The Hope of Being Understood

I'm not as thick skinned as I appear. I mock displays of sensitivity but not sensitivity itself. I hurt inside all the time and the rest of what I do is about hiding it. I think about what I must do to be perceived as normal.

Melancholic Javier Bardem

I hide everything because I never gained much by revealing anything. People tell you that talking about it can be beneficial but that hasn't been the case for me. It's beneficial for them so that they can counteract your sentiments that may be directed against them, not to empathize and understand. I've always been hurt when I reveal myself.

My hidden thoughts and pain simmering within me serve me well. Out in the open they're criticized and rebuked which causes me more pain. At least when they're inside there's hope that they would be understood if I just spoke up to the right person at the right time.

So I hide those feelings to seem strong. I'm not. I'm just resilient. I bend so as not to break and try to regain form. I'm insistent on my position but not unhinged. I insist on making people's lives better by keeping my irrational sensitivity aside.

I've tried to keep things inside in the past, but I wasn't always good at carrying out that decision. My feelings oozed out at times and burst at others. The results weren't pleasant. I got the worst of both worlds. I wasn't understood and I lost the hope of being understood. I've told myself to keep it all in no matter what and now I'm better at it. I'm better at putting on a show. It's always taken time to heal. I become the face that I pretend to be.

Displays of weakness are only appealing in a movie as the sad music plays in the background. It also helps when you're a charismatic actor who's loved even before you embody a role. When you see George Clooney or Brad Pitt crying, you don't feel sorry for them, you empathize because you know they are cool and will rebound. Because you value them, you also consider what they're feeling more seriously and less critically.

In real life it's pathetic. There's no close up, no camera zoom. Your weakness is an inconvenience in the real plot. In reality your face and each line that reflects your emotion isn't magnified. The light doesn't hit your face in a way that reflects your mood. There's no music to fill the silence surrounding your sobs and whimpers, in reality all you have are the people around trying to fill that empty silence with meaningless talk.

Sadness Descends

Sadness often descends. It feels as if it moves from the air into my head and then on to my chest and then to my belly. Why does it always descend that way? Does it want to run me into the ground? I’m not exceptionally sad, I just have a sedating sadness that will pass.

An Unexplained Sadness

There is a sadness in my own eyes that I can see but cannot comprehend. It is a result of a drift in my essence that is so far from what should have been so that all that remains is sadness. It's such a tiresome journey to walk through life with all its sadness and troubles and all what entails. There's so much wrong that cannot be made right just by one decision, there must be a multitude of them to turn things around.

I wonder what it was that first drew me to this sad and contrived way of life, was it the lack of something or was it something else. Like all my friends I realize the that as time passes chances grow fewer and in effect have done more when older than when I was younger. What does it all mean though, is there something beyond?

Sad Old Sorry Tales

It hurts to have those you cared about
and have given to turn their backs on you.
It's a sad old sorry tale of the bitter life we live.
Each time we complain we're told to grow up,
it's a sad and worn out tale to complain.

Such naval gazing it may seem to look upon your state
and curse your wretched fate
for having been given this lousy hand from life.
Grow up they say, and I say too
when words like these I see written on pages like these.

These words seem to me as virtual as the medium which they occupy,
but when at once that feeling visits you with force, you need to say it too.
You need to sound worn out and juvenile,
telling the same old tale as though you've found some profound truth.

Yes, the world is filled with many a Brutus, and we've all had our share of knives,
where is the profound truth in this?
Truth it may be, but new or profound? I think it not.

It seems to me the world tricks us sometimes
or people themselves deceive us into thinking that such is not the case of the world.
But those who stand by us ever so constantly are forgotten.
We care about those who stab us when they falter in their usual supporting love.

Yet all these are words
and words I care not about if I were to read
out of the hands of other players in this life,
yet it's our right to curse our fate
and look upon the world with dismay.
It's our right to ramble and victimize ourselves
as though none of those who read have been wronged as much as we.
And men like me will mock these tired old tales,
not for being above them, but for having experienced them all too well.
I fail to sympathize even with myself in normal times
when thoughts like these don't visit me.
How then can I expect to sympathize with others
whose naval gazing seem more shallow than my own?

It's a sad old sorry tale of being wronged, forgotten, neglected or rejected.
Yet when I think of those who have offended me with these wrongs,
my cocky arrogance and snobbery are humbled and set aside
and my heart lets out a sigh, nostalgic in essence emotional as a child's.

I think on them with sorrow and joy,
for having given me so much, enough to hurt me this much.
I think upon them with love and fond memories
and regret that is not my own.
A regret with no guilt from me,
a sad and happy thought that is hard to explain.

Yes, even one like me can stop my self mockery for a time
and realize that behind these sad old sorry tales of bitterness,
there is some truth to be felt not known.

Shallow Gal

I find difficulty relating anecdotes which don't have any added value to them. I can only be sarcastic and angry and I have no sense of humor that satisfies me, generally because I find others' humor not so satisfying either. The things that go through my head are not as trivial as thinking how absurd women look in nineties tights, I mean they do go through my head but I don't feel the need to share it with the world. I would have loved to be funny, but somehow the way my mind operates does not allow me to reproduce the humor going through my system.

In any case, it goes to show that I’m one of these people who think about life, abstract values, and emotions and like to analyze things to get a better understanding of life and so on and so on and the bla bla bla that come along with all that. This may seem a bit of work for others who have got life figured out easily without need for this mumbo jumbo, but it doesn’t work for me. I like to explore the gloomy side and the alternate side of life.

I think it would be a blessing to be what they call ‘shallow’, which is taking things at face value rather than trying desperately to dig down to the mantel and core. It would be an easy life to think I got myself figured out and others around me figured out too, but I’m just not built that way. ‘Shallow Gal’ said I have issues and that I’m disturbed or something of that nature and I actually cracked up.. I can’t reproduce the humor of why I laughed so hard, but perhaps because I found Shallow Gal too shallow and because she just doesn’t know much about life, she thinks anyone who gives things a second thought must be disturbed.

Well after I thought of ways to tear down Shallow Gal on account of her superficiality and her naïve yet satisfactory understanding of the world (her satisfaction that is), I decided that maybe I’m only making myself feel better thinking that I’m somehow better just because I care about the dark and gloomy side of the world. Maybe I’m just incapable of being what they call shallow and my consolation for certain miseries I encounter on account of that is that I think of others as wanting or ‘shallow’. I mean if you can get by and be happy without going through the dark thoughts I go through, then I think you should be commended rather than mocked.

What do I know, I might be disturbed indeed, but at the rate the world is treating everyone, I’m guessing I’m not alone out there. Many may have no clue what I’m going on about, but some others may know that this has become our lives, to think of something further and look for something deeper.

This is who I am, after a party, I can’t just write about the scandals that happened and who was too drunk to do what and other bizarre incidents which I find interesting by the way. I would write about solitude, about that most lonely feeling you can get while you’re in a crowd. I would write about how you’re left with yourself even though you mingle. I would write about how I’m so conscious of myself when I’m drunk and realize I’ve been so isolated from the crowd around because I’m trapped in a shell called me. That’s what I would write, but I suppose others would write about a man drooling over them or an insanely funny drunk conversation.

I don’t think it has anything to do with being better, it’s just how people are built... I’d rather live miserably in what I perceive is the truth, than live happily in a lie... That about sums up my build. I'm not saying that others are only happy because they're living in a lie, I'm just saying that I personally find many truths a cause of some sort of misery and I'd rather continue digging them up than discarding them along with their misery.

I think if I were 'shallow' I would find such things utterly boring and if I were as they say ‘deep’ I would find this utterly useless because people want to search for themselves perhaps, but maybe for those few who have similar thoughts it might be interesting since they feel understood.

I write about what it feels like to be forgotten as a person and unappreciated, but why should popular people think of these things? I think about outcasts and people who are not socially capable of making good friends. I think about people who conform to society so much that they forget to be themselves and lose any natural chance they had to be special. I think of people fighting inner battles with themselves to change something that only sheer will can change. I think about how to take the fall in the way that best makes you strong. I think about how certain ideas that are generally accepted can be wrong. I think about what I can do to correct whatever misguided perceptions I may have.

Yes… all in all I think I’m just disturbed rather than dark or deep or any of that, I’ve seen some of life’s darker side and have no choice but to continue dealing with it. Would I have been less disturbed if my life was all great and perky? I don’t know. Would I have been Shallow Gal if things were different or is it just the way people are built? I don’t know.

Diary Entry #976

To a friend.
This is a diary entry as I would imagine someone to have written:

I arrived home to a lonely, empty flat. Not just void of other people, but also void of any furniture that gives warmth to a place. It was a cold spacious and empty apartment that reflected how I felt inside. The coldness of the walls and the uncarpeted floor made their way directly to my bones. To make matters worse, I found myself facing a mirror and staring at an almost entirely separate person from the one looking through. So I asked this person, “ Are you all that I am?” and I couldn’t stand that the answer was “yes.”

I felt like I couldn’t bear my own skin, there was a beast inside itching to claw its way out of my skin. “How can anybody stand me if I can’t stand myself?” I thought. I was trapped inside myself and I wasn’t happy.

Coming home I’m faced with the usual simple chores like taking out the trash, changing my clothes, preparing something to eat and brushing my teeth. On any other night, these simple things would not have been burdensome or even significant in the least, but tonight I was with the worst kind of company; myself.

Being unable to bear myself, each simple chore, every simple move felt lonelier than ever and burdensome as ever every second they were prolonged. I felt as if I was imploding and the beast inside me was tearing my insides.

How can I bear myself and how can others bear me; I am nothing, a big nothing and I’m trapped. There’s a cage I’m in called me and there’s nothing I can do to change me and nothing I can think of to change me.

I’m filled with irritation with myself, anger, disgust and low self esteem. Those mixed feelings that even words can’t describe run through my whole body from top to toe as if they were running through my veins along with my very own blood. I can’t bear this, I feel like I will implode or explode from the pressure of these poisons flowing through my system.

The feeling never stops, and it grows and it takes a hold of me and I’m dying to get out. The cage is closing in on me and fills me with so much negative energy that begs of me to stop existing altogether. Only trouble is that the cage itself is me. I scream out loud with all my lungs can afford but to no avail. I pull out my hair and give myself a few slaps, something shakes, but the rage inside doesn’t go.

The pressure inside my head keeps building and my veins seem like they are about to explode, the irritation is unbearable and I must do something to take it all out and end it all. I grab a knife and slash my arm with it, dark blood flows and I feel some of that rage shaken, I slash it again and I experience more pain and more red blood gushing out relieving some pressure… Through these cuts some of that horrible negative feeling has been vented out and I’m too exhausted to feel the rage with the same vehemence.

I don’t feel less alone or more loved. I feel the same abandonment and I feel the same low self worth. The only thing is that I’m now too tired and I can bear myself another night. Who knows what tomorrow may bring, but I don’t suspect it will bring me anything better; I’m condemned to being me and to a life of misfortune.