A few days ago I had a strange feeling. The idea that I was a virus stuck in my head. Anything I came in contact with became infected.

It just seemed like anyone I’ve become close with has been hurt in some way. It felt as if all my relationships always take a turn for the worse, and it’s my fault. I’ll find some tiny, forgivable trait, and turn it into a detestable problem. I’ll close off. I’ll hurt someone.

Sometimes I think that I hurt people to test my boundaries, to know how much they care. Perhaps I’m so insecure in my relationships that I need to be sure about how someone feels about me.

It’s as if I try to be friends with people I want to offend, so that they will hurt me back in some way, like Travis Bickle. Perhaps I need to be hurt.

I constantly feel as if I don’t know how to love. It’s such a frighteningly scary idea. I wish I loved more. So many times I believe that I am experiencing love, only to realize that I’m not, that it was just a fleeting emotion. Perhaps I need to be hurt to know that I can love.

I’ve only truly loved once. Perhaps it was so intense, so passionate, that all other emotions feel numb in comparison.

Perhaps I simply don’t know what love is.

I just know that I don’t want to hurt anymore.

I once wrote about how I could never come up with my own ideas, that my creativity was non-existent. After all, I look to this and that for inspiration and ideas on nice, simple webpage design. It seems to be true for almost everything I do though. My style of dress. My expressions. My elocution.

When I first wrote about this, it felt like I had no creativity whatsoever, that nothing I created was original. I constantly felt like all that I could do was imitate.

The realization dawned on me today, that I always look up to certain aspects of so many people, and that I’m always trying to capture that aspect for myself, such as Steve’s style, Aaron’s character, Rob’s serenity, John’s/Alvin’s intelligence, Nadine’s charisma, or Dave’s strength. It feels like I’m just a motley menagerie of other peoples’ personalities, never really being “myself”. I end up being someone who can only imitate parts of other people.

I suppose that I’m fine with this, although it’s taken me a while to understand this fact. After all, it’s only been within the last year or so that I’ve come to accept myself, and who I’ve come to be. I feel like I’ve become a better person in my pursuit of self-improvement, but only by following what I like in others.

For only in others can I see beauty.

I’ve realized that, for some reason, I’m always, constantly seeking the approval of others. It’s something that’s become a part of me, although I know that I’m able to deal with the times when I can get no approval whatsoever.

I hate this about myself. It feels so damn cheap and shallow. It can bother me so much to know that someone doesn’t like me, or something that I’ve done.

My understanding of the reason why I’m like this is that my previous major relationships have all hurt me in the subject of acceptance. It has affected me so much that it’s something that I can’t get over. I need acceptance to fulfill a childhood void.

I adore praise. My mind accepts it like a vacuum. I let it affect me, and I don’t care. It’s something that I need.

When praise leaves me, then I feel like I’m left alone, with no one who can understand anything that I do. It feels like there’s no acceptance, like everyone hates my being.

And with this I go to sleep.

Things feel very different right now. I know that everything is always changing, everything is constantly moving, and that no matter how static my life seems at the time, my mind is always working. I begin to see things quite differently. I’m really not sure how to explain it. For some reason, my thoughts begin to come around full circle every six months or so. My mind is never at the same place I am.

It’s an odd realization, to know that I’ve changed so much, yet so little within the last six months. I remember telling Sam one time when I was 15 that I probably wouldn’t change from the way I was back then. How wrong I was. There has been nothing but change, change that I can only see long after it has passed. I look back on what I was like in first year, and I become so embarrassed.

And now things feel so odd, as if I’ve never been in such a situation before, as if I’m looking through a new pair of eyes, yet kept my old experiences. It’s such a hard situation to define, since I feel like I can never truly understand it until is over, like the dead in Dante’s Inferno.

None of this feels familiar.

I had a dream last night, a dream that seemed so real, a dream I did not want. A dream of scattered memories sewn together, creating such a perfect world, where love was requited, where I was blissfully happy. When I awoke, everything I had was gone.

All I was left with was hope, and emptiness. I immediately knew that what I had was false, too perfect a world for me to live in. I felt bitter, as if I had something taken away from me which I felt was rightfully mine.

Why would my subconscious trick me so? Why should I feel so terrible, so laden with hope? Couldn’t my mind simply give up this struggle, freely, without interference?

Hope is not a good thing for me. It makes me weak and vulnerable. When I have no hope, then all is known. Nothing is uncertain. I am sure of what I have and what I don’t have. Progress can be made on accepting this. But when hope enters my mind, all progress is lost, and I can only try to fight for what I’ve gained.

Yet I wish to dream again tonight, of memories strewn together, for they were so wonderful, that any let down seems worth it. I don’t know why I’d want to torture myself again, feeling empty and bitter when I wake up. Somehow, the high seems worth it, like some addictive drug Pandora was selling out of her magical box of plagues and death.

Perhaps I actually do believe in what my hope is telling me. Perhaps I need to believe in something, that somehow this will change, that things will be different. Or perhaps I’m simply a fool, willingly falling for something that may make me happy, but empty in the end.

Nothing good ever came out of Pandora’s box.