sit and contemplate my experience and the nature of its reality so often? Well it is because someone planted an idea in my head that corrupted everything I thought I believed, and destroyed my ability to discern between what is and what is not. I very well believed I was schizophrenic honestly. I didn’t know. I thought I was so sick; and I was. Just not in the way the idea grew to have me believe.

Any desire in the face of this man is one that comes from further wanting to prove the power I always had, and will continue to have. However, this is conflicting because power is the root of much harm in this world. I lost sight of my power and was governed by his. And for myself, since it has nearly been two years now, do I just need to see that he can no longer take my power away from me? Or maybe, it is that... I just need to see that he no longer has any power over me. I’m supposed to love him for everything he is not, and maybe it will come in time. I’m not all the way there, but I’ve come such a long way.

03/01/2021

We used to look at each other and smile. It wasn’t on purpose or with thought, it was just a reaction. A physical response. The same way many of our actions weren’t from the mind; they weren’t planned, they were just responses to whatever was growing... that in which we didn’t really understand. I surely didn’t understand. By the time my sense caught up, I was in Tasmania in somebody elses bed planning my escape and now it’s nine months later and I’m about to birth the death of you. A new kind of interference. The one where the future and present meet to wipe out any path forward in that particular direction. At least for now; who knows if the memory will ever find its way back because I’m only living here and now where time is linear and only moving in one direction - forward. That direction has been interefered with, as it always is. Interference closing the door and placing the foot down through another. It’s looking back that causes the fear of moving forward. Why I’m afraid of accepting that what is has begun to replace what was is beyond me. My experience with you hasn’t been felt in a long while now - or at least the experience I associate with you. I guess my memories and my angst are just as much an experience, it’s just not the one I want and I can no longer hope that you have hope as much as I hope you do. You keep telling me you hope I’m well but you never turn the hope into an inquiry even though you are all the capable of answering the hope itself. You just want to keep your distance; distance from the distance. Because even though you hope for something you don’t really want to know. Like you hope for a child one day, but you’re not having that child today or tomorrow. And while I hope that you are well too, I’d all the same ask. I’d ask the question, and I’d kill the hope for the truth. Because in reality, parallel to my hope, you are and regardless of my hope it does nothing to the state of the way things really are and if I can all the same utter my hope in that linear direction toward you, I need not take form for granted with a hope when I can all the same know. I can just all the same face what is, because what is a hope if it only exists to be a hope and to never be answered in return. And so are you good? Or are you waking up every morning feel sick in some regard, but in which you can’t quite put your finger? Do you walk around with the capacity for the world outside yourself, or are you just trying to survive? What does the world look like through your eyes? You know, you’re the same person I felt the need to write, the one in whom I felt the need to share with. Something tells me there isn’t much difference other than the space and the time I guess...

...and so am I.

Is letting go just as simple as unclenching the fist? Because I can let it all go, but the moment I pick up an artifact of the past I am transported and full of that feeling. There is interference. There are some stories I step into more than others. Many of them hurt. It’s conflicting because I am reminded of beautiful moments but also left empty. Did I play your playlist just to feel anything again? Because I am afraid? Am I afraid?

You never wanted to grasp me anyways. I can’t forget all the times I reached out my hand only to feel the breeze between my fingers.

19/12/2020

The language used for narcissists is heavily laden with conscious action and motive. The “narcissist” is “seeking”, choosing “vulnerable prey”, “trying”. I do not like this language around narcissism as the victim is someone acting unconsciously; being led by their conditionings into a trap but that narcissists are intelligent, master maniuplators as a choice. This is not explicitly said but this is the language that is used to paint the picture.

I struggled to view you as this specific type of toxic person as I could see many of these tendencies in you but I did not, and consciously rejected, that you were purposefully scheming it all. Maybe I just wanted to believe that you too, in some ways, were just on autopilot. You are conditioned to be attracted to the vulnerable, where I might be conditioned to push-and-pull.

Where I do place blame is the moments of empathy / clarity / awareness on behalf of the narcissist when they know they are acting harmful, and choose to.

I am indeed quite reflective; inclined to live in the past. I bring memories forward and live inside the blending of the present with the past itself, creating some kind of obscured reality. Maybe my everyday memory is different from the norm. Although I’m still not quite sure how dangerous this reflecting is other than maybe it is bringing the past around too often.

In therapy you are meant to be authentically yourself without the conforming, so that you can become more consciously aware of all that you really are; so that you can work with what really is without condemnation. It is the fear of the implications on our social reality that being one’s true self poses a threat to - which this social living is an integral part of living. But if you are to never really meet your self obsession in its full and natural form, how are you to understand and work with it? Sitting alone, noticing it, naming it in your thoughts is one thing, but in therapy you sit there and you just talk. It all comes out in a different way. It’s more primitive, these thoughts form a new identity.


10/12/2020

Whole-heartedly detached, and running on an empty tank; where everything has gone I am not quite sure.

I’ve mustered up a little tiny breath of introspection. The other day I thought: I no longer want to be seen for what I give but rather wholly loved for who I am. That’s a lot to ask, but the alternative doesn’t mean so much anymore.

08/11/2020

And when I become happy by the new relationship. It doesn’t need to be a static state. More living, and less thinking about it. / I am happy that a place like this exists in the community.

Him: I only felt it through him during this time. It was a period of stable lows, solely finding my meaning in the passionate outcries between myself and him. Sometimes, I’d find it in my friends and be invigorated by it - only to be pulled back into him.

07/11/2020

But if I am just an expression of existence... I mean think about it... Made of matter - simple matter. If I am just made of fragments of existence, then I am just walking stars, planets, grass, dirt, water, and bugs; surely those compounds contribute to me in some way. But then in addition to the matter itself, I am the ratio of the compounds as well; of water to dirt. But it isn’t even the matter itself, how much of the matter, nor the matter that has all been constructed together, but the interplay of the matter structure with what it is made from; an embodiment of experiences. All of this comes together as one single gestalt. The gestalt of a recipe of matter. I am a gestalt of existence.

19/10/2020

If I am a flat surface being pushed and pulled from either side does my single representation have any meaning?

15/10/2020

You grow up being told that you are wiser than your years (usually by men who wish you were older) and you are made to feel special for it. That by being some form of smart, or having the way that you look and interact in the world defies your number and you are unique for this. You integrate this. You carry it around like a badge. It becomes you. You start succeeding at things because of it. In turn, perceived immaturity or failure are not options. You become what you are known for. People have called you wise and special so many times you wouldn’t let yourself be anything else. Your shoulders get heavy. In every situation, you are the wise and the special thing and the idea of not being the special thing slowly suffocates you. You feel pressure but you don’t know why; you think feeling pressure is good. Pressure is what makes people more wise, more special, more smart. All successful people are under pressure; they thrive under pressure and so you will continue to. You’re 23 but you’re a professional now. Taking emails on the weekend and finally able to afford both living in the city and having a car. The wise and special one. You’re getting bags under your eyes; your mom told you she saw grey in your hair. You blame her for the faulty genes. The pressure has been on you so long, it’s pressed down on you so long that your cracks have only gotten bigger. You didn’t know because all this time you’ve been looking out from the tallest vantage point, looking ahead like you are just the light that’s guiding the way. Apparently that’s all you are. So why would you notice the cracks growing beneath you. Sometimes things get a bit shakey but that’s because of the outside world doing its outside things and sometimes they are fierce and powerful. You withstood these fierce and powerful blows and so once again you are just reminded how wise and special you are. Cracks are growing bigger. More events happen outside. Eventually there is a really big storm. You don’t think much of it. You’re wise and you’re special and it has kept you safe before. But your cracks, they’re as big as they can be now without you toppling over. All it’s going to take is one big blow. Inevitably it comes and you shatter into pieces and you fall apart.

08/10/2020

At Switchboard in Ganges.

I’ve opened up my journal to say something about purpose, “on purpose”. I’ve spent two days on this island and I feel incredible. I feel full, and it has nothing to do with connecting with others even though that is what I lack and what I’m always looking for. On the first night there was mist over the water and the backdrop was multiple shades of candy pink and blue, and maybe even at times purple. The ocean was calm, the air not even that wet. I sat on the shore all by myself in awe - wondering how what I was currently experiencing was of the same reality that I was living day to day. I now wonder if it would be so special if it was my day to day. It’s hard for me now to face that I’m headed to a boat that will transport me back to the city where it is loud, full of ego, full of spending and concrete and those without a home. I’ll be back in my bed with access to a shower whenever I want it and copious amounts of food. Surely this is a reminder that I live a life of luxurious comfort. I have to be mindful of spending so I can buy some property with a little cabin on an island somewhere. I want to live writing, learning and taking photographs. And then I want to love. Love is surely at the centre of all of it. The fuel source to make everything else any good. Maybe love is the source of all beauty. Like when I was sitting on the shore and I felt full, maybe it’s because I was feeling a profound sense of love for life, or at least, that particular moment. Nature does not just proclaim a grand stature to calibrate. Calibrate your own sense of self centred living to be reminded that these moments entirely outside of you exist and will continue to exist and be beautiful and you can access it whenever you need but it is outside of you, or it can be with you. Maybe this has something to do with purpose.

02/10/2020

The most beautiful and harrowing bits of my life have been love. Because it is so fucking hard to love, and to be loved in return. You know how hard it is to love another, fully and beside yourself and when you see it, and when you can give it, it feels like an act of a greater force. Something bigger than you.

08/09/2020

Sitting under a massive weight of conditioning. No matter the work, you are never done. Albeit the ego, some of the conditioning, allows relationships but remember the difference between a relationship to an individual as opposed to ‘society’.

It is hard work to be unapologetically you. And that doesn’t mean you don’t apologize.

In tandem, an observation as of late is the subconscious acts of asserting affiliations, touting accomplishments, asserting opinions and to other just be ‘a part’. Gloting seems to ramp up when I am *trying* (the conscious act of) to make friends. I’ve been observing myself in hindsight and there are certainly increased actions of trying to prove oneself, to be ‘a part’.

Keep trying to check yourself because there is no need.

07/09/2020

We are both primitive, and nuanced.

22/08/2020

I’m in the middle of preparing food and I’ve had to pause temporarily to absorb this. This morning I woke up next to someone and lied in bed for a long while... It was really nice to just lie there. There was embracing and receding; speaking and silence. When it was time to rise it was mainly for the purpose of coffee. We then headed to the park where the local farmers market was taking place. We walked in the sun and scanned all the vendors before we decided who we wanted to buy from. We then visited our favourites. It was nice to stand there and chat with producers who were only there to share what they offer this world; to sustain what it is they can contribute. There were so many different kinds of cucumbers, squash, potatoes and tomatoes. We bought lemon cucumber.

Once we bought our groceries for the week, we left for home where we tried some of the produce we had just purchased. We sliced up a beautiful looking tomato thinly, and the same with the round and yellow cucumber. We stacked them on top of each other - drizzled with a humble olive oil and goats cheese and a little cracked black peppercorn. I thought, I couldn’t be more content than this.

May every morning be exactly like this, until it shouldn’t be anymore.

I wrote about a moment that meant something more.

14/07/2020

I have been managed by my past subconsciously for virtually my whole life. I used to feel that I accepted my past, which I do, but that accepting the past meant that it did not govern me. Acceptance is an important part, but not the only part. I looked to my father as my saviour from my other life. I saw my traumatic experiences as making me special, which they do. However, I hardly thought about health and how fulfilling desires does not equal health.

After a full year of prioritising healing I am still worn down mentally, emotionally, and physically. Most do not understand. Sometimes I get insecure because I wonder if I am stuck in self indulgence of trauma and owned by the label of it. Because I am so focused on it, that is how others will see me; crushed by the weight of the past and unable to move on. But think about the process of packing up your home and moving. You have to compartmentalize your belongings, clean them, discard what is not of value, move them, unpack them, organize them....

This is exactly what the process of healing and growing feels like.

---

An excerpt from Gilbert Highet “Man’s Unconquerable Mind”

“.... assembling masses of utterly uncoordinated facts and unverified information, then building on them. Such people become local eccentrics, hollow-earth fanatics, amateur metaphysicians: they are not fools; but they have minds and spoil them.”

12/07/12020

I lied awake with dreams about attachment. I drifted in and out of consciousness, only to find that in both the conscious and unconscious I was fixated on the same continuum; trying to live in a space that no longer is available to me. It’s interesting that if even for a night, the two were in sync.

29/05/2020

I’ve been trying to write an essay on family. I’ve been working on it for about two months now, a lot of that time trying to discover what exactly it is I wanted to say about family. After all, what can be said about family is plenty. Figuring out where my voice was in the expansive notion took a lot of time. It was highly frustrating. Eventually I landed on the idea of the family paradox. To pursue the individual is to pursue family, inevitably. If it doesn’t loop around then perhaps you’re not really in pursuit of yourself.

This morning I was reading through old journal entries. I often like to reflect, probably a little too much. I found this fascinating (to me) journal entry however, speaking about being an individual in a romantic relationship. My distaste for being seen as an object in relation to the other, rather than being ever seen as an individual outside of said relationship. It sounds a bit convoluted but let’s think about that...

The journal entry goes like this:

“Thoughts on you are wasting my time. Oddly, it was the most honest of time wasting. I feel the need to prove to you that I am more than just a “good, kind, and patient person” (his words) because those are mostly traits surrounding how you treat others - how I treated you. I was good to you, kind to you, patient with you. But how about me as an individual? Outside of how I treated you. I want you to see that I am special. Just like I wanted you to want me to stay. I had a sheet over my head and god damnit am I angry about it. And don’t try to act like it is a foolish desire to be treated and seen as special by the one you desire. It’s a special connection from the get go, based around feeling propped up by the other. It’s inherently a boost. Now the problem with closure lies in feeling like you never saw me. I guess because if you never acknowledged me outside of what I gave you, then you never saw me. You made me feel like my place, my identity, and individuality I might have was gone with your generic words - the textbook of it.”

I’m excited to come across this entry and somehow integrate it into my current ideas about the individual in their relationship with relationships. I’m further compelled to believe that being an individual is inherent to having social relationships, and vice versa. This continuous learning and synthesizing from social experiences adds to the individual’s existence, all the while, the individual is only then felt by the separation and contrast to the external world. More on this later.


20/05/2020

... the disownership is felt through my deductive reasoning. I guess at some unknown point in the future I’ll be able to compare. It’s so frustrating not being able to let go. To just perpetually sit in constant investigation and scrutiny.

To try to make sense of, to label everything that I can to help with managing risk. My mind still hasn’t fully adapted to the idea that by trying to turn grey into black, it is working against all natural forces - like pushing the boulder up the hill only to get to the top and watch it roll back down. I haven’t fully adapted to the concept that stress spending is not limitless. You have a balance and most days I spend into the red without even meaning to. I can be so disciplined. But when it comes to subjecting to stress, I know no boundaries.

03/05/2020

Something I wrote about in reflection on my own mental state a few weeks ago was this...

Reality(?). A result of the brain working as per the biological blueprint on how a human brain should work. Mental ‘illness’; a result of the brain working not to the biological majority. Schizophrenia, reality is ‘skewed’. Is reality static, and our mind makes it variable? Or is reality variable? This infers that reality is only based on the mind perceiving it.

Robert M. Pirsig in The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance wrote on page 236...

When he said Quality was subjective, to them he was saying Quality is imaginary and could there be disregarded in any serious consideration of reality.

Think about this in regards to your thought about: is reality perception. I suppose the pursuit of reality is to define ‘nature’ apart from perception and subjectivity. Therefore when someone is diagnosed with a mental illness their reality is conflicting with science. Science is the application of the scientific method. Pirsig argues that the scientific method is flawed, reason is flawed. At least in the way it’s been implemented in society - I would have to go back and clarify whether he’s arguing that it actually goes farther than that.

Is erasing all your subjective bits, and aspiring to only reason….. is this what it really means to become one with nature?

02/05/2020

Angry. So I wrote this:

To hell with the person that you spent a majority of the last month getting to know who turns around to say “I don’t keep in touch” before leaving. To hell with the boy who projects his annoyance when you try to assert the romance. It’s his time, his window pane, he flips between the tabs only to arrive on you when he feels like it. But god forbid you send a pop-up when he isn’t ready for it. It isn’t a nice surprise. He says it’s a nice surprise because he has to. If he doesn’t you’ll know he’s clearly not that interested or perhaps conflicted. Conflicted between wanting the conversation (when it suits him), wanting the validation (when he needs it) and wanting the company (should he feel like the stimulation). You make yourself available for them because that’s what a two way relationship is. That is what it is. Fluid. There has to be fluidity. It is two ways and don’t for a second think to yourself that you’re an imposition asking for something when the other isn’t in view. Don’t write goodbye letters to those who are going to pluck you from private to use as the butt end of their public joke. He was no longer the star, and now playing catch up to save face. It’s always so disappointing to find out the basis of your relationship was to uphold clinical definitions, devoid of the genuine feeling.

When I’m writing a stream there isn’t an outline; it’s not academic. There is no thesis, hypothesis, or structure. It’s just a stream. But as this stream comes out I’m analyzing my feelings as they are being laid out on the keyboard. The great thing about typing against the resistance is that it just comes out anyway; your filter is too slow. What I wanted to say to these feelings is that I do understand the added context of allocating space. You only have so much space. However, this is outside of that. It is not a counter to that. If I wanted to pluck excerpts from personal relationships to showcase on the web there better be continuity. I cannot be saying one thing to a person; fostering an environment that appears to be safe, trusting, and comfortable only to feel otherwise on the inside. I think about the times others have, on their own volition, been vulnerable with me only for me to be judgemental on the inside. So what if I turned to my social web profiles and used it as content? As social content. To laugh about. This is my social feed afterall, the content is only going to be naturally derived from my life. And I suppose that’s where care comes in. I wouldn’t be eliciting this as content if I was engaged with the interaction.

A certain level of being an asshole, being careless and selfish is expected in life. I can’t fault someone for succumbing to this from time to time. I cannot because I do as well. Consider this an open appeal to be as honest as you can be in all your interactions as it is what offers the most respect and care. In addition to that, ask if it is a good time to send nudes.

A dialogue between two of me.

26/04/2020

In my newly created reality I was free. Not much of the past was hanging off of me. Now back home, those weights hang off of my back and I have to question why do I not feel the same; why do I not behave the same? A lot of the tools I’ve gained aren’t useful with these weights hanging heavy. I need to figure out how to take the weight off.

It makes me wonder..... about the you outside of context; anytime, anywhere.

23/03/2020


Have had a lot of anxiety today. I woke up this morning with quite a fierce ache in my back/chest, a tightness that would make me think it would be hard to breathe even though it wasn’t really. I was still able to walk “the hill”. If only you could see that hill to understand. I started to think about all the people I’ve been around and interacted with in the last week. I don’t really know any of them all that well, and started to feel a lot of shame for being this new encounter in their life that could possibly carry so much stress and worry. I started to dread being that person that brought the virus to their lives, turning it from a far away terror seen through a television screen to some sci-fri drama reality. I’m a little more calm for now. I’m focused on making it home, though I’m starting to think I may need a plan B.


22/03/2020


Thinking about all the things I can do to preoccupy my time in isolation. Ways I can continue investing in life and not lose my mind. Losing my mind may not be bad as long as I get it back. I do find myself wanting to continue in investing in all these relationships I’ve made. I worry about needing attention. I need to really check myself in terms of “what are you doing this for?” Is it for attention, or is it because you think this could offer value to people? How about making art? What makes something art vs seeking attention?


11/02/2020

I still love you. I watched your videos, and I laughed. I smiled. I didn’t cry. When I heard your recount of our time together after the end, I shook my head. I wasn’t angry. I want to be able to share my truth with it being matter of fact, and not a defamation attempt. You know more than anybody that we’re human. You have such empathy and respect for being human. So what about the human parts of you? Your ability to love is so compromised, but you are human. You can’t do what is hard. You watch yourself from the sidelines, and it makes you lie awake at night. You cringe at what it means to be you, but you just lie in it. That’s all you do; lie in it. I wonder if you will ever love. I wonder if you will ever take responsibility for yourself. You gave away your money so easily because you don’t care about your money. It was your time - maybe. Actually I’m not so sure why I needed to hate myself. What was I supplying? Why was it only me? Who is your supply now?