Shape Without Form

2012-05-29

2012-05-22

You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past

There’s so many philosophies about happiness out there.

About happiness not being a constant but rather a cliched destination. Happiness as something that you are constantly working towards. Happiness being an unexpected, unpredictable moment that you better damn well take note of. A feeling that washes over you in all its glorious splendor only to abruptly dissipate as quickly as it appeared.

During my junior year of college, I took a literature class in which the professor made us form our desks into a circle; students taking a different seat with each tuesday and thursday two hour session.

In high school I was crippled by shyness. The mere idea of raising my hand during discussion resulted in an escalated heart-rate and instinctual desire to make a beeline for the door. Fast-forward into my college career and that anxiety unfortunately accompanied me. The funny thing about never talking in class is that it made me one hell of a listener. I keenly immersed myself in the discussions… albeit I was silent. I quietly agreed with some opinions and soundlessly reviled the ignorance of others.

I spent too much time trapped in my own head. Over-thinking everyone’s opinions of what I might say while I was personally guilty of the same thing. Why the hell did I care so much?

Why the hell do I still care so much?

One time in the forced-circular-seating literature class, this girl described herself as an “optimistic realist”. My professor kind of side-eyed her and moved along with discussion, but for some reason her self-description stuck with me. I’ve always tried to force myself to believe that people are inherently good. That people are not merely driven by selfish desires, and that humanity exists—despite how deeply buried—within all those that walk the earth. This deep-seated desire to have faith in the goodness in man is pitted against my realistic view of society. People are tethered to instant gratification. Compelled by what will benefit the self and what grants greatest pleasure.

Torn. Because what will make me happy in this immediate instance is the same thing that will progressively destroy me. How do I reconcile the compulsion towards instant-gratification with the desire towards a long-term sense of happiness?

Why am I living with the delusion that long-term happiness is even possible?

“In the sky overhead, it’s the same sun watching us make the same mistakes over and over. It’s the same blue sky after everything we’ve been through. Nothing new. No surprises here.”

2012-05-12

“if you want something, you’re going to succeed. because you’re nice and you’re smart and you’re legit.” - Inspiring words from my dad.

→

It’s love.

2012-05-07

Sometimes the best way to handle stress is to put on a bikini, make yourself a delicious mimosa, listen to hip-hop and read some Chuck Palahniuk.

→

Sitting in my car in the parking lot of my workplace. About to quit my job. Nervous as fuck, and edging on the side of an anxiety attack.

I always envision the worst possible scenario. This particular time, it’s my boss strangling me in a fit of rage. Totally rational response, am I right?

2012-05-04

In early October I started seeing a therapist.

I stopped going in December, but only because I took off on an impromptu trip to Europe. But let’s be real. It’s because I somehow convinced myself that I had miraculously worked out twenty-something years of issues in a mere three months. But needless to say, I ditched therapy and took a fourteen hour flight to Amsterdam, feigning normalcy with a contrived attempt to “find myself”.

I’ve always been a very introspective person. I over-analyze every little thing that passes through my mind. I thrive in solitude, I cower in crowds. Dwelling upon the past is my M.O and I just can’t let shit go. Brain crowded with an internal monologue capable of crippling me to the point of tears. I always envision the worst, expect the worst, and worry myself to the point that I want to give up on everything and just sleep forever.

That being said, I had been on anti-depressants for precisely a year when I first stepped foot into my therapist’s office. Vaulted ceilings above, cream-colored carpet below, I tried desperately to focus on anything and everything besides the growing lump in my throat. It had taken me months to work up the courage to call her…to pick up the phone and set up an appointment. Sitting on her brown, leather couch, clenching the edge of the cushion in a death-grip and focusing on her wall of still-life oil paintings,I wished desperately to be back in my car. I envisioned myself fastening my seatbelt and numbly pulling out of my parking space. Making a U-turn onto Beach Boulevard and speeding off into the unknown of anywhere-but-here.

But there I sat and there i remained.

I remember how embarrassed I was in second grade when I didn’t know what a Sharpie was. First day of school as we lined up outside the classroom, my cheeks turned a dark shade of red as I recoiled in the second-grade-shame of not being in the know. “Oh my god, do you know anything ?” I had not yet made any friends since transferring schools, and somehow this brief instance of ignorance concerning a permanent marker felt like the end of my world.

Perspective has never been my strong suit.

“So, Keeley—that’s how you pronounce it? KEE-LEE?” My therapist sang, offering a smile whilst staring with eyes that seemed to penetrate my soul.

I felt uncomfortable. Her smile made me uncomfortable, and her leather sofa made me uncomfortable.

“Yes, that’s it! Lot’s of ‘E’s, i know,” I offered in the half-assed attempt to make small talk. Along with perspective, small talk can also be filed under things that I suck at.

More small talk ensued. And with each question, I became increasingly aware of how—even in this setting of confidential disclosure—I was striving to create a contrived image of who I was. I couldn’t just let the answers flow naturally, I was meticulously responding with what I deemed significant. Editing out boring bits, fluffing up the ones I thought worthy of psychoanalysis. I wanted to ensure that I was qualified to be in her office; justified in my decision to seek professional help.

I called her because I felt like I had lost control, and I wanted her to help me find it. I called her because I can’t let things go…because I have a habit of losing things.

2012-04-30

do as i say, not as i do.

We were talking about yoga, but somehow i ended up crying for twenty minutes.

“You’ve always been hyper-sensitive. You hear negativity that’s never even been spoken to you.”

I’m over-emotioned and I have a tendency to over-analyze. I guess you could say that’s the driving force behind my lingering depression, but more often than not I just feel like the world is full of shitty people, constantly doing shitty things to one another.

I picked up the phone to the sound of my dad’s voice, talking specifics on this yoga class and that pilates class—recommending this instructor, saying that pose really strengthened your core.

Post divorce from my mother and somewhere along the string of failed relationships that followed, my dad took up yoga as another form of fine-tuning the physical and drowning out the deeper stuff. Post-divorce I would visit my dads’s house on the weekends. I remember anxiously awaiting Sunday when I would retreat back to my mom’s house. I recall constantly walking on eggshells, apologizing for things that were never my fault to begin with, and yearning for the recognition that I was worthy of his love.

One night in third grade, my dad’s car sounded in the driveway and my sisters and I met the familiar sound of his truck with our regular, “Oh no, dad’s home!” My feet shuffled across the hardwood floors to my bedroom—my defensive act against the disorienting anger that trudged up the doorsteps to my childhood home.

“You don’t respond well to criticism…you let it cripple you.” He spelled out the words as if I hadn’t spent the better part of twenty years fine-tuning such bouts of self-doubt.

The doorknob turned and my eight-year-old fingers gripped tighter to my pillow. I could be wrong, but I think I briefly considered whether my best friend since second grade felt the same way when her dad came home from work. Seconds slipped into minutes which felt like years. I felt like I was flying as I slipped across the hardwood floor. I saw my dad’s hand grip around my mom’s. I saw him shove her against a wall. I saw her fall to her knees, and I saw my dad charge out the door. I saw my dad forcibly fling open his truck’s door and I saw my dad drive off into the night.

“If you want to do something, you can do it. You can do anything,” he said.

I tried to choke back my tears in the same way I discard praise.

“You’re extremely sensitive and feel things too strongly. You take after your mom in that regard.”

It’s been 15 years since their divorce, but time is relative.

2012-04-10

You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.

— Carl Sagan (via misswallflower)

Source: misswallflower

2012-03-23

Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.

— Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (via helplesslyamazed)

Source: quote-book