Posts tagged with "self-evaluation"

On The Mend

My ther­a­pist has the curi­ous habit of push­ing his low­er lip into his upper gums when think­ing. He also has a very par­tic­u­lar way of talk­ing, and some­times I won­der if I could imi­tate him.

I went into my ses­sion feel­ing great, and left with a lit­tle more mod­esty than when I start­ed. I may pride myself on my self-aware­ness, but he’s always there to remind me that some prob­lems are root­ed in my sub­con­scious. While my feel­ing of empti­ness has dis­ap­peared, there are still a few under­ly­ing issues, such as why I start­ed to feel that empti­ness in the first place. He said that when we meet again that it should be on a reg­u­lar basis, and I should­n’t wait for a cri­sis to begin fix­ing issues. I agreed, but want­ed to give things a chance on my own first, armed with this new-found enlight­en­ment.

He approach­es my sit­u­a­tion from such a per­pen­dic­u­lar per­spec­tive. It’s always a view I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered before. When I first went to see him, it was for my anx­i­ety attacks. Not for the oth­er deep-root­ed emo­tion­al prob­lems I had (and was unaware of). Sometimes, I won­der if we’ll ever get to the point where he’ll say to me, “You know what, Jeff, I don’t think you need to come here any­more.”

Fishing Without A Hook

I’ve been liv­ing the strangest exis­tence late­ly. It’s been a life with­out struc­ture or mean­ing. I won­der what I’ll think of this phase of my life when I look back in five years.

Some days are eas­i­er than oth­ers. Sometimes, it’s a strug­gle just to find a rea­son to exist.

I have to admit that every pain, every sad­ness is inspir­ing. It may make my fin­gers bleed and my lungs ache, but the pure emo­tion that comes out of it is worth it, because that means I’m feel­ing some­thing, instead of the numb­ness that scares me most.

My one mis­take was try­ing to for­get some­one, when instead I should have been try­ing to for­get life in gen­er­al. I’ve always had the habit of think­ing too much, and not doing enough. I’ve been try­ing to set goals to get some­where, when it’s work­ing toward those goals that’s the impor­tant part.

I made an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist again1, because some­thing is def­i­nite­ly wrong with me right now. It feels like I have the world at my fin­ger­tips. I have so much time and oppor­tu­ni­ty on my side. I laugh at the right jokes. I dance at the right songs. It’s all star­ing me in the face, but every­thing still feels emp­ty.

I’m not look­ing for answers. I just want to stop ask­ing ques­tions.

  1. I haven’t been back since last October [↩]

Dead Cells

I’m get­ting a hair­cut today. I tend to look a great deal frumpi­er when a month has passed, which is also around the time my hair starts to piss me off, in a “WHY WON’T YOU STAY LIKE THAT?! NO, LIKE THAT. AAAAARGGGHHGH” kind of way.

My last one was on Christmas Eve, in the mid­dle of a rushed hol­i­day sched­ule, and I remem­ber exact­ly the frame of mind I had when I went for that hair­cut. It feels like I’ve been through so much since then; emo­tion­al changes, per­son­al epipha­nies, and life expe­ri­enced. It’s only been a lit­tle over a month.

Sometimes, I won­der if it would be scary to be my friend or lover, because of how much trans­for­ma­tion I can go through in short peri­ods of time. Julie once said I had changed a lot in the year that I knew her at the time. I want­ed her to quan­ti­fy that for me, but I did­n’t, hop­ing it was gen­er­al­ly for the bet­ter.

I can only hope it’s always an improve­ment.

Follow-Up

(I love these entries.)

First: lis­ten to this. Some days I feel exact­ly like this song. Those days are pret­ty good.

I remem­ber read­ing the blog once of the guy who said that his aunt was Nancy. She was a Canadian woman who suf­fered from men­tal insta­bil­i­ty and killed her­self (“It seems so long ago/Nancy was alone/a forty five beside her head/an open tele­phone”), and Cohen read about the sto­ry in the news­pa­per, and penned this song about her.

Anyway.

I like him. He’s very unbi­ased. He does­n’t try to cod­dle me or side with or against me or force me into think­ing any­thing. He offers per­spec­tives that no one else can give me.

I was­n’t sure where to start, so I just tried to bring him up to speed on my life in the time that passed between us. It began briefly with how well I was main­tain­ing the progress we had made but quick­ly drift­ed to the rela­tion­ship, and that pret­ty much took the rest of the ses­sion.

(From here on out, I’m going to refer to it as the rela­tion­ship. Just cause I’m tired of writ­ing “half-rela­tion­ship” or “rela­tion­ship” in quotes like that. I’d say that two peo­ple as involved as we were would cer­tain­ly be con­sid­ered to be in a rela­tion­ship.)

Continue read­ing “Follow-Up”…

Missing A Ride

I almost did some­thing stu­pid crazy excit­ing adven­tur­ous tonight. But I did­n’t. Maybe it was too last-minute. Maybe I was feel­ing too shy and intro­vert­ed. Maybe I’m com­pla­cent. Maybe I’m too com­fort­able where I am right now.

Maybe the con­se­quences of fail­ure were greater than the poten­tial gains of suc­cess.

Sometimes I won­der when the scales will tip that bal­ance. When — if ever — will I be unsat­is­fied enough with things to step out of my com­fort zone and take those chances?

When will I catch that ride?