one by one by one by one.

Wow, lamest day of doing nothing. I spent literally the whole day picking up random things in my room, watching snippets of whatever was on TV, and sleeping. I actually pulled off some lucid dreams, though, so I guess that was the most exciting part.

I've been a bit discouraged lately because it seems as though I'm not making enough money to get back on track. Also, I am loathe to admit this, but I feel very lonely right now. I guess I always do, and I make it hard on myself when it comes to improving that part of my life. Still, for some reason or other it's become fairly unbearable this week. Whether or not I let myself acknowledge the emptiness, I can always tell when things are particularly bad because I start talking to myself alot, and I go into obsessive mode. My obsessive mode-- clinically obsessive, by the way, which has led me and one of my one-time therapists to wonder if I'm more bipolar than anything else, but I digress-- is outrageous and relentless, kind of like eating a meal that's too big for you. You ever get the idea that you have to finish the whole damn thing? That's what it's like. I'll start in on something that's charmed me or made me curious, and before I know it I have to read/know/understand/have all there is to it, even when I'm bored of it or would prefer to be doing something else. I'm guessing it's something akin to crazy old ladies with their pets, just anything to fill the stupid emotional void that we all have when we have unresolved issues or feel invalidated/unaffirmed.

Anyway. I'm constantly shrinking myself, trying to find new levels of honesty, and alot of this comes through prayer and writing. The good thing is, I think I've figured out what may be my "main" problem. I don't believe that people can work out all of their issues on their own, but I think I'm a particularly relentlessly thoughtful (see: obsessive) person, and that some breakthroughs are possible between me and me. Not that I'll know what to do with them when I crack the code, but cracking the code is at least a starting place.

So yes, the thing I've been thinking about has been occuring to me in parts, starting sometime last year when I realized I've been feeling so long a special kind of separation from people, and that I expected it to go away in my college years, but it only (kind of) got worse. It's not social ineptitude, because I can be very socially capable when I chose to be (not often, I like being by myself, but I can fake it), and generally (and I hope I'm not bragging here) to know me is usually to like me. I'm a very self-deprecating person and that makes people feel comfortable, and I'm intelligent and informed and nonjudgemental enough for most people to enjoy my conversation. So it's not that. It's a sense of bitterness and sadness that I have, sort of. A frustration at the lack of security I ultimately feel and this peculiar thing that I feel is blocking me from living happily.

I think the problems is that I feel like I've been "blocked" for so long that all I can do is think of that rather than move forward and get over that block, but the block itself is all of this disappointment that's just grown into a monster. It started with rejection or something like that, and it's just become this huge thing, and I keep hoping that some event is going to destroy it but it doesn't happen (and he stays, but he leaves the next day, as paul mccartney would say). And it makes me angry. And what is it, really? Strangely (or not), the films In America and Ghost World have helped me zero in on it, and Freaks and Geeks has also contributed to my grasp.

Please-- if you're the type to roll your eyes at this self-exploration please don't read anymore, because it is sort of cliche but that doesn't make it any less true to me, and writing about it (I hope) will ultimately help me.

The thing is, I think, is that... ugh, I hate saying this, but I think it's that my childhood was cut really short. That's hard enough for some kids, but it was extremely difficult for me because of my family dynamics and my own nature, which has always been a bit on the obsessive/over-thoughtful/eccentric side. I was exposed to my parents struggling to make things work/keep us alive when I was pretty young, and that was accompanied by moving a good deal, being exposed to alot of death, depression and mental illness in my family around the time my grandfather died, and then all of the medical problems of my sister and the affect that had on my parents. My dad closes off while still being present in body while my mother is frankly an immature person who saw in me more of a friend than a daughter. While my dad might have been affirming enough for some kids, I was always very wise and sensitive to behavior, and I could always see that my dad complimented without really seeing and gave gifts without realizing what was worth giving (which is strange because my father is sweet and could never be called a cold person, he just... doesn't get with the program). So on the one hand I felt invalidated by my dad and depended on by my mother, and gradually my childhood vanished in smoke. I put it aside consciously, even, accepting my place in my friends' life as a maternal figure.

Because of who I was, I always felt like a pretty rejected girl. And THERE's where you have it-- the sad, completely lame truth is that behind most anti-normal people are people that have tried to fit in and have been rejected. As a homeschooler, you're basically rejected by the world in the first place. Or at least it used to be that way. And then, as I got older, I was further rejected by the homeschool community because I was "bad." Yes. Rejected by the rejects.

Anyway, all this to say: ever since I was eight, I think I've been waiting to finally have that life that I feel like I was supposed to have had. I was supposed to have FUN when I was a kid, and I didn't. I was supposed to be HAPPY when I was a teenager, and I wasn't. It's an unfortunate clash of expectation on my part (and optimism, always disappointment) and rejection by whoever mattered to me at the time. I was supposed to be young and fantastic after we had moved back to Ventura and finally made friends, and that's why it broke my heart so thoroughly when that didn't happen. And then came LMU, which was supposed to be amazing, but I was still so stuck in this mourning phase that I missed out.

It's probably time to accept that I can't be young. I don't know how to be. I've become very cynical because my hopes are always so high (against my better judgment) that I always feel so terribly sad when I feel things don't work out. And that's not from event to event-- it's now morphed into what is my ongoing depression. I think that's the source. I'm too discouraged about what I feel are lost years that I feel generally hopeless about the new ones, and I can no longer summon the energy for new possibilities.

Damn, but I am a headcase. I suppose what I have to do now is just plod, try my best to take things one day at a time rather than scrutinize the big picture.

but that's so exhausting. i'd rather be dreaming than living.