Then something happens. The dead fighter in me gets resurrected, horrified and livid by my weakened state and the demise I allowed to occur on my watch. The doormat perfectionist in me surfaces as my neuroses lunges out of my body nearly making my passivity convulse into the darkness. I refuse to take a backseat in my own life as I become a victim to my own thoughts. I no longer perceive the bees as threats I channel violence towards or even futile distractions as I embrace my own inadequacy, my inability to proceed with my life through the abyss of it all. Surging with stubbornness but this time determined to see beyond the bees, to feel the outside world that my paranoia suffocates livelihood out of, and then it's like I open my eyes for the first time.
The buzzing thoughts and the paranoia that strangles anything that didn't come out of darkness is still inside of me, but it's contained now. I'm like a multi-faceted amethyst - pretty, flawed, broken, rough, polished, soft, smooth, tainted, vivid, and dynamic. I have many sides to me and not all are beautiful. With discipline and emotional receptivity, I can emanate the best in me. But it does require focus and effort. While it's natural for others, I have to try. I'm still refining myself.
Everyone sees only one angle and one view of the amethyst stone in a single moment. I, however, am unable to see myself at all. I may be able to feel myself and discover who I am from there, but I can't learn who I am through eyes I don't have and can't use. Relying on others to identify me doesn't work because people fail to realize that what they see is a distorted perception polluted by their own subjectivities. None of us have any idea who I am. And I'm desperate more than ever to find out. Sometimes I feel like I know myself the least.
To do that, I have to be alone. I need to focus on myself right now. Where I am in life is inconvenient. I feel stuck in a paralleled world where time is paralyzed and it didn't freeze in a moment of my life I want to cherish. I'm unemployed. I don't go to school. My living situation is tragic but is at a temporary improvement while the complex stalker and threat is seized in its psychotically predictable isolationist world for now... I'm in love with a guy who left me long ago, while my premonitions practically torture me about another possibility with another guy.
I don't want another missed opportunity. I don't want to experience another inexperienced emptiness lingering inside of me. Each time my soul makes room for something enriching and I only absorb the negativity that left me with nothing, I feel like a part of me dies. This person who I don't even know who hasn't even really had a chance to define herself is being broken down by outside forces and the ever-growing insecurity, the one quality in me that seems to grow at steroid speed while I'm prematurely stunted in every other area. I don't like it.
I can meet a person, identify with them, extract exactly what their source of problem is and manage to ease it into their lives in a usable and powerful way. But when it comes me and my own life, I can't even tell when I'm experiencing something. I feel dead inside. That's how detached I've become. Helping others is my way of identifying sources, and I'll continue to do that. But right now I don't know how to transfer that knowledge and insight into something I can benefit from personally because I'm not acquainted enough with myself.
Relationships come and go, but friendships linger. Then again, friendships also die in a sense when we neglect them. We stop putting effort into it, and it's like we forget that it's there because we have our own lives to focus on. After all, the one thing we're never able to escape and the one thing that'll always be with us is ourselves. If I'm willing to put effort into a relationship, into friendships, then shouldn't I at least be able to recognize myself? And eventually I'll want more than familiarity. I want to know myself. Distractions will hinder that. I don't have much right now, but what I do have is an abundance of time uncommitted to other responsibilities. I have an opportunity to turn something unfortunate into a discovery into myself. Let me be a whole first person before I include a plus one into my life.
For the first time I've experienced what it truly means to regret and how missed opportunities can gnaw away at me. I don't want to make that same mistake. But when a door of opportunity closes, another one opens. And there are many doors I can choose to open. Some are already open, so maybe I should walk into them and not let my fear scare me away. But my fear isn't always my enemy preventing me from doing something great. Sometimes it gives me a chance to reconsider what really matters to me.
And I realized that I matter to me more than any other potential relationship right now. I may live to regret it later, but I can't make decisions I'm only half-interested in because I might regret it when there's something I feel I need to do right now for myself. By working on myself, I do more than try and face my fears. I work towards eradicating the fears that plague me. And they may never go away. But if that's true, I don't believe that facing them is a wasted effort. If fear's my enemy, I should study it so I can protect myself.
Of course, I must be careful to not turn that task into an escape mechanism. The more I get to know myself, the more I'll understand these anomalies in me. It's time I stop avoiding things and face them, whatever it is that I choose to face. And I've made up my mind. I'm going to tackle the most frightening and unpredictable thing - me.
I've neglected and ignored myself from myself my entire life. It's time I break the cycle. In a psych class a friend who can read people really well told me that the first thing he noticed in me was how I would sit. I bring my body closest to myself as I possibly can as though I want to protect myself and extract something from within me. Every time I'd ask a question that I was obviously seeking an answer to to soothe myself, I'd revert to that awkward body posture, an introverted attempt.
I only know bits of pieces of myself from fragments of what my friends see in me and what they express about me. I'm 26 years old and I wouldn't even recognize myself if it weren't for them. I don't want to be a distortion of outside perceptions, a compiled stranger. It's taken me this long to make myself a priority. I don't want to wait any longer.
"Let Me Be a Whole Person First" was this blog title that's been circulating in my mind for a while. Sometimes accumulative thoughts evolve and completely obstruct the original voice that would've been expressed had I have written an entry then. I've thought about this topic for a while, but I didn't get around to it. I'm actually glad because my thoughts are clearer now. My emotions, desires, and thoughts are in mutual agreement.
However, it' s unhealthy that I put myself at a lower priority. I feel like the universe was leading me up to where I am now. My friends have been struggling in relationships that are in jeopardy and ones I believe they should terminate. But their fears and stubbornness similar to my own prevents them from letting go until the final thread tears, however long that could take. If the thread never tears, will they just continue this dangling relationship? I see myself in a lot of them, so these questions I raise about their relationships leave me with this burning question mark that I need answered. So many people I'm surrounded by are leaving imprints in my own life through their relationships.
It's time I piece together the puzzle of my own identity and intact the distorted bits into a whole image. Maybe then I won't be so inaccessible...
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