2005-01-28 - 11:46 p.m.

sometimes i love my neighborhood. i just closed down the new healthy cafe writing. then walked past this building that pretends to be a church, but has become a shell that holds activities that tend to be more spiritual than pulpit. tonight there was drumming and happiness wafting out. celebration. hippys talking by their subaru's in the street. next i walk by the new little house that's been converting into an meditation center. koreans, buddhists, taoists. the sweet smell of something new blooming saturating the air as i pass the kids playground by the daycare. there is a calm here.

finally, i'm feeling better.

i feel like i've been hell bent on ruining myself for the last couple of days or weeks. once i really get going, it's hard to stop. once i already feel bad, then i just feel like i need to lash myself for it all.

i wouldn't trade yesterday for anything. i've learned so much. man having lizard there. i've never let soemone do that. it taught me how to receive. how to let someone just love me in a time where i really needed it. it also taught me a lot about compassion. i've always been so insane about others limitations. i couldn't understand them, thinking why don't they just...why can't they...whats wrong with them...or...what's wrong with me. lizard and i were walking through the maze of the hospital when i asked, (sometimes i'm struck with severe naivity) what is the nueropyschiatric unit? is that like brain chemistry unit? she looks at me, "it's the pysch ward. the crazy hall. i've been there several times to visit my mom."

(now that's really private friends, so wrap that around only yourselves).

i vaguely knew this, but i never realized the details or what it must of been like at the ripe age of 8, 11 and 16 to visit your mom in a place like that. she edged through the details that she could and i was succombed to a total sense of compassion for her. washing. eternal. everything she's ever done, any acting out or irritating thing completely poured away and nothing but love for her and understanding stood in its place. i'm embarrassed that this didn't just come naturally. i'm stubborn and i have to really experience something to get it. otherwise i'm just a doubting tom.

it was this, combined with a comment don j said about his best friend. he said that he doesn't unload everything to him, that he knows what he can handle and doesn't give him more. this kind of gentle acceptance made an impression on me. i usually am irritated by someone not being able to handle something (like my irritation for don j at that time). thinking it's cuz of me, if they just cared enough, they could handle it, be there. but it all fit, sometimes people just can't. sometimes its cuz of what's happened to them or where they are at in their spiritual development. this has helped me in the way of acceptance and forgiveness for where i am at. ei. where i've been torturing myself, judging, hating. hating myself for being so defected, for doing the same shit behavior that i can't seem to stop the fuck from doing!! so here i am thinking about having the same love and compassion i have for liz, for myself. for the hard edges i've been through and the results that i'm living out now. stopping time.

stopping the wheels rolling over my bones.

realizing that i do the best i can, which has been very damaging at times. i'm just waking from this long stint of wildness. this wildness felt like power. constant fun, impulsive excessive affairs. i got to feel distant and uneffectable. but in truth i was causing continual caos and hurt. wanting touch, diving in, then feeling horrid after. before i was unconscious, so i'd be tossed by my own storm. now i know what it's all about, i'm waking up to these heavy stream of behavior and i'm mortified. embarrassed at the bredth of it. sad. entirely sad that i've done this to myself. mostly we are talking about the sex. although food is always a close second. this repetitive lesson i keep thinking i'll learn, learn particularly by beating myself up after hurting myself time and time again.

i remember the very first time it happened. sixteen. was with the man i've been most in love with, in a pure way. and i drunkenly slept with someone else. second person i'd ever been with and half way through, i was attacked by feelings of regret and fear and i started to cry. he didn't want to stop for my feelings. i was spiralling down. away from myself. this is where i started to seperate my body from myself and just act without emotion. now i can't hold onto myself in sex anymore. i leave. i forget. i seperate for what feels like survival. and then i can barely feel that i even did it. the is for the most part. there are exceptions as well.

it's so sinking to me. all these years man. all these years. and you've followed some of it. some of the adventure. this sense of freedom in it.

i talked in therapy about this today. i went on about how i think i just am incapable of change. that i obviously keep falling into the same pattern for over ten fucking years. how others say i've improved and i can't see it. how i just think i am giving up. that it's all useless when one doesn't change and grow. and that all i want is to make it better than when i was little and subject, captive to constant insanity and hurt. i don't want to be my mom who was convinced that the world is horrible and everything was bad and something to just brace yourself against, survive with your shoulders creping up to your ears, always tense. never enjoying. never having light. i can't be like that. i can't go from one drama to another, go from one disaster i create to another. live from a hole constantly digging up. trying to breath.

i want joy. i want to make room in my life for ease. for normalicy and hope and joy. just some fucking joy. god damn it.

i feel differently finally. but i'm afraid to own it, as if i do, then the minute i might feel good, i can also loose it and be angry at myself again. catapulting down. so i hate to admit it can be good, build on it. because the more blocks i build, the more there seems to be to toss down. insane. i realize. i'm so hard. so hard to myself and ultimately to others.

i can't anymore. i don't have time for anger. it will eat me alive. i can't be so rough and stubborn. i can't put someone on a shelf and force them to be who i need them to be. force them into a space where i can believe i'm not loved. i've got to tear down these crazy, thick walls. i can't live behind them anymore.

i am just so afraid that i can't depend on any of this sticking. i don't have a ton of evidence in my own consistency. what i've created consistency of is the pushing of myself down. yes i do have surges ahead from a genuinely good place, but it also comes from ego. to show those cruel people that i'm okay. that i'm worth something. so then i rob myself of even that, the good, pure impetus. wild.

i am feeling better tho. yesterday i had to move right ahead on some work after the biopsy.

today i actually collapsed a bit. therapy then some work and a nap that was like a sleeping beauty drugged sleep. i felt so tired and a bit sick. and i can imagine, this organ in me that regulates so much in the body was bruised and irritated. so i think i've shut down a bit today. and the progress is that i haven't beat myself up over taking the time off. i've been accepting.

i really want to make new choices for myself. ones founded on the seeds of who i want to grow up in me. ones that are gentle and loving. ones that allow me to build my own little dream empire. this life i hope for. it's just so baffeling. this great paradox of that part that wants me to live out my dream and create against all that was wrecked within me, and that part that wants to simply finish the job and ruin myself completely. it's so tangible. i thirst for both. and they just battle out within me for space. i better start deciding whom i want to win.