a couple of things

I feel nearly the exact same dissatisfaction with my life that I did a year ago right now. Despite all the changes I've made: the different relationships, the different city, the different job, the different effing haircut...I'm still angry.

Hmm, it must be me. Well no shit. It just makes me wonder if it was even worth it to leave in the first place. Let me back up again, why have I always looked ahead? Why have I been so eager to move on and run away to the next place? Why can't I just sit still!?

I don't want to cry because it feels like admitting that I give up

I was always working so hard to make sure that you got enough

But these sleepless nights and heavy heart

Make me want to rip what we built apart

It's funny how feelings can be so fleeting and yet at other times so concrete

And with us it seems like those emotions were incomplete

I don't know what else to do to try and make myself happy

But numb that memory for now and pretend to be laughing

I'll be okay in my own time and in my own way

Because the sun will rise tomorrow again and bring another day

God I can't take this anymore...

par example

I am living very near where I grew up now, and with that experiencing things and being around people day-to-day for the first time in nearly a decade. 

It's odd how so many things about home have continued to stay the same; it's as if everything remains frozen or isolated in some habitat that keeps away change...take my dad for example.

I have always remembered him as a patient, wise, hard-working man who loved my siblings and I--and my mother even more. Nothing has changed. How is it that I feel I have changed enormously, several times throughout my years, yet my father seems to me to have had no transformation? Maybe it's because of age, our experiences, our personalities, or it even could be the fact that external perceptions are often misplaced.

And yet I write this because of my dad, who exists in my mind almost no differently than the way I remember him growing up except for one thing: his slowness to anger. Like any child growing up with a father, they can remember him cursing and yelling in frustration with something. It's usually a humbling experience because there is this figure who is always right while you are always wrong...an individual who is strong and unwavering...wise and deep in experience--who is suddenly subject to a fate that is beyond his control. 

Over the last few months, I have seen some unlucky things happen with my dad. And he simply deals with it now with a laugh; a joke at himself and a deflection to the fates that have continued to befuddle him while I was away. He doesn't yell and curse anymore, and somehow this reaction was always in him in other things he did. It's merely as if his sense of justice and equilibrium with the world has stayed the same, but now he has learned to accept it for himself.

I pray that I can inherit this wisdom!

Punch! Punch!

I raised an eyebrow to find "I hit myself..." being finished by Google with "...when I'm angry". The reason beingggggggggggggggggg I do this. Probably since I was 8 or 9 I think I can remember starting to do this. I'd punch myself in the head, thighs, or abdomen at certain times when I became angry. I slammed a door into my head yesterday and realized..."wow I still do this?" 

When I hit myself I don't want to hurt myself or damage anything, which is why I do it out of sight and not with anything that would have brash results. I have come to the conclusion that it is a crude way of dealing with anger. I'm not sure if I want it to stop. It's not that I like hitting myself, it's just that I don't care. I like my other mediums of mitigating being upset by running, reading, blogging, or trying to be around friends or family, but those are not always available, nor do they always seem like appealing solutions. 

But I will say that when it happens it eases the stress slightly. I don't think anyone has ever seen me do this, and I have not ever had an awkward conversation about where a bruise came from. I never thought all of this time that it was harmful. I probably still won't. I guess what sucks is the fact that I still get so enraged at myself. Sometimes the cause is bad luck, but in the end I will find a way to blame myself for not being able to avoid something or make a better decision somewhere along the line. More often than not the reason I hit myself is because I can't stand the fact that I made a bad choice. I have never hit myself because of anger at someone else, which is good I think. 

I feel stupid, embarrassed, and even childish about this behavior. It's strange, or maybe not after reading some of the comments, questions, and diagnosis about this on the web. But either way I have never been able to let this go over the years...but at least it's not an event every time I get upset. 

I've read extremes; that some people take this habit as far as cutting themselves or coming close to suicide. I've never considered doing anything like that...for me it has always involved quick, furious blows to a part of my body. It usually lasts only a few seconds. I'm not quite sure if it's a way for me to punish myself, or just to feel something. I've read that some psychologists relate it to depression and/or to distract from the present emotion of being disappointed in oneself. It beats me. (haha)