It has taken me a long time to come up with this latest blog post…  I have tried many times to write what I am feeling, but each time, I am distracted by one thing or another.  My feelings about everything right now are so complex, so conflicted, and so deep that I have not really been able to connect to them.  I am distant.  It is a distance not only within me but also around me.  It is to the point that my friends have begun to notice and comment.  It is nothing that I am doing deliberately, and if there were a way that I can just reach down to the deepest parts of my psyche  and flip a switch, I certainly would…  but this, as with many parts of enlightenment, is not easy.

I guess everything stems from one thing…  I am not really where I want to be in life.  And, frankly, I need to get over that.  I have a terrible habit of thinking only about what I don’t have and not on what I do have, and I award victory to this negativity.  Maybe one day I will be able to just be happy with what I have, but until then… I will just have to keep trying to wear my smile.  It is far easier to answer, “Fine, thank you!” to the question of “How are you?” than to actually tell people that, at times, I feel as though I am slipping away.  Wow… that was dramatic.  :p  The reality is that I am likely not REALLY slipping away.  More realistically, I am just aware now more than ever of how utterly unhappy I have allowed myself to become.  There is no excuse for this.  Of course, me being me, I have not only had to entertain, internally, the idea that I am not happy but also try my damnedest to break it down into its various simple components.  This constant analysis is emotionally and mentally taxing to the point where I only have a fraction of my consciousness left to live day-in and day-out.  I find myself sometimes so overwhelmed with myself that the slightest of glitches in my day cause me to become a frustrated, almost angry person that even I would not want to be around…  then 15 minutes later, I will be so at peace with everything in the world that nothing at all could remove a smile from my face.  In those moments, I find that I am the most pleasant and most calm.  I strive to find how those moments come about so I can train myself to only allow those moments to happen.  It is in those moments that I find beauty in rain, order in chaos, and joy in the silence.  I love those moments.

So…  what is it, exactly, that makes me unhappy?  I have given this a lot of thought… and a recurring answer is an overwhelming sense that the world has simply done me wrong.  There is a sense, either real or perceived (more than likely perceived) that no matter what I do, it is never enough…  and that no matter how much I give to others, financially, physically, emotionally, or otherwise, the desire from others to repay, or make up to me, all that I have done does not exist…  this a very hurtful and dark place to call home.  And the minute I reach this conclusion, I sink a little bit deeper and go a little bit further away from all that I call dear.  In this feeling, all I can see are the endless faces of those that I have called friends, whom have taken from me…  then departed.  In an episode of The Cosby Show, Theo was given an opportunity to be on a hot new dance show.  This opportunity he wanted to share with his best friend Cockroach (Walter), but ultimately it could only be had by one of them.  Theo and Cockroach discussed what was going to happen, and ultimately, Theo insisted that Cockroach be on the show.  In the end, Cockroach took the opportunity.  Theo was the reason the opportunity existed in the first place, so he felt a sense of entitlement to the opportunity.  When Cockroach took that from him, he became angry and felt betrayed…  Where am I going, you ask?  At the end of the episode, Claire (Theo’s mother) confronted Theo about why he was so angry with Cockroach…  Claire, being awesome as usual, submitted to Theo that he should be angry…  but not at Cockroach.  He should be angry with himself.  She told him that next time, he should only give because he really wants to give and not give because he expects something in return.  This is a lesson that I really need to learn… or apply to how I react or what I expect.  For some reason, though, I always wind up here… in this void.  I feel like a door.  I am there to let people through, and I am there to hold people back, but as life goes on, I see the people that I care about move on while I just swing about.  I want to be one of the people moving on.
Enter conflict…  because as I type this, I see parts of my life where I really have moved on.  I graduated college, I am successful in my career, and I am not hurting for anything that I want or need.  It is almost selfish of me to want more… but it is not in the material world that I want.  It is an emotional need.  I have always felt somewhat disconnected from my emotions…  Perhaps this is due to a tragedy in my childhood, it could be from bad experiences in school, or it could be nothing at all.  When I feel like I need to cry, I hold it in.  I am stronger than that.  I don’t need to cry.  When I need to talk, I usually start, but become so conflicted in how I feel that within 3 sentences, I have talked myself away from the problem yet the problem still exists.  It is almost a self-fulfilling curse.  I say that I want people to give to me and be there for me, but I do not allow myself to be weak.  The squeakiest hinge gets the oil, but I don’t squeak.  Now lately, I have been getting better.  I have been talking and feeling more, and I put myself out there…  I allow myself to be vulnerable, so maybe that is a start.  But I still have this desire for more…  for something to fill this void.

Anyway…  I could ramble and blog and type all night long…  but must stop.  I do feel better having typed this out. 

bp