21 XI 2002 - 22:37 - praeterite haec verba IAM

This entry is really laughably similar to many of my earlier ones. I'm beginning to think this is a phase of sorts, or else I just really like feeling like this. Of course.

There is a very real fear growing in me that I don't think.

This, because I can see other people neatly excreting what the teacher says, making it different enough that a semblance of independence is preserved -- but look at the whole closely, and one can trace every word back to its source, separated from it by only ten minutes.

I fear that I do this, and I don't have any certainty, because I'm too close to myself. I'm never a reliable gauge of anything related to me, and haven't been from the first time I began to second-guess myself and found it quite easy. Is it that I didn't want to spend the time to do the full analysis of the speech if it was for a class I didn't like? Or was it that I simply can't do it? Is it that everything in the passage, in the events, in the language I am being asked to analyze leads most logically to the conclusion that I make? Or am I repeating things that have appeared in the subtext of my teacher's comments?

So what if I'm but a repackager of ideas?

It would seem that it's not hard to make a living in the world that way. But if it were ever pointed out to me that simple regurgitation had become my business, then I don't think I could live with the shame of it. Simple.

There are other things I think about at night, too. For instance: I rarely say what I'd like to, or even what I mean, these days. I don't know when that started, and I don't like it, except for when it keeps my id in check. Being too quiet takes its toll; it has to come out somewhere, and I'll talk to myself at night. Such conversation is more fluent than I normally am, because I am accustomed to my own ellipses and periphrases... and even better, I know all my buttons, and know exactly what to say to bring myself further down.

I blame the weight of the unspoken for the gnawing at my nerves, but really, I think it's just me and my own meddlesome, button-pushing ways.

The worst button of all to push is the one that asks me what I give to other people -- the one that asks why I'm here at all. From a nighttime perspective, it looks as if my friends should never know how much they mean to me, from the way I treat them. I try to change this but my mouth outpaces my intentions, and then it seems as if it would be better if I just tried to avoid them. No. That doesn't make things better, either.

It's funny, you know -- a teacher said to me once that one of the most common problems with young people's writing was that they made the assumption that their problems matter to everyone else. Which she tempered, subsequently, but the central message remained. Of course it's normal to doubt oneself. Of course it's normal that I should be at odds with, well, me...

The important thing to consider here is of course not me. It never is. Why can't I just see that already? (That would, of course, be too simple.) Things would be easier if I weren't enamored of my own importance and if I didn't have to live with myself... if, then, I were more malleable, responded to my own criticisms, things might be different. Living in an if-then-wish world isn't going to get me anywhere. That knowledge doesn't change the other, more dangerous, more difficult: it is I who cause many of my own problems.

So, more conversations at midnight with myself. It's even simpler than math, really.