Posts tagged with "growth"

This Is Why You're Not Allowed (Save It)

This is the rit­u­al.

We meet. Usually by Greyhound.

We get stoned. In the car, in the park, or in the apart­ment.

This is what we’ve been sav­ing for. What we’ve cho­sen to deny our­selves of, until the present com­pa­ny, so that the expe­ri­ence is more intense. The rea­son why we’ve with­held for so long.

We intro­duce to each oth­er what we’ve dis­cov­ered on our own. Songs. Videos. Experiences.

There is no pride. No bias. No judg­ment.

We cher­ish these times. These week­ends. These mem­o­ries.

When we can grow from one anoth­er.

Because we’ve grown from our­selves.

Inner Barrier

This pho­to I do devel­op and print and when­ev­er I look at it, it chills my heart and I can’t look at it for long. I real­ize that it brings to the sur­face the dark aspect in the depths of my soul, which ter­ri­fies even me. I can only recoil when con­front­ed by beau­ty or evil.

—nar­ra­tor, Soul Mountain

For some, every day is a strug­gle.

Me? I tend not to notice.

(Finally.)

Personal Horizon

Andrew and Alex are going on a back­pack­ing trip to Europe until the end of this month. They’ve request­ed a list of peo­ple inter­est­ed in receiv­ing infor­ma­tion and details about their trip, so nat­u­ral­ly I let them know that I’d like to have some doc­u­men­ta­tion dur­ing their jour­ney.

And while I under­stand their moti­va­tions for try­ing to have such an inter-per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence, I don’t under­stand why it has to be because of a trip.

Isn’t every­day life inter­est­ing enough to talk about? Can’t one learn as much on the bus ride to work as being some place com­plete­ly for­eign? I nev­er decid­ed to make an extra blog or some­thing for my trip to Hong Kong/China/Macau, even though it was still a some­what life-chang­ing event. To me, the month was anoth­er part of my sched­ule, some­thing I had planned to do. It was as sig­nif­i­cant as any­thing else going on in my life, or maybe I should say, any­thing else going on in my life was as sig­nif­i­cant as that. I hope I nev­er have to rely on trav­el to con­sid­er my life impor­tant enough to dis­cuss with some­one.

Perhaps, I feel like I still have so much to learn about every­thing else that I would gain as much just think­ing in the show­er as I would being exposed to new things. Every day can be excit­ing. Every sec­ond, there’s a chance to learn and grow. There are still so many things to fig­ure out.

And I prob­a­bly con­sid­er myself to be one of the biggest.

I Fucking Rule

Someone made me feel ter­ri­ble the oth­er day. She igno­rant­ly belit­tled almost every­thing that I’ve worked for in my life. To have this per­son so insou­ciant­ly give me advice on some­thing that I’m still try­ing to accom­plish was com­plete­ly insult­ing. Yet I can’t blame this per­son, because the com­ments made were in igno­rance of how hard I’ve tried, how much I’ve worked, how dif­fi­cult it’s been to make myself a bet­ter per­son.

With most oth­er peo­ple, I could­n’t care less about their opin­ions. But I respect­ed this per­son. I held her in the high esteem. This per­son was already most of what I want­ed to become. And, nat­u­ral­ly, this made her opin­ion impor­tant to me.

I don’t know what her back­ground is, or how she’s come to devel­op as the per­son that I know, but I do know that mine has made things dif­fi­cult on a men­tal lev­el.

It takes me longer than oth­ers to get over things. I only trust half a hand­ful of peo­ple. I’m still emo­tion­al­ly weak in some respects.

I’ve come a long way, and even though I still have much fur­ther to go, that does­n’t dimin­ish the fact that I’ve suc­ceed­ed thus far. Or the fact that it’s been a fuck­ing strug­gle. Or the fact that I’m fuck­ing proud of who I am now, and what I’ve already accom­plished.

So what can I say, real­ly, about these things said in pass­ing? Nothing. All I have to keep in mind is that what I’m work­ing towards is much eas­i­er to some than to oth­ers. That it’s me who’s in con­trol of my amour pro­pre.

And that, in the end, all that tru­ly mat­ters is self-sat­is­fac­tion.

Control

With change comes the need for con­trol.

And with emo­tions run­ning through me in an almost uncon­tain­able, effu­sive man­ner, that need for con­trol has nev­er been more nec­es­sary.

Usually, this comes eas­i­ly. It feels as if I’ve been train­ing my whole life for such a thing, that I’ve spent most of my time work­ing towards becom­ing a cere­bral per­son. Except that in the past, it’s was to edul­co­rate the pain.

Now, it’s to con­trol the hap­pi­ness. The almost inef­fa­ble feel­ing of eupho­ria.

Sometimes, I can bare­ly con­tain the surge of emo­tion, and I have to stop myself from act­ing out, to keep my mind in check. I refuse to be one who acts out of emo­tion. I refuse to be one who’s at the whim of what­ev­er mood I’m in.

I will be stronger than that which has become so impor­tant to me. I will be in con­trol of that which I’ve sought so long to have.

Because bal­ance is more impor­tant than hap­pi­ness.