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2002-05-06 - 4:07 p.m. There is no new material in this entry beyond the hyphen below. This is just all the stuff I moved over to another diary when I decided to split this one in two. I basically decided it would be too difficult to reintegrate it into the places where it ought to go, so I'm just putting it all together here in one big, ugly mess. In other news, I've picked a name for my diary, but I haven't actually set it up yet. I'm going to try and do some actual designing (gasp!) before I open it up, so it'll look all purty and stuff. So, in spite of what I said in the last entry, there is no new diary yet, but there will be one soon - and will be announced in the next entry, which will be the final one for this diary. - Overwhelming guilt is crushing me. I am scared and anxious, but still quietly hopeful. This doesn't have to last forever; in fact, it cannot last forever. I just hope that it happens soon. Planning an escape overseas, or something. Planning an escape. Trying to engineer an incident. Should I get drunk and tell her? I don't know. I don't know what I'll do afterwards, either. Is every relationship I have going to end this badly? If so, maybe I should stay single for ever after. Oh, oh, damn. Damn me and my worthless gutless hide. If only I'd taken the chance the last time. She's never going to confront me like that again. She must know. She must already know. Doesn't she care how I suffer? Is it really that bad for her? - Two things happenned today that I want to write about: Went for a walk to think about things. In the middle of an orgy of self-pity, I thought to myself, "I don't want to live anymore". As I did, I walked past a tree and at the base of it there was a dead possum. I was quite surprised to see it there, but the timing made me think perhaps I was seeing it there for a reason. Not that I think that "everything happens for a reason", but this seemed like a rather pointed coincidence. I was forced to admit that I wasn't really jealous of the possum. I do want to live; just not the way I'm living right now, for preference. The second thing. It was very hot today. Coming back from aforesaid walk, I came across a book sale. I went in to browse, and for whatever reason I started sweating buckets. Sweat came pouring down my face and gathered on my nose, where I would reach up to gather it on my fignertips, then lick it off. I can't explain why, but sweating like this was tremendously pleasurable. The heat was oppressive and I was dying for something to drink, but the actual sensation of sweating felt marvellous. It's the first time in a while that I've enjoyed a physical sensation like that. - I think my girlfried might know about diaryland. If she's at all computer savvy and/or suspicious there's a chance she might look at my diary here. Damn. I might have to delete my account. Hmm. Is there an easy way out of this dilemma? - Yesterday I tried to break up with my girlfriend. It didn't work out as planned, but things have definitely changed. I'm not living with her anymore, which makes for a huge change. And I've promised her that I will try to clear up some of my psychological mess. Have to keep that promise. Don't know how I will. At the moment I'm reading a book by Alice Miller and I'm planning to go and see a homeopath or a kinesiologist or something, to try and deal with my problems. It's funny how easy it is to get along in life, to be really doing well and so forth, and at the same time to be a complete and utter fuck up in every part of life that actually means anything. Hmm. - Well, life is completely different now, although it's kind of the same too. Listening to "History" by Loudon Wainwright III had me in tears, and absolute mess, but I felt much better afterwards. Also I've been reading Alice Miller, and I realize two important things: 1) My parents were fucking awful to me from the time I was a small child until I first moved out of home. 2) I don't hace to forgive them for this. They deserve my hatred, and I can't live my life unless I really expereince my own feelings. Otherwise it's all just a fucking waste, I may as well be a robot. I have to express my feelings _when_ I feel them or I'll just go back into my repressed state again. Oh, and my programming efforts are yielding some results. My thesis is making progress, but not much of it. - So, I've finished the work that I was so worked up about. Yet I still feel like the guillotine dangles above my neck... Mum is upset about us drinking the wrong wine. My big sister is scared of what mum is going to do tomorrow. Dad is indifferent to the whole thing. I hate my parents. They're lowlife shit. If they had such fucking awful parents, they should've taken it out on them. Why do we have to suffer? The fucking selfish pigs. One day I will take it up with them. "Things I've done make my dreams go bad, like Borstal boys coming home to dad." - Richard Thompson - I'm dying inside, dying dying dying... Is there anything inside this hollow shell that once was me? "What an old dry shell I am, Meet the uninhabited man..." - Richard Thompson Maybe if I could just once get really angry at my mother and shout at her and tell her how much I really hate her then I would become a real person again. But I can't, how can I do something like that, I am too weak and cowardly to do anything but be friendly and polite and nice, what a nice guy I am... It would be better to be a monster, a thing with no conscience, capable of any evil, any selfishness... Then I would exist. Instead I am a sham, a thin veneer of pleasant lies, and everyone likes me but no-one would even notice if I suddenly fell down and died... - Oh wow! Life certainly springs the surprises from time to time. Yesterday I got an email from K, someone I worked with at the cinema about 2 1/2 years ago. We were quite close, in a funny sort of way, and the last time I saw her we actually got on to each other, and if it hadn't been for me moving to Canberra something might have come out of it... And she's in a play (she's an actress) that I'm going to see today. This will be the first time I've seen her in so long? Why am I so excited about this? I don't know - partly I think because she seemed so happy to be in touch with me again. It was kind of flattering to think that somebody actually remembered me enough after all this time to actually be kind of thrilled at the idea of seeing me... Actually, take out the "kind of" - it was very flattering. Plus, I don't know, she's just someone that I really like and can talk to easily, and I've drifted from so many of my friends lately that it just makes me hope that maybe in her I have a friend that I can relate to on terms that, well, I hate to sound like a sixties throwback but she's someone who was always "on my wavelength". It's kind of scary though - but in a good way. I just need to wait a few more hours - trying to do work but it's hopeless when I'm this geed up... - Oh god. How am I supposed to cope? When I saw K. in her play last night, she played piano and sang a song and it was just amazing. Then afterwards we talked and talked and it was so exciting and it felt so... alive. I don't know, I was just totally there with her, and we were really communicating beautifully, and she agreed to be interviewed for my thesis... and then when I walked away (she had another show to do) I thought... that was everything and more that I could have hoped it might be. But, I, I feel scared now. Am I falling in love? I mustn't, I know, while I am still in this counselling with A. And she probably doesn't like me that way, anyway - it's a rare woman that does. But I am starting to hear the first strains of a yearning, I feel like I am bending like a willow, like a fountain... "You're the one that I've wanted so long But then again I might be wrong You look just right in the pale moonlight But let me turn the headlights on..." - Richard Thompson - It's getting worse. K. wasn't there when I called tonight. Maybe pretending to be interested in me was a cruel hoax. She gave me a fake telephone number. The only person who's ever sincerely liked me was Thuy, and she's gone to England and now I'll never see her again. She probably actually didn't like me. Everyone hates me. They talk about me behind my back and say what they really think. They think that I am too "high and mighty". They want to be sick every time I talk. I disgust people with my ridiculous appearance and foul smell. In wishing for my own death I only give conscious expression to the unconscious wishes of everyone around me, including my own parents. Perhaps my siblings love me. But they are very unhappy people too. J. just wanted me because I am pliable. I was willing to pretend to be whatever she wanted - a doormat, a piece of furniture. How can you love a thing? Why would you want to turn someone that you love from being a person into being an object? Maybe I should stop reading "Nausea" - I think it is affecting my state of mind. - That fucking traitorous bitch! How dare she call me at home! How dare she try to pressure me! "Why don't you think about it for 24 hours?" Fuck you! Aaaaargh! Sorry, I'm just really fucking angry because the woman who's counselling me and J. over the relationship breakup just called me at home and tried to manipulate me into joining a "men with depression" therapy group. OK, she wanted to suggest it to me, she thought it might be a good idea, that's OK, but I said no and so she pushed harder. That's just not fucking right. I expect that kind of shit from evangelists in the street because that's the only way they can hope to get anything across. But this woman is supposed to be fucking counselling me, she's supposed to be completely fucking trustworthy, and she tried to manipulate me, she tried to make me feel guilty about the fact that I wasn't keen on the idea. Well, that's just it - I'm not going back to counselling with her, and I don't care what J. thinks. I'm sick of the whole business anyway. They're just more people on the side of parents against children, on the side of the powerful against the powerless. Why should I trust them? They tell me that my lack of trust is a sign that I'm sick, but that's just more fucking manipulative crap. There are people who can and people who can't be trusted, and part of coping with life is figuring out who belongs to which category. I do trust some people, a lot, completely - there are people who I would tell anything to, to whom I would entrust my life. But why should some fucking cold-hearted "therapist" (am I only one who's noticed that this word is made up of two others - the rapist?) get to belong to this group by virtue of the fact that they're going to tell you you're crazy if you don't? I fucking hate them, I hate the whole bloody lot of them, they're all totally disingenuous anyway because if they were in the least bit honest they'd fucking admit that they have problems too, instead of acting as though their Freudian psychobabble somehow admits them into a special club of happy, well-adjusted people who don't have any problems... Everyone has problems, and I'm not talking about discovering that your shoelace is undone. The world is a cruel, vicious, deeply unfair place for virtually all of us - living isn't about getting out of it, it's about learning to live in it despite it being so fucked up. But the first step toward that is being honest about the way it is - not by being comforted. What are the ethics of comforting someone, anyway? I think usually comforting someone is just a way of making yourself feel more comfortable by smothering the sincere misery of another person - "there, there, it's not so bad as all that..." - when what they really need is to feel that pain to the fullest extent - and if you want to help them the best thing you can do is try to feel it with them. But how many people are brave enough to do that? Not bloody many. Definitely my counsellor - make that former counsellor - isn't one of them. "Sometimes I feel this whole world is one big prison yard - some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards" - Bob Dylan - Oh god oh shit why is this happening who am I - I don't know but I always used to believe I was a good person now I realise that I am a fucking arsehole, why am I so weak that I cannot tell her that it will never, ever, ever happen. Shit, shit, shit. Doesn't this guilt ever end? I tried to tell her the truth and she used emotional blackmail to force me to 'try'. Well, guess what, I was trying, but it doesn't matter how I try nothing will make me something other than I am, that's where you're all mistaken, you think that I am a broken thing that can be repaired, but I am not, I cannot - I am a mosquito that lives by drinking the blood of others, and the only way to make me stop is to squish me. That's the only way you're going to "fix" me. Whatever the fairy tales might say, a frog is a frog, kiss or no. I have to prove that I am not a frog. I am going to work really hard and be really brilliant with my thesis and win the university medal and then everyone will love me, I will get money and adoration and respect and my musical talent will magically blossom from the stunted fungus that it is into something beautiful and wondrous, and women will happily agree to put up with me in spite of all my failures and inconsistencies and hypocrisies, and I will be able to go to thailand and live by the river drinking cocktails and dreaming of sleep... ...or rather, I will get a second, and have to pay tuition for the PhD which I don't want to do but will immediately commence anyway. I have been thinking lately how I am attracted to M. I feel guilty about it, but it's just a fantasy, I tell myself - imagining myself as being able to help other people who are miserable and fucked up makes me feel marginally less miserable and fucked up myself. - There's a childhood game that goes by various names... it involved running through some area, past people who try to tag you, to reach "bar" - when you get to "bar" you are safe. For some reason, when playing this game, I remember being filled with genuine terror, as though this were not some children's game, but a genuinely dangerous pursuit - and I remember the tremendous feeling of relief I had when I reached bar. Today I feel like that. After having spent two hellish weeks trying to force myself to write a first draft of the first chapter of my thesis, I finally managed to get about 5000 words into more or less serviceable shape in time for my appointment with Clive today. Now I just have to face J. tomorrow; in the last week two different people have told me that I need to bluntly tell her that it's over for good and that I'm never going to get back with her. I tried explaining that I'd almost said exactly that, but they basically said I was piss-weak and that almost wasn't good enough; I was going to have to spell it out in letters of fire ten feet tall. J.L. said that I was being cruel by not doing so. Well, maybe I am, I had to agree, although how I'm going to make it clearer than I already have without being cruel I don't know. They're not the ones who have to look at her face as her hopes and dreams for the future are crushed forever. Fuck I hate myself. Why did I ever give her such expectations of me? Even if I were strong enough to stay with her I would never have what it would take to justify such loyalty and faith to me - even after all the fucking rotten things I've done. I try to tell myself that it's just her unhappiness, that she is clinging to me because she has nothing else to cling to - but that doesn't exactly make me feel less guilty about telling her that it's really all over for good. What a useless piece of shit I am. - Just finished watching "La Dolce Vita". It's a great film, but very disturbing. I've seen quite a few films which have a sort of morality-play story about them, that goes something like this: Young, naiive hero goes to the big city to find out about life. He gets caught up in some kind of big, wild party that at first seems wonderful and exciting. However, bad things happen which make everything turn sour, until our hero realises that the party has to end sometime. If it's a tragedy, the hero realises this too late, and everything ends disastrously. If it's a comedy, he manages to win the girl and run away with her to a better, simpler, more honest life. However, in "La Dolce Vita", it seems like a question is posed against this sort of morality play: What happens if the party never has to end? What if our hero never quite ends in tragedy or rises to happiness - what if he stays stuck in delirium forever? Is it a terrible or a wondeerful thing? Or a dull thing? Would it really be 'the sweet life'? There are some other ways of reading the movie - Marcello is a child who can never truly grow up and love himself and others because his father was never there for him, was always away chasing women - even as an adult Marcello is desperately trying to persuade his father to spend a little time with him - but I guess that interests me less. Yesterday I told J. that it was really over for good, that I will never get back together with her. It wasn't quite Marcello and Emma calling each other worms and suffocators, but it was pretty close. I just tried to explain to her that being so dead inside and having no feelings except guilt and self-hatred made it difficult for me to accept someone else's love. I think she accepted that OK. I still feel awful about it, but I'm told it was the right thing to do. I just hope she has someone she can lean on at the moment; I think she doesn't want to talk to J.L. because J.L. told her this would happen, and now J. thinks J.L. will tell her "I told you so." "Please don't pass me by Please don't pass me by For I am blind, but you, you can see Oh I've been blinded, totally Please don't pass me by." - L. Cohen
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