Public Acts of Self-Immolation

After re-reading my last blog entry, I came to the realization that I have a singular ability to creatively and effectively verbally eviscerate myself.

The pen, or keyboard, after all, are mightier than the sword. If not mightier, at least extroaridnarily effective.

When I lose faith, when things are going terribly wrong, when there seems to be no way out of the mulitplying disconcerting and uncomfortable situations of my life, I turn my words against myself like highly sharpened ginsus...or full gas cans and torches, not just matches, and set myself aflame. I'm real good at pouring inflammatory comments upon myself and embellishing them with creative description to the point where they bloom and flourish in florid colors.

Part of it is that I don't believe in victim mentality. I don't believe in saying it's everybody else who's causing problems for me. Then again, I tend to forget that it isn't always me. It is not that I'm sub-standard or less than others--sometimes others expect too much. Although there is much I have not learned about the world and the way things function on other levels of the socio-economic scale, and I could use a really nice guide in this area. I usually try to keep my head above the flames of discontent, but it is too much of a burden, a weight around my neck, and I'm pulled down into the conflagration of self-immolating castigations.

It often seems far easier to take out the knives and cut myself open hoping that others will see the suffering and understand it. But I know from the past that it doesn't always work that way. Some just like the spectacle and are amused by it. It is seen as weakness and insecurity and low self-worth.

Frankly, my self-worth changes on a daily basis, so I have no idea what my overall self-worth is, and I do not like it when the harsh criticisms I heap on myself when I am at my lowest point are taken to be the gospel of what I believe about myself.

Although these feelings do haunt me.....they are magnified or lessened contingent on what else is going on around me. Like taking a pair of binoculars choosing which lens to look thru. It all depends on what I am capable of seeing at any particular time. To stop looking out the wrong end of the binoculars can sometimes be very difficult.

Lucky Bastard made an appearance yesterday. We talked. He has his problems in his marriage, and with his own employment, and he said he wanted to focus on those. He has said this before. Around and around with this. We will cool things off...and in a week or two or three he will try to return. And no matter how wonderful he can be in moments, his personal issues are far more than I care to deal with anymore. I am not responsible for his feelings, or his lack of them, or his physical needs. I have issues of my own, and while he listens and has good constructive input, something is lacking. So there is no reason that I should self-sacraficingly help him if there is no balance. It was fun for awhile, and there was some payoff, but the fascination of that payoff isn't there any more. It's just a grind and I'm tired of walking around this particular millstone.

There are other issues--of independence and employment and under-achieving after years of being an over-achiever. Fear of no longer achieving.

And there are other relationship issues, of which I will not discuss so openly as they might hurt another.

So my hair is still on fire, but as of yesterday, I have started to suture up the slice in my chest that left my heart bloody and bare for everyone to see. Eventually I will find the fire extinguisher too.