sdcjournal

If the only time i’ve stongly felt anything in the last 10 years has been torment or depression, then how much of that hell will ihave to go through if i “reconnect”

I’ve been trying to bring the catch 22/stuck paths up to my conscious mind, but they’ve been staying tauntingly out of reach. time will tell.

Disconnect
Joy
Integration
Expectations
Cool Apathy
Potential
Coasting
Shutdown
Reboot
Spoiled
Credit
Appreciation

Why does it feel like cheating if i were to enjoy my life and my successes…like somehow it would be unfair… to whom?

or do I already know the answer to that question?

How much is this holding me back from “raising my numbers”

Does fun = hubris and therefore met with a similar tragedian fate?

Or am I screwing myself over because seeing me happy would make him happy and I dont want to give him the satisfaction? Or make him think that growing up in the environment I did didn’t affect the outcome, or that I’m where I am “because of” rather than “in spite of”.

I guess I just dont know how to address the “what you did 10 years ago really hurt me for a long time” without it seeming like… not old news, but something that is no longer currently relevant, since our relationshp is different now.

It seems like not only do i have a block about confronting my dad about stuff, i have a block against taking steps to proactively improve my immediate happiness, which is a double-block.

Though he has reacted a bit differently than how i’ve expected the last couple of times, so maybe things have changed a bit organically on their own or its not as big of a conversation as i’ve built it up in my head to be… we just haven’t been able to speak freely for so long that i guess anything would be big at this point.

Sometimes I feel like I can start and then the feeling doesn’t stay, like tonight I was able to share that I’d seen the new Shrek movie and chitchatted about it for a bit. Theres just so much weight attached to Talking To My Dad that sometimes it feels comically inflated, like an elephant in a room.

Maybe its become a scapegoat for being proactive on my own… or maybe thats a copout to avoid conflict. hooray for circular thinking.

I also managed to give Alex a talking-to that I wish someone had given me in october. She’s doing the “everyhing sucks i stay at home and am miserable and my job is so miserable” so i made the point that if your job is the only thing in your life, every little thing is gonna be that much more magnified because its a much greater percentage of your life than if you had other things going.

She’s also afraid of getting rid of old friends that she’s quite obviously sick of and outgrown (she never has fun talking to them and always ends up complaining to me about them) so i told her she can’t make new friends as long as she has the old ones because they’re just there to enforce old habits andyou can’t grow that way.

So I basically confronted her after her general excuses “well i dont have anyone else and my job sucks and blahblahblabh” and said “Alex…what are you going to do TODAY to improve your life?” She had mentioned earlier in the conversation that she was curious about taking a German class so she could talk to her girlfriend better, but hadn’t done anything about it…so she thought maybe she could find out about some German classes, and i suggested she take a first step of reaching out to her old school and seeing whether they had anything to offer, and that being all for today…that change can seem so huge that we forget that we can do it in small steps and that small action is better than no action at all…

so I hope i helped…in any case she’s lucky to have me.

Stuff is in flux except for work. I’ve been cleaning and cleaning…gotten rid of a ton of stuff…i feel like i should have been taking before and after pictures

theres a lot of stuff now thats half empty…its a weird feeling, seeing shelves that have been full for years and years suddenly empty…disconcerting… i thought it would be a good change…its kinda bittersweet…like, i dont know where to look anymore…shapes are changing in my field of vision… stuff is emptying out and i’m trying to resist the urge to fill it up again.

Stuff is comforting…the absence of stuff, therefore…

didn’t think it’d be difficult…

not stopping me from doing it though, i just wish i had more of an idea of what was going to happen after this cleaning is done…

dad, while he has yet to object to my cleaning rampage, managed to sneak in a subtle comment that “i was only keeping the old tax records for selling the place”. bah. always got to be something hanging over my head… oh well…someday i’ll have the snappy responses down.

blah…change is the worst, except for the alternative