once bitten, twice shy.
written: 5:02 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 21, 2008

You know, it's really quite sian to be home the whole of Monday until you have to get off your ass and head to school at six for your evening class. It's a good thing I have a licence and a car to put the licence to good use; otherwise, I think I might just spontaneously implode or something.

I spent the weekend reading three short articles for Islamic Law and I must say that I don't remember half of what I read.

I also felt damn shitty last night and somehow it's got to a point where whatever relief I feel after the bout of shittiness has passed seems to be temporary at best. Because I still feel a bit of that shittiness now, and as much as I'd like to take Kyle's MSN advice about enjoying life and whatnot, I just don't seem to be able to find a way to do that.

You know, I suspect that I'd be a lot moodier than I currently am if I didn't forcibly stop myself from thinking about many, many things that I really ought to be thinking about. Like, for instance, the fact that I've been using the same password for every single online account I've signed up for for the past ten years. But it's not the fact of the singularity of the password that matters, but the fact that it has been ten years. To put it bluntly? That makes me fucking old. And from that realisation springs so many different issues that, for the sake of my sanity and happiness - whatever this means, really - I refuse to think about.

When would we stop revisiting the past, and why can't we stop? It should be easy in the face of realisations that it doesn't mean jack to you anymore, and that none of it should have meant anything in the first place. But sometimes, the enormous and glaring stupidity of your decisions and the gross chemical imbalance that gave rise to those decisions really just make you want to scream and shout and rant and cry. It's not about the shattered promise anymore, but about you, all the shit you chose to do to yourself, and ultimately, it's about the difficulty of taking responsibility for your own (stupid-ass) actions.

It's so hard reconciling your present with your past, let alone your future. Maybe it isn't enough that I've got one foot out of the door; maybe the fact that I still have the other one stuck where it should no longer belong is the sole cause of all these feelings of disorientation and displacement. Will I ever come to terms? I don't know, really. Maybe not, but even then, does it matter, should it matter, why should it matter? The past is dead and buried, isn't it?

I wish, at times, that there were somebody on whom I could pin all of this, a convenient scapegoat with which I could use to escape liability. But the truth of the matter is, whatever unhappiness that my past conduct has caused me is the product of my own doing. And since I always pride myself on being more discerning and intelligent than the average female person, the burden of a momentary lapse in judgement, or a misjudgement, or simply a shocking oversight of a situation I thought I had under control, has to fall squarely on my own shoulders. And there's really no one with whom I'm able to share this burden, and even if there existed such a person, I don't think I want to do that. The Band-Aid has to be ripped off, not replaced over and over and over again. That much, at least, still rings true to me.

Is this living life, then, the stuff that epic novels about meaning and moments so life-altering that they burn a hole in your memory are made of? Because if every transient moment of pure, unbridled exhilaration that makes you feel invincible and immortal is going to be followed by probably a lifetime's worth of confusion and scars, then I'd rather just have my life boring and pallid and bland. Ignorance, after all, is bliss.

The question is, how do you go back? How do you un-see, un-know things, how do you cleanse your heart of its scars in a way that doesn't involve building an iron cage around it? And why is it that you can't bring yourself to move forward, or want to move forward, or want to aspire to want to move forward, when you have every reason in the world to do so, and no reason not to?

before sunrise // before sunset


Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010