All Too Well

I face my younger self. Taking it what I used to look like. I dont remember what I looked like before tattoos, piercings and surgical body modifications. Before self harm scars and memories of where the most painful bruising were. I take in all the physical changes that my body's overgone in the past 30 years. I struggle to accept that was how I used to look. The passage of time is hard for me to accept because internally I haven't changed that much. A lot of people express the same feelings, but I don't quite know know how to put it into words; I've held onto some aspects of my immaturity, adventure and anxiety. The maturity I had, the ideals of pleasure and pain, things that have captivcated my attention have barely changed at all. It kind of feels like I've a recycled soul. Reincarnated into another body, but the slate wasn't wiped clean. Maybe that's why I know things that I shouldn't. Why I've always felt out of touch with the current time frame. Maybe it goes beyond a warped sense of time. I don't think that I'll get any answers on this anytime soon, unless I die. Even then there are no guarentees. On the bright side, there will be a new cosmos, a new dimension for me to explore, so until I get bored with it (if I get bored with it) I will have something to focus on. It's hard to remember it at all. There are times when I want to do a Dickie Roberts; you know re-live my childhood. Start all over again. Reboot myself by a human computer. Maybe if we grew up with a little more direction I'd be a different person. Actually, I know that I'd be a different person. What felt like forgotten bitterness, turmoil and rage is swelling around me. I have to keep my anger surpressed. And it's not for moral reasons. It's simply because I need something. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. It's not a question of fearing getting caught. I feel the anger in me. Settling in my joints and threatening to explode. I need to let it out and I do with physical acts of expression. Writing and talking about it doesn't do it for me. I can talk about things all I want, but it only puts a damper on things. Could it just be that I'm unable to let things go? An injustice collector of sorts? Smashing something into pieces, regaining the control that I feel I've lost, dominating. The release is calming. I look at the broken pieces of objects on the floor, enjoying the calm. I catch my reflection in the glass shards and just for a moment I identify with the object. I see the shattered pieces and it reminds me of who I am. A fracture. I spent my teenage years carving myself up, drinking and experimenting with other things. I found myself becoming a stranger. The normal turmoil that comes with adolesence was magnified. I was bullied at school constantly, my father was always drunk and my mother was always swinging through exploring my failures and polishing her own ego. Time that I had alone, I spent it crying, wondering what I'd ever done wrong to deserve to be treated like this. It's no wonder that I started cutting myself. I needed to let the pain out in a way that was just for me. A way that I could control. Relief was sometimes punishment, but what did the punishment bring? Relief. Different reasons, different depths of cuts and different locations told the parts of the story that even I wasn't aware of. Sometimes it was concious choice and other times it was just going with whatever felt right. I thought that I knew was wrong and that I had it all under control. I thought that I could just wait it out. I let shame and youthful arrogance get in the way of getting myself the help that I needed. I was given an option to expose everything, get everything out in the open, but fearing shame based on my experiences and not wanting to face wrath at home, I smiled. I knew what I was doing. I was hiding something that didn't need to be hidden. In doing so, I made things worse for myself. I could have said something, anything at anytime. Fear was the only thing holding me back. The uncertainty of it. I figured the devil you know is better than the devil you dont; easier to prepare for the worst if you've had some experience. Filling up on lithium laced cupcakes, feeing into my own hysteria. Or was this just my way of crying out for help but my ego wouldn't allow me to just come out and ask for it? I didn't want to take responsibility for my behaviour. It wasn't just scars of the past. I was selfish and implusive; my implusivity has constantly increased over the years. The more that I think about it, I was raised in a household were you couldn't have an option of your own. Constantly being berated, mocked and ridiculed constantly for almost every little thing and then I get asked by them "Why don't you have any self-esteem?" Maybe because you beat it out of me? But of course, it's never their fault! How could they do something wrong? Something wrong? Not my fault. I wanted to just be free. Free to let myself feel everything that I wasn't able to feel outside. I induldged my out of control emotions, taking greater and greater risks. I didn't care what happened to me, I just wanted to be free. That taste of emotional and physical freedom was something I didn't think I'd ever be able to experience. I'm surpsied that I managed to keep all that emotion inside me for so long. Think of it as a sort of emotional constipation. Anything that wasn't accepted or supportive under parental opinion was mocked, ridiculed or labeled as stupid. The short sight, arrogance and narcissism resulted in me withdrawing into myself. You couldn't have any individuality outside of alone time. I hate them for it. I honestly do. Neither of them made anything of themselves and they've attempted to set every one of us up for failure. If I could go back in time, I'd tell my younger self to get out earlier than I did. I'd tell myself to push through the fear an anxiety and go. That regret is on me. That's my mistake. I developed my own opinions, built up my own sense of right and wrong. It wasn't just my emotional well being that was destroyed, but I really feel like I lost out on a career. I love history. I love culture. Art. I wanted to be a professor of European history with a focus on medieval times, christian theology (as it shaped Europe, not that I was religious) and I wanted to learn about restoration of artifacts. I wanted to work in a museum or research of some sort. Being a professor of it was also an idea that I tossed around as I was ready to enter university. I was told that it was stupid, it was a fantasy, it will never happen and that it's a cute hobby not a job. I took it to heart. I settled for another thing I was interested in, but it wasn't really my passion. I love psychology, but it doesn't really move me the way history does. And I do like my current job, working on persuing a career in the cannabis industry, but the longing for my earlier career choice is still there. I don't think it will ever go away. I could attempt to start a career now in it, but I'd finish in 7 years (I wanted a doctorate in it.) but I don't want to be almost 40 starting a career. I could have started earlier, I admit that. My low self-esteem and her mocking aside, I was actually just worried that would happen. That I would go for it, spend all sorts of money and have nothing to show for it. I kinda of have that now if I'm honest. I don't entirely blame her for not persuing it once I left. That part is on me. I wanted to have time to explore, discover myself and my writing was starting to take off. I was getting to travel. I always said later, I was enjoying the travel now. After all, it was kind of what I wanted to do; I was going to museums and galleries. I was experincing culture, new and old, learning languages. That I could never regret doing, I just wish I'd structured things a little differently to persue the education that I dearly wanted. It can screw with your head at times, relationships. There've been times that I've let my guard down. I've relaxed and shared things only to face crtiticsm. I feel that most of the time she's like one of those two-faced friends you have as a teenager. It's all fun and games when it's going their way and then the moment it's not, they get cunty or drop you for a while, then come back like nothing's happened at all. It's more of an annoyance than the soul crushing experience it was when I was younger. Sadly, I've grown accustomed to this. It will never change as much as I want it to. She's read my things in the past, obsessively so or her pet monkey, then constantly harps on what she's read if she doesn't agree with it, especially if it paints her in a negative light. It's basically stalking what she does. You pretty much have no sense of privacy. You have to lie and hide things from her if you want anything that's your own and doesn't have her 2 cents involved. She needs to have her opinion heard on everything, even if it's proven to be wrong. Especially if it's proven to be wrong. Thankfully, she's too preoccupied with her saint of a son to have the time to read through my things now. And I say saint of a son with sarcasm. He's another one who never accepts blame. She's hammered into his head that he's special, he never does anything wrong and constantly spoils him. And cries to me that he has no friends? That's not my fault or my problem. Her actions have done him no favours. He's like this because of her actions. And I don't want to hear "He basically grew up without a father, it's different for (biological) boys." Bullshit excuse. There are pleanty of people who've grown up without a father or mother figure. It's time to stop making excuses for him, let him face the consequesces of his actions, regardless of what they are. It's times like these that I am so happy that I can't have children. Nature finally did me a favour with this one. Her pet will have the time, though. He's not had a job in 12 years and is sucking on the government's tit. He's not disabled. He's able to work, he's just lazy. She's dumb enough to fall for his excuses again and again, allowing this to go on while he lives in her home and she pays for things. And she wants to have an opinion on my life? Continue being a doormat to a piece of shit, just like with your ex-husband, while I keep moving on. I didn't want to admit to people that I needed help. That I wasn't able to do things on my own. Failure is something that I have a hard time accepting. I don't know to make mistakes. At some point I confused perfection with value and often times its lead me to dispair. I constantly struggle to be the best, worried that I will be seen if I'm not on top, if I'm not the first. My insecurity and issues with self-hatred have lately been leaving me with a burning sense of shame that I know to be trivial. The self confidence that I've been building over the past few months is starting to crumble. I find myself insulting myself, beating myself up over the slightest mistake. I need a little help sleeping once again. Sober me and sleep are on rocky terms these days. I think sleep is cheating on me with euthoria. I'm not jealous, just envious to some degree I guess. It's like fireworks in my bloodstream as the tablets begin to digest. But when I am able to sleep, I find myself running through the golden fields, the warm raise of the run on my neck. I don't know why this is the memory that bubbled to surface. It could be that it was the first time that I ever felt some kind of release. The burn of the stomach acid is familiar in the back of my throat. The violence so rightfully deserved. The way the scarlet of constratsting the light pruple bruises that were starting to blossom between the unfosued slashes. I think back at the desperation and carelessness, its thrilling and captivating. Lately I've been struggling to wrap my head around what's going on with me now. I must being missing some key compnents to solving the equation. I feel the pressure and frustration building. There is so much riding on me figuring it out. Today was my first official meeting with my new therapist. I didnt let the anxiety that usually holds me back to consume me, preventing myself from letting someone know what is wrong. I shared. It wasn't in a "look at me I'm smart" way or "poor me" way either. I accepted that I need more outside help, that I can't continue to be self-reliant because while it has worked in some ways for so long (keeping me alive, forcing me into new things, persuing new goals) it's really not working. I can't continue to go on like this. It's tearing me apart from the inside. I don't want to come home and cry myself to sleep or feel so uncomfortable in my workplace that I would hurt myself just so I wouldn't have to go back. And it's not like there is anything that's making my workplace unbareable. Usually little blimps of drama, but I'm usually never involved. I just allow myself to be amused by it more than anything. I would say at the moment the majority of my thoughts are a constant bumbardment that I want to esacape from. Things play over and over again in my head, nagging me. What's the point of this? Why does it even matter what I like? Why does it matter that I don't like something? It all means nothing. It circles through me, moving through my bloodstream, causing me to constantly question existence in general. Maybe that's part of the reason why acting bothers me so much. It didn't always. It's more of something over the last year to six months I'd say. Present both on and off medication. Our actions, our beliefs define us more than our passing thoughts. But I wonder what do I really believe in? I'm not talking about after death, I'm talking the here and now. What do I really believe in? I used to really believe in hard work, but now it's more like fighting a losing battle. I used to believe in sharing what I had and I did on many occasions. What did it show me? That people don't like me, they like my stuff, what I can do for them, what I can offer them. That's not really an option. I never believed in truth as I grew up on lies. I learned when to lie, how to lie and why it's important to lie. It made me better at learning how to find the truth and even seek greater truth. There are two things that I know I believe in. Every living organism consumes in one form or another and every living thing's biological functions will stop resulting in a physical death. But it really doesn't say anything about my belief system, does it? Only that I have compartmentalised and sanitised away all other parts of life. More and more as of late, I'm experiencing the familiar feelings of being iscolated from the group, not being a part of the group or having anyone actually enjoy my company. I feel as if I'm leading a hollow existance. I'm filling my calendar for the year out not just because I feel the need to constantly go. I wasn't entirely truthful when I was talking about filling my calendar full of concerts, events, museums, trips and tattoos. I mean, I am, and I am because I want to do lots of things for the coming year, but I also am looking for a distraction. These things usually serve as distractions that stimulate me in more ways than one. It provides and oppertunity to do something out of the norm. See something out of the norm. I want to feel something other than this self-hatred, this constant self-guessing and (as of lately) this overwhelming desire to cry. I feel like if I'm not doing these things then there is no point in being here. And booking all these things presents me with the oppertunity to have others join me. They all can't say no every time, can they? And if they do, maybe it's a sign that I need better friends in my life. Sometimes I think that I'm guilting people into spending time with me. I don't feel bad about it, just wonder if they are thinking the same thought. There is the possibility that I am not as nice as I seem. I'm focusing on the good in this one aspect of my life because I fail short in others. Compensation. Not always a happy ending with it.