13 VII 2003 - 14:29 - trivialis62

So I haven't been here in a while, and that's mostly because of lack of time, and because for a while I was shy of trying to add an entry to a site that might not let me on to do so. And why, thought I, deal with that, when here was LiveJournal, complete with a handy desktop client and even paid, so that you didn't have to worry nearly as often about being denied access? So, there I went, and pretty soon the updates dried up there, too. After all, one day of class is pretty much the same as the next... at least as far as this course is concerned. (Drill in the morning, then grammar in the afternoons. Homework at night. Repeat.)

And then I also thought there was going to be an Alchera project to give me an excuse to update. But I fell behind on that, too -- and thanks to computer troubles, so did the webmistress, so that's on hiatus at least until August. I might put something up for June yet, though.

I've been reading your diaries irregularly... I'm sorry I missed you while you were in New York. Glad you're here and back safely, though, and maybe we'll catch up some time next year.

[two hours later, post-laundry folding]

(I'm not proud of what's below, but I have to get it out. Consider it a teenage thing, or consider it something in the system that I have to get out before I can sit down and have a hope of doing Greek.)

One of the things I had to do this summer was filling out an eighteen-question survey handed out by my college counselor. 'These,' he said in that way of his that tells us that he has power over our lives for the next year, and he'll be damned if he won't enjoy it, 'will help me to write your letters of recommendation and to get to know your class better.' I get along with him well enough -- my nature is inoffensive enough, my talk glib enough, that we get along tolerably. This is nothing new, the state where I have a feeling the teacher likes me much more than I like him. But these questions! Probe, probe, snuffle, snort, 'what questions do you ask yourself about your racial, personal, cultural, or religious identity?' I'm not obliged, of course, to give a full answer, and I didn't -- but in any event, I don't think he would have wanted to hear the full answer, and over email, too, without the qualification of any tongue.

So I won't tell him what I won't tell you for long.

That (as I may have said before) when I was younger, a sister of mine asked me in irritation the questions, 'Is there anyone you know who can stand to be around you for longer than ten minutes at a time?' and 'When you look in the mirror, do you honestly like what you see?' Fine. Questions, nothing more. Except that they were very easy to take into myself, and I'm not sure my first answer to the first question isn't No. I'm sure my first answer to the second is.

So, the past eight years or so of life. Which is fine, except that when I do make friends, I can't help feeling like they're only on loan, that they'll take it all back at some cruel whim, and so I shut down. Or, worse, I test what is set before me, incredulous, and do obnoxious things to see if perhaps they won't reconsider. And what always amazes me is that so few of those who did settle in the first place do reconsider, that I still have friends, that I still manage to talk to anyone for more than ten minutes at a time. And I'm working on this whole not being obnoxious business, I'm working on being considerate and the sort of friend I'd like myself to have. Jury's out on whether that's working, though, and I can't help being suspicious that nothing has really changed, that I'll just keep falling back into the same stupid cycles because it's easier and I don't want to try. And that's really what scares me.

Because I think that part of me doesn't want to try, doesn't care about becoming the better person who actually has a chance of holding up a conversation and who has read anything, doesn't care about becoming what the other part of me so desperately wants to be. Oh, look! I'm dividing myself into parts! How nifty, except not. I like grammar, because it's all so terribly clear, because there are paradigms and rules to follow and certain constructions, and I hate looking into myself, because I haven't yet figured how to make myself fit into the order of contractions and endings and make it all fall into place yet. So I remain a murk, muddling along towards a goal I'm not sure exists and growing increasingly unhappy and confused.

The solution to whether I liked what I saw in the mirror (an emphatic no, only marginally less emphatic as time goes by) was of course to fashion myself into the sort of person I might feel all right about liking. And that held me through a couple of years, the thought of 'not yet, but maybe someday.' And if I said no when I asked if I liked myself, I at least could tell myself why, and figure out a bit how to improve it -- correcting certain habits, or maybe just learning to wear the habit like a patch I wasn't quite sure I wanted, but didn't mind terribly having around. And that was working.

Or not. Some 'solutions' may not be so at all -- like continued repression of minor irritations so that I can keep the peace. Fine, for a while, until the minor irritations grow into a full-blown rage that leaves me light-headed, red, or seeing black. And shouting, loudly -- and in the end, I feel worse, because I don't like to lose control like that, and I promised I wouldn't, not having grown up with shouting and having learned to abhor loud noises like that --

which makes it good, I suppose, that I don't lose control like that often. But it might be easier if I were a little bit better about saying what was on my mind instead of bottling it up -- and I try, but then I get shy or feel afraid of offending someone. Anyway, if I were really good, then I wouldn't be irritated to begin with, right? (Of course, I would also be a saint, a condition that is clearly false. But then my mind has ever hoped it.)

And I can scratch at others just as easily quiet as loud. The problem lies in knowing that I'm about to do it -- regret is no good, the twentieth time after the fact.

Ah. This summer -- I enjoy what I'm doing, I enjoy working with Greek (although I'm not sure I like the language, if that makes any sense), I like the people, and I feel like shit. Part of this might be that I've given in to my impulse to wallow in self-pity, although I'm not entirely sure what that involves, and I haven't been wandering around the room saying 'Poor me' repeatedly. (I find that when it comes to picking up hints about myself, I am extraordinarily bad, and rather need to be whacked over the head with a baseball bat. Anodized aluminum finish, preferrably.) But also, I've stopped being able to come up with reasons I don't like myself -- it's just this general 'No,' a general bad feeling, and I think I've become rather uninterested in liking myself at all. Not worth the effort, says a quiet and perfectly reasonable voice from somewhere in my head.

Which would be just fine, if said decision didn't involve feeling like this all the time.

The funny thing is, I'm not even sure I'll be feeling this way for any extended period of time. This could be a trough -- I could read the past three months as a slow decline. Or it could be something quite normal -- up -- down -- up -- down, hello, adolescence. The trick is, I suppose, to see if I feel better on the other side of twenty-five, but then that does seem like a long time to wait.

I can be patient, though. Just watch.

[finished 16:45]

I think all I ask is some hope that this is just some offshoot of being a teenager, that this will pass. But perhaps that's something best not asked of others...