Monday, July 03, 2006 // 1:01 AM

for five minutes

you should know: the words only make you feel better, they don't make it okay. the words are cheap i know, oh how i've spent them, oh how i spend them, still. but at the end of the day step back and be honest with yourself, step back acknowledge your own hypocriscy, your own fallibility, your own humane-ness. step back and honestly admit at least to yourself that you might, there is a possibility that you might, have gotten every last assumption you've made about your life and what is true/important/whatever completely wrong.

no one is going to go down on one knee and beg you, it really is your life. i mean that kindly, actually, even though it doesn't seem so, because at the end of the day you are a friend and i really do want the best for you, i really do want to be there for you, like i am sure you'd be there for me. and of course it's not easy, don't be silly, i would say the same to you, were we standing in each other's shoes. you're allowed the temper tantrums, the whining fits, the panic attacks, and i really do think that's what friends are for, sometimes, just to understand, just to hear you out. but something sarabelle said to me once, that has really stuck in my head, is i think it's pointless to get upset about it if you're not going to do anything about it. well i believe there is a lapse time, actually, of self pity, that a person can reasonably be allowed, to vent and et cetera, but it is a slippery slope, and really, eventually, pick yourself up already. there comes a point beyond which the indulgence doesn't get you anywhere, in fact, it only drags you down, all the while feeling ever good (while masquerading as ever bad), all the while you're trying to defend its existance. some things are complex, i know, most things, in fact; but a lot of things also aren't. and with a lot of complicated things sometimes too there is a mindblowingly simple answer, or something completely unexpected, and no one can find that for you, though people can be there for you to bounce your ideas off, to nudge you in helpful directions. to empathise. and while it's certainly more poetic to be in pain, it's a choice you make, and a difficult choice to make, a difficult situation in which to not sell out, all the things you believe in. so once you've made that choice please remember that once, for maybe the briefest moment, on at least a half conscious level, you had a choice, and you made it. and that you are faced with the choice of whether or not to prolong the daydream, everytime you look at it again from the reality's outside. please know, life's a bitch for everyone, in the different ways, no matter how picture perfect they may seem on the outside (and i find this really difficult to believe, sometimes). and while the cyclic thinking, the confusion, the complaining etc really don't bother me (not really- during those times i tell myself i need to better understand or just be more patient), the fact that your unhappiness with yourself fuels only a long rant and nothing else that's more helpful/productive/corrective, worries me. because there are ways to heal, and they don't include the stabbing of the self, over and over, the opening and complicating and mutilating of what was there originally, and what was never there at all. and i'm sad, for you, because i have been in that bear pit of hysteria, of self-pity, of well plain angst, really, and the shit that it feels like, i don't like it there, i don't want you to be there, either. especially when, from the inside, it certainly does look mighty like the rest of the world is strange, irrelevant, or too far away a thing to aspire for.

and sometimes i think there's no way to force clarity, really, when it doesn't want to come. there are some things it probably isn't helpful to do though, things that drag you deeper, things that attempt to distil out that nugget of pain.

it's not eating me anymore. but, for the right reasons? because i have let go or because i am not in the position for it to be eating me, anymore, at least, i think so, feel so? while, i hope, some good part inside me does hope, it is not eating you. because it's a shitty feeling i know, i am all too painfully aware.

so i don't think i've let go. sigh.