So She says

I think a lot about the things she might say. That is to say what she ought to say if she wasn't who she was, which is an impressive degree of selfish. The woman is literally unable to see past herself, or at least she was when I so needed her not to be. "Come here" I imagine her saying, "tell me what's wrong". She would sit next to me on my bed, towering above me looking downward with a facial expression that was part playful and part inviting and radiated warmth. If I close my eyes I think I can feel the warmth coat me like liquid chocolate. I imagine it feels warm to know you are loved.

In the absence of such relief though what is left is an arctic chill which over time freezes your own warmth shut. The absence of that love is not the real damage, the real damage is found in that you never learned how to value yourself. You never learn how to look inward and like what you see. Dr. Freud tells me that that which is external becomes internalized when you are young. That your parents voice becomes your own inside your head. I wish I heard so many different things in my head than the relentless beating of the drum of self hatred.

"Son, pain is a part of life. If I could stop you from feeling any pain I swear to you I would but the truth is I can't and I guess maybe it's better that I can't. What's important for you to undersstand is that no matter how badly something feels or how much it hurts the nature of pain is that it is temporary. It will pass and you will survive. You are so smart and so strong and life may try to knock you down but it won't ever win because you are a survivor. It is who we are son. We get bruised and beat down and sweaty and wounded and tired and sometimes when things get their worst we even feel like giving up but you know what baby? We never do. We keep fighting, we keep trying, we keep on keeping on. We never lose sight of who we are even when it might be easy to do so. We treat people with kindness even when they make us mad or treat us badly. And what gives us strength to all of these things is love. Love is what keeps us going and I want you to know right now and forever that no matter what happens to you, no matter what mistakes you might make or pain you may endure, no matter what other people think of you or say about you, no matter if things are good or bad or somewhere in between, I will always be your mother, you will always be my son and I will always love you with all of my heart. Even if you tried to change that you couldn't. So take your time, be mad at me, talk to me or don't talk to me, it's up to you. When you are ready I will be here for you, I will always be here for you. I love you."

I think then I might be able to sleep.

Good Times

What do you do when you find yourself more and more becoming ordinary? As each day pushes me further and further from youth I find myself a vessel for cliche emotional cargo. The change is not really welcomed but yet I'm strangely rather tolerant of the whole thing. Strange because I've so often prided myself on being odd. I despise predictability. I guess fundamentally the idea that our behavior is so cause/effect seems to equate to meaninglessness. I can't construct that link right now but it exists on an emotional level for me. 

What is scary about moving further and further away from youth is the ever increasing limitations of realism. That by growing older you become more and more cognizant of the possible and the "real" and less and less focused on that which should be, that which you desperately want to be and that which you know down in the most vulnerable part of your soul must be. Whereas a child thinks in dreams and potential, the adult sees only the difficulties and struggle in the way of progress. I feel fundamentally like a failure. I have accomplished almost nothing worth accomplishing. This fills me with disgust and leaves me unable to even contemplate the worth of my own existence. This is tempered only by the inextinguishable impulse to search for answers to the question "why" which in this case tells me a psychological pattern is at work. Namely that my mother made her love so conditional as to condition me to believe the only way to be worthy of love was to accomplish amazing things. I think the child in me sees a need to hold myself to this insane standard of accomplishment in the hopes that...

The feeling has gotten worse. It's grown steadily since last week. I'm exhausted. I don't have energy for anything. I want only to sleep all day.