i think my routines are being kind of compulsive. that's all that i really worked on today, to be honest...
i am often thinking about my need for attention. it may not seem like i am an attention whore, but in many respects i am. i don't enjoy things in and of themselves. for example, i kind of feel anxious if i were to just drive off somewhere and explore. i would feel like i was wasting my time. the only way i can justify to myself doing something like that would be if i were taking someone with me. for example, if i were taking my kids with me, then i could justify that i was providing an "experience" for them. or if i were taking my wife with me, then it would be an opportunity to "get out." but in itself, and by myself, there would be no justification. there is no true pleasure "in and of itself" for me. if i ever do something on my own, then it is shrouded in a kind of loneliness and sadness.
why is that? i get so angry that i am like that. for a person who is inherently alone, i have no capacity or enjoyment for being alone. it is so fucking ironic.
it's also ironic because in my attempts at art, i am always trying to "cancel out" the attentions of others, in order to "commune" with the emptiness, the no-self-ness, of art. but that has always been the quandary: because in my own experience, in my own life, the absence of the attention of another always results in a kind of collapse of purpose. and, again, i hate that. i hate that i am dependent upon the world. but it is true nonetheless...
what all of this means, if it isn't already obvious by now (particularly as i maintain this stupid blog) is that i am incredibly selfish. i say to myself that everything i do is to "help others," but in truth, all of my efforts are to justify my own existence. because again, in the absence of others, i am afraid of drowning and disappearing within myself... a meaningless, useless nothing.
i often blame this on my brother, or even on my parents... but maybe it was always there. it was always primary. this absence... this black hole. and i can't fill it. i can't plug it. i can't stand that. it hardly seems fair that i was born with the burden of this bottomless pit within me. it is unfair that i didn't have a self, and could only "be" by opportunistically using the attentions of others... i hate being dependent like that. i wish i were just who i was. i wish i could (on some level) be content with who i am. i wish i didn't confront each new person and each new interaction as a potential threat... as a potential discounting or disqualification of my own existence. i wish i didn't feel scared that i would be seen as useless or meaningless...
i guess all of my efforts are to impress people, and to have them acknowledge me, maybe even fear me. i guess all i do is intended to have the world see me...
i mentioned dualistic thought, and the alternative, to swallow that emptiness, and to attempt to disappear... well, it doesn't work. it only repeats the problem. somehow, i need to be nondualistic, find a way out of this trap...
*****
the wind is blowing through the trees.
my wife is exceedingly kind. i realize, more and more, how much i owe to her for my existence. it was through her love that i became what i am. i am still troubled by so many things, but at the very least, i feel some solidity and trust in myself, because she believed in me. without that, i would be plagued by the old self-hatred and loathing that i spent my whole life fighting or fleeing...
help me. i want to be.
*****
when i was young, my mom had this one book called "having fun being yourself." i used to read it or try to read it, every now and then. it embodied my mother's spirit, her shamelessness. it was something i aspired to, that sense of allowing myself to enjoy being who i was, and having fun. but for some reason, a lot of that wisdom, well, it never stuck. i was always convinced that i was a piece of shit. a nothing on someone's shoe. i couldn't shake that feeling...
i sympathized with broken toys, because maybe i felt i was one. my mom always warned me of the sin of self-pity, which she felt i had a lot of. yes, i did feel so sorry for myself. but it was only because i felt incredibly trapped, and didn't know a way out of it...
there is no salvation through others. but there is also no salvation through myself. so "why sit and wait for the new world to begin?"
"you can't believe in yourself. you can't believe in anyone else. so why sit and wait for the new world to begin?"
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