was the topic I started with, but it quickly degenerated into me rambling about my psychological problems again
Published on April 19, 2005
By
PJ_
In
Misc
Apparently feelings are something you're supposed to feel. Who'd have thunk it? I've always thought of emotions as something that colored my thoughts. Just something that adds a certain quality to what's going on inside my head. Apparently emotions are supposed to be something that you can actually feel in your body. I'm pretty sure I do have emotions, so I must be just not paying attention to them. It's a new definition for the mind/body problem. That was a philosophy joke. Ha. Seriously, though, I remember thinking when I was in high school of my "self" as something different from my body. Like the body was a chess piece that I could move around on the board of life. I'm sure that seperation is a bad thing. A symptom of my problem, or the cause? Ha. I'm not even sure what I mean when I say "my problem."
What is my problem?
It's not just that I don't connect with people, and therefore may end up spending my life alone. That's a part of it. That's the part that scares me. I also tend to flub job interviews. Maybe because I'm nervous. I have terrible eye contact. Seriously, I almost never look at people when I'm talking to them. That's a problem. I have to work on that.
I've hit on an interesting duality here, I think. The Problem (and I'm thinking of it here as a big, monolythic thing. Probably not appropriate, but that's how it seems) has two major consequences that I see right now. Firstly, it prevents me from ever meeting the person who I can spend my life with. Secondly, it keeps me from being able to get a job. The latter is frustrating, but it's the former that's making me cry right now. (As a side note, I'm not feeling the sadness in my torso, where Kathleen said that most feeling originates. If it's anywhere, it's in my sinuses. That goes along with the tears, I think.) (And it's interesting to note--and I just realized this myself--I'm not looking at the screen as I type parts of this. I have my eyes closed. Just like how I look away when I talk to people Why is that? Am I afraid to see the effect my words have? Am I trying to hide my emotions even from myself?)
Where was I? The two expressions of the Problem. I guess it affects the two seperate parts of my life. The "regular" life, where I go to class like I'm supposed to, graduate like I'm supposed to, get a job like I'm supposed to, and earn a living like I'm supposed to. The part you have to do, like everyone has to do it. And I'm okay as far as going to class goes, because all I have to do for that is sign up and go. Do the work and you're golden. That'll carry you through to graduation. But there's no defined way to get a job. You don't just go and they give it to you. There are always more applicants than there are jobs, and you have to somehow convince someone that you're the best of the bunch. Even if it's true that I'm the best, I can't imagine what I could hold up as distinguishing myself as such. And, truth be told, there probably are people out there who are better than me. I'm thorough, but I'm not always quick. I wasn't clever enough to answer Microsoft's interview question. This is hard. The course isn't pre-defined anymore. I don't know what to do or how to do it.
And the other part of my life. Emotions. Interpersonal relationships. I know close to nothing about these things. I don't know what to say about them. But I think they're important. I want to have someone I can talk to. I want people I feel comfortable depending on. I want a family of my own some day. God, do I want that. But how am I going to do it? I can't do this on my own. I can't do this on my own...
I don't know what to do. Can I depend on someone else? It just doesn't feel natural. I've been trying to avoid depending on other people since I learned to wipe my own butt. And I am not kidding when I say that. I distinctly remember deciding that it was time for me to learn to wipe my own butt, so I wouldn't have to depend on my Mom to do it for me anymore. (I also remember figuring out how to climb out of the crib, and at least one dream i had when I was sleeping in the crib. I have snippets of memory from way back.)
I should bring this up in my next counseling session. And I should tell Patrick that I started this online journal. I wonder if anybody ever looks at it. I doubt it. It gets linked to from the rest of the JoeUser site when I first post something, and you can find your way to it from a post I make in the forums, but I seriously doubt anyone would bookmark it. No one's read this far.
This is very poorly written, as an article. Internet pollution I called it in my last entry. The text I'm entering here has meaning to me, but there's no reason for anyone else to read it. But if I weren't going to post it I wouldn't bother writing it, and some of these thoughts wouldn't come out. Funny how that works. I wonder why that is.
I don't understand how I work.