October 08, 2011
01:05
My father keeps emailing me stuff about Steve Jobs' death. Actually, while looking through my email, a lot of stuff he sends seems to be about death.
My stomach is turning thinking about death.
In one of the articles, Jobs is quoted as saying, �death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life�s change agent.�
I'm thinking about what the goth said, and how it makes me feel as if she has no faith in me. And how another person before essentially said the same thing, how these people think I wallow in misery, how I crave misery.
I think I might be punishing myself, I don't know. Or maybe I just feel helpless. I don't appreciate their accusations. It has taken me a long time, but if I believe what they tell me, I may as well kill myself. They think I will never change. I may as well be dead, then. But I believe there will be change. It is my faith, my religion. It is slow and frightening. I fear more deaths before change.
I have to believe that change is possible, since it seems I keep losing other people. And their beliefs in me.
Goth rephrased it, as if she felt I have great potential and wishes I'd see that in myself.
Maybe if I weren't a negaholic I'd focus on that aspect of what she said instead.
A mutual friend kind of convinced me the goth doesn't like me at all, and everything she does is chicanery. But I don't think that's true, either.
But I tend to fall on the side that believes the worst. It's harder for me to accept that the goth likes or liked me, and that it is simply complicated by other facets of her personality that find me difficult to apprehend.
It's easier to accept defeat.
She probably does like me and is attracted to me.
I feel stupid even saying that. Typing it.
One time she said she couldn't stop thinking about me the past year or so or maybe more. Then the mutual acquaintance said goth said the same thing almost to someone else.
And kept beating it into my head that everything this girl says is a lie.
I err on the side of paranoia.
Because when I'm deceived, it won't hurt as much.
She probably has thought of me, though I doubt she really thought of me that much. But it doesn't matter what I doubt, because I simply don't know, and ultimately it doesn't really matter.
But she kissed me, and she slept with me, and in the morning there wasn't even a hint of bitterness on her lips. And in the car ride to her home that night before, she told me how she was always attempting a form of suicide when she drank as I held her hand. And it all felt real.
And I doubt everything because of everything that she said after. And because of what the other person said, the third party.
That quote by Jobs was followed by another:
�Don�t let the noise of others� opinions drown out your own inner voice."
He's right. Of course he is. And I have been letting my voice get drowned out constantly. The self-doubt I've experienced is all me trying to temper my ego by listening to others. It's time, it's been time, for me to listen to myself. I know I wrote this same thing, something similar. Maybe as long ago as seven years ago. And I've been moving slowly toward it. Not to reclaim the puckishness of youth, not to reclaim anything because nothing can be reclaimed, but to find the new form of self-belief. I deserve beautiful things. I deserve a beautiful life. Lately I have been feeling more like I believe these things I say to myself.
My friend feels like I'm still in a cocoon. I believe her, too. But I guess it matters more if I believe me. I think there will be an accelerated pace when I no longer live with my mother.
I hope it is soon, I think it will be.
I hope I move faster than death. I am tired of seeing death take everything away while I stagnate.
I suppose part of the mistake. I feel. Is seeing it as if I said it seven years ago and it's not a promise I've followed up on. The mistake is not seeing that the followup has been happening all this time. That I have been crackling open. That my wings will not come out of me fully spread one morning, but have been spreading more and more, tearing through the dried out past and becoming bigger in imperceptible and nearly inconceivable ways.
And it embarrasses me again to write that. And maybe someday soon, I will be able to write things of that kind and not feel the slightest embarrassed, because I will love myself. And I will trust myself.
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