precursor

There's a part of me that thinks I'm pretty cool.  There's a part of me that thinks I'm pretty terrible.  When I feel like I've completely blown it, someone comes along and makes me think I'm okay.  When I think I'm okay, someone comes along and makes me think I've blown it.  I'm in a constant state of transition, swapping between great and egregious, turning from someone pulled together to someone falling apart.

I'm always torn up inside.

I feel like a lot of people have had their hands in my actions and voice, especially my words.  And I struggle between listening to people I consider wiser and more experienced while still trying to stay true to myself.  When it comes down to it, I write for me.  Writing is my therapy and because of that, things are written from my perspective so naturally things will be skewed.  As much as I try to create a balance in my writing and in my thinking, things will probably always sway in a dark direction.

The fact that quite a few people can relate to what I write is why I post it online.  I could keep a handwritten journal but if my writing is beneficial to anyone, then I want to share it.  But at the same time I don't want to change my content to appease anyone.  Sure, I'd love to be more positive, would love to write about the happy things I encounter but that's just not where I am at this point.  If anything, I feel like changing my content would betray the reasons why people come to read me in the first place.  If what I was writing before was attracting readers, why should I change it to try to keep them when I might end up putting them off?

I do understand the notion of making my writing more accessible.  I need to make my writing shorter, which makes it easier to read and digest.  Shorter paragraphs.  Shorter entries.  Less negativity.  I understand but I don't want to make my writing something more than it is.  I don't want other people to do that, either.  Yeah, I talk about wanting to die and hating life but who doesn't feel that way sometimes?  I just happen to feel that way often.  And I just happen to share it while others do not.  But it's really just me venting.  No more.  No less.  If people like it then that is fantastic.  Welcome aboard.  If someone doesn't, if I'm too negative, if I make others frustrated with my brick wall doldrums, then the great thing about this website is there are hundreds more people to read.  Most are way better than mine.  And that's okay as well.

I know I have a problem with being down a lot.  I know that it can wear on people's nerves.  Believe me.  I have to interact with those kind of people on a daily basis and it's exhausting.  But I always hope my writing is less lamenting and more lyrical than the average despondent young adult male.  Yes, it's mostly negative and gets uncomfortably dark sometimes but I see it as a sense of straight forward observation rather than whiny bleak despair.  More poetic and less pathetic.  But maybe I've been wrong.  I'm sure I've turned away quite a few people with my constant barrage of bad luck behavior.  In fact, I know I have.  The funny thing is a lot of those people were no better than I was.  And less articulate in their misery.

But then I have to go back to the notion of staying true to myself.  No one has to read me.  If I went back to getting two or three notes, then that would just have to be fine because I don't want to be false and feign a certain feeling just to provide a relief to the reader.  Does that sound selfish?  I'm sorry.  But see, I get no relief myself.  You can turn me off but I can't turn off the suffering that spins in my head.  I don't particularly enjoy going over the same themes of weight and image and lacking confidence and talent but that's what stabs at me until I bleed it out in blog form.  Maybe one day I'll have written it to the point of finding peace.  Or exhaustion.  Or death.  Either way, I'll be done and it'll be nice to rest.

Although I'm fine with writing about depression in my entries, I always thought I was a pretty decent person to be around in real life but every once in a while, someone will point out that I'm negative outside of my writing.  No one wants to be around a Danny Downer but I guess I never realized how bad I was.  It's just a case of someone slapping me across the face with how dumb I am sometimes.  It often leaves a nasty bruise of embarrassment.  Now all I can think of are all the times when I possibly pushed someone away with my self-inflicted insults and attacks on my own body and behavior.  I think I've messed up a lot.

It's okay, though.  I write so I can figure that kind of stuff out.  I use it as a tool to untangle my many shortcomings and hopefully one day overcome them.  You've just caught me in the sorting phase of my fractured fallout from dying without ever having really lived to finally finding a heartbeat again and being left to deal with the ramifications of such a piss-poor existence.