i've become a bad listener.

or maybe, realized that i've been a bad listener all along.

i guess that's why i like books and movies. books and movies still have a power to transport me to another world, and to stop all the thoughts inside my head from swirling.

the sad truth is, when people talk, i am not listening. i am thinking, already thinking, about what to say, about why they are saying what they are saying. and i trail off in so many directions that i lose the place where i came from. i snap back into conversations, feeling awkward and awful at not having anything meaningful to say, and just offer "oh," or "hmmm." (i would say "i know" but i learned long ago that there is nothing worse to say to people. really, how could anyone possibly know what you think, or how you feel? they might sympathize, but they can't really know. so i try not to say that.)

i spent a lot of time being quiet when i was younger. now that i am home, i have a tendency to retreat into reticence again. one-word answers and lots of sleep.

and my feet and hands are always so cold.

i want to write about something other than myself. i want to write about other people. but i can't.

whether this is the mark of vanity or cowardice, i am not sure. perhaps a bit of both.

sometimes i think it would be so easy to retreat into my thoughts and never come out.

being home just takes something out of me, and i don't know what it is. it manifests itself in little things, my daily reluctance to answer the telephone or the doorbell, my stiff declines to invitations by my mother and sister to do "things," my constant nagging fear that i have done or may soon do something wrong to upset the frail balance in which my family coexists.

i think the heart of the matter is that i am lazy. i am lazy and i do not want the expectations of others. i do not want to put effort into much of anything, because here nothing tangible inspires me. that sounds sadder than i mean it to. i just wonder what i do out of a groomed sense of obligation, and what i do because i really want to. the lines are blurry these days.

i'm afraid that my desire for love has turned me into a selfish person. i second-guess myself at every turn.

i read this article about being an "event maximizer" or some other psycho-babble gibberish. how some people expect so much out of everything, they are constantly disappointed and live in a state of permanent disappointment. the end of the article said something like... wait, i want to look it up, i don't want to misquote it. here it is: "It may be cliche to say, "Don't expect too much, and you won't be disappointed" -- but it is good advice to follow if you want to be more satisfied with your life."

ohhh, how that made my blood boil. an article telling millions of people in new york city to fucking stop dreaming, to accept mediocrity. all that murphy's law bullshit which has haunted me and this house from the beginning of my life, all that "waiting for the other shoe to drop." enraged, i began to draft a letter in my head back to this unscrupulous and oversensationalized news magazine.

but for a moment i thought, maybe the article is right. and that moment of weakness, that hesitation, scared me as it never had before. satisfaction with life. i had never really contemplated it as an attainable goal. it's hard to achieve when one is one's own hardest critic. for whatever reason, i have kept satisfaction always just out of my grasp. i have touched it a few times, to be sure-- that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. but to reward myself with the actual prize of it... well, if you'll forgive me for saying so, i just feel eternally unworthy.

so my thoughts bumble around to the fact that i'm a bad listener, and i conjure up some other need to work on.

i wish that i could stop psychoanalyzing myself, and i wish i could stop being torn between the desire not to care and my own freakishly persistent perfectionism.

but until then, i suppose i'll be forced to keep writing about myself. it's never my intention, i promise.

last entry next entry