13 February 2010

I found one of my old diaries this week.

It’s mostly from 2001, but there’s one entry dated 2003. My fake-whiny-depressive-emo years. Yeah, i was one of those kids. Even if i’d written every day, i doubt i’d have any accurate records of that time of my life, because i was busy making every problem i had out to be a big deal. To re-read any of my writings, i had the worst life ev-ar and nothing i did would ever make it any better.

I actually don’t feel particularly bad about this. Yeah, if i could tell my seventeen-year-old self anything, it’d probably be something like ‘Oh, quit whining,’ but what teenager doesn’t have an over-dramatic, over-emotional, my parents are so horrible and nobody will ever understand me and life sucks! phase? Everyone i know did. Different ages, different reactions, and some have quite frankly never grown out of it, but everyone went through it.

My rather poor choice of how to handle the Over-Dramatic Years consisted of picking at every problem outside of my control until they eclipsed all the problems i could control, making my life out to be one big dramatic mess. I knew even back then it was a load of bullshit, but at the time this made me feel better – or at least i thought it did: ‘Look at my awesome self, managing to handle all these horrible disasters. Okay, so i’m not actually doing anything with my life yet, but give me a break, look at all the stuff preventing me from even managing the bare necessities!’

I thought i was proving myself to be strong. In reality i was proving myself to be weak – too weak to solve any problems on my own, to do anything but roll over and blame everyone and everything else for my problems. Self-deception of the most irritating form.

Actually, the really irritating bit is i’m starting to slip into those old patterns of self-deception again. You’d think i’d have learned my lesson, and i have, to a certain extent: i’ve settled on ‘content’ instead of ‘miserable’ this time around. I even occasionally poke ‘happiness’ with a stick. ‘But, but, but, i can’t do What-i-Want X because i don’t have enough money and i can’t get more money at work because of Problem Y and i can’t get more money outside work because of Problem Z…’

Quit yer bellyachin’, Emo Sherry.

random other stuff…