TheBanyanTree: The end of life as we know it

[Monique]

Be forwarned: I doubt there's anything in here that anyone, other than
myself, would be interested in hearing about. Even I'm not that interested.
The subject line, by the way, has nothing to do with the content.


I'd like to dispense with the cynicism. I need a cynicism dispenser. Wait.
That seems like it would involve MORE cynicism, not less. I could have the
first portable cynicism dispenser, and carry it around with me, bringing
cold hard reality to the people I run into or over, whether they want it or
not. That's not really what I want to do though. I want to dispense WITH it,
not dispense it. 

For the record, I rarely run over people. 

Cold hard reality is highly overrated. It's people like me who give it a bad
name. Then again, people like me are known for being perceptionally skewed.
Not skewered, though I'm sure that has occurred to more than one person. I
am certain, within my strict parameters of how I'm to be defined as a
person, that I am lacking. And truth be told, (I have no fear of clichés) I
am indeed much more disposed to a glum outlook and disposition for only a
few days a month, though it may seem like a more because the force of it is
so overwhelming. I know what you're thinking. PMS. Well, yes. I credit PMS
for my total lack of objectivity, my insane rants, my irritability, my
insistence on my lack of people worthiness, my deeply held belief that
everything will end badly (everything being a rather open term that could
apply to just about anything), my cynicism, the grip that cold hard reality
has on me, and the rain. There was a lot of rain today. But yesterday was
sunny and no rain -- and I still had problems, so perhaps PMS is not
responsible for the rain. 

I figure, and excuse me while I talk to myself about this, that somewhere
I've gotten the idea that unless I'm PERFECT I'm not good enough. Well,
obviously I'm not perfect. Okay, nobody's perfect. I know that. I'm not a
complete idiot after all. I don't expect anyone else to be perfect, just me.
It's because I don't have any underlying qualities to make me worthwhile
otherwise. Look at that. Even I can recognize how stupid that sounds.
Everyone has SOMETHING, even me. 

I think there's something else going on with me, but I just don't know what
yet. These issues are deeply rooted, they're ingrained, they're so THERE
that I can't possibly deny them, but I still know they're stupid. 

>From that, I can usually segue right into: I'm stupid. 

I have this belief that because I am who I am, I must do MORE than someone
else in my position would. For example, in order to be worthy of being
loved, I have to be more. Or do more. I was told, as a child, that I'd have
a very hard time ever "getting" anyone to marry me because I was
unattractive and socially inept. Then I see all the unattractive and
socially inept people who ARE in relationships and I realize there's more to
it than that, but that still doesn't make ME feel any better. And I'm too
smart. I was reviled for that when I was younger, but I grew up in a family
of heathens, so what do you expect? Okay, so I proved them wrong and got
someone to marry me. Just goes to show you, there's desperate people out
there. 

That's not nice. 

Excuse me for a sec. I have to ask myself a question: "Self, what the hell
is wrong with you?"

It's a mystery. 

Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe I've seen too much. (I think that statement by itself
is fallacious, but we can deal with that later.) I know I don't want to be
disappointed again, hurt, left, discarded, tossed aside, overlooked in favor
of someone more fun, more attractive, more BETTER. It's happened before, I'm
sure it'll happen again. Someone once tried to reassure me about that. "Of
course you will, dear, that's LIFE. But you can't just give up! Enjoy it
while you can."

But I can't live that way, knowing there's something ready to fall on me at
any minute. Dealing with the mentally ill for so long, with borderlines who
can change from one minute to the next, who can turn into a completely
different person, and dealing with people who claim to be perfectly normal
but who act much like someone who is borderline, has left me feeling as if
there is no stable foundation upon which to stand. I feel like I'm standing
on quicksand. That at any minute all that I know can shift yet again. And it
can -- people change, don't they? If you ask me, there's too much change
going on these days. 

I don't think I'm strong enough for a trial period, where I feel like I'm
being tested to see if I'm adequate. Even though I know that isn't how it
works and that I'm testing just as much, in theory anyway, I still don't
think I'm strong enough. I don't think I'm fit to be around people, at least
not in large doses. I think that NOW. In a day or so I'll think otherwise.
But next month I'll think so again. And then even if I can weather it, can
anyone else? Should anyone else? No one else should have to. 

That's what I think now. In a day or so I'll think anyone would be lucky to
put up with my shit, but that's not TODAY. Today I wish I didn't run the
risk of disappointing anyone else ever again, because that's how it starts.
Withdrawal from the world of people has occurred to me, but hasn't seemed
exactly feasible. Today I even thought I'd disappointed my TAX PREPARER. I
keep giving her work to do, but because some of my clients are a bit tricky,
having received bad tax advice in the past (and not from me, I better state
categorically), I feel like I've let everyone down. And that's my TAX
PREPARER, so you can imagine how I feel about those even closer to me.

And now I sound really pathetic too, don't I? How disgusting is that? I'm
just trying to FIGURE THIS OUT. I want to get rid of it once and for all, I
want to dispense with the negativity, I want to be able to rely on myself
and not be bothered by the possibility that anything can happen in the
future. I want to get past this. It doesn't matter what people think about
me, it doesn't matter if I've disappointed 99% of the people in my life, it
doesn't matter if my lover leaves me, none of it should matter as much as it
does. If I'm happy with myself, and I generally am, that's what should
matter. Perhaps sometimes I'm not so happy with myself. Well, what do you
expect? I'm not perfect, y'know. 

I hope you aren't reading this. It's a long, self-indulgent pity party I
threw in honor of myself, and it is so not attractive. And now I return to
the work at hand, which isn't about me at all. ("Aha!" You're thinking, "at
last, something that's not about HER!")_