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May 17, 2012, 2:20 am in public
We are all various portions of introverted and extroverted traits, in an ever shifting organic concoction of tides and spikes and infinite purpose and possibility. In my opinion, applying both of these guides toward each person in your life is simply known as: “caring”. April 7, 2012, 12:24 pm in public
For as long as I can remember, I have identified with with my thinking, and being thought of, as a naturally extroverted, gregarious, outgoing person. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it just happened somehow that I caught onto the facts that a) I did well at creating myself as the center of attention and b) that people who are noticeable are the ones who receive the affirmation and encouragement I wanted.
In that moment, I determined that the quiet, introspective me, wasn’t good enough. That being that person made the people I cared about hurt and worry, got me in trouble, and being available and seen was what was best for everyone. Through this and other observations, over time nurturing my fledgling ability to communicate my desires authentically and effectively was overlooked. It is true: I have magnetic, charismatic social talents, and I do occasionally truly and fully enjoy going out into the world and sharing them. Coupled with my intuition and understanding of people, I’ve experienced amazing, even transformative social interactions that I highly value as part of the life I’ve lead, and I am certain I will again. However, I have habitually, and with potentially misguided examination, met my more frequent tendencies toward solitude — though intense and from a deep place — with shame, and all too often with a vehement self inflicted emotional punishment.
Due to many factors I spent years in an agonizing isolated depression, in pain, online; a constant pressurized stream of my fears, my weaknesses, and my disappointments lurching passionately from my mind into IRC channels full of people ready to commiserate and affirm my negative beliefs, which were carefully constructed to appear as though I thought they were completely and utterly right. And I probably did. It took me until 27 years into my life to be able to say, compassionately and authentically, that I didn’t enjoy loud live music, crowds, and bars so packed I’d find myself having to scream in order to be heard speaking. Due to other facets of my personality as well as prioritizing social interaction, it was scary and incredibly hard to ask for the closer one on one and small group connections my soul was really seeking. Until my 30′s I met the physical disturbances in my body, and the numerous emotional hurdles present in most of my preparation for social events, with blame and negativity. For years, I’d get churning nervous shits while preparing to go out, holding onto the promise of inhibition annihilation by way of drugs and alcohol to power through it.
Self scorn, and more frequently now self-doubt, is still my first response toward wanting to be with myself, in many cases. It’s a long road back from it being nearly impossible to trust when I need to be alone, and when I am trying to withdraw to punish myself in silence. Over time, they had simply become the same thing. As I’ve aged and learned more about how and why to be alone, I’ve started to embrace alone time, usually in the form of travel. For a long period of my young-adult life I forced myself to constantly value expressing connection over taking time for myself, in part for fearing that if I took that time my job/lover/friend/parent/insert-connection-of-value-here would be gone when I returned, and as such often undermined the limited time I had so boldly and bravely taken. Boldly and bravely may even be an understatement. Even now that I am beginning to master recognizing my need for solitude in wilderness, and having felt the amazing freeing power in listening to that call, prioritizing it is still incredibly challenging. Over these last few months as I’ve been frantically struggling, I’ve known and even proclaimed to others repeatedly that I desperately need to get away for a while, even just a few days, and have yet to make it happen. There are many, many pieces to this puzzle of worth, of connection, of belonging and feeling accepted, for every one. What this woman said helped me find another one of mine: In health and otherwise, my introversion is where my revelations come from. It’s where the meaningful, impactful words I write, the ideas I share, and my awareness of the connection I feel with humanity comes from. It’s where my performances come form, it’s where the layers upon layers in my shows come from, it’s where the compulsion to create Vita Arts came from. It’s where my paintings, my music, and every self photograph I’ve used in this post comes from. 
My introversion is the birthplace of my extroversion. It’s how I communicate with my soul. Hiding isn’t always a lie. April 6, 2012, 11:45 am in public
My constant struggle to find and retain worth in myself is something I rarely truly embrace about what it’s like to be me. How childlike I am, how emotional I am, how deep and violent my internal conflicts are — Always expressed with a tinge or more of resistance, shame, disapproval, when I talk or think about them. There are so many aspects of myself I can’t actually run away from or ignore, as much as my instincts tell me I can. Which is where my talents have come in. Soul-crushed and speechless over being rejected in a relationship? Music. Reconciled a portion of deep shameful hurt toward myself? Aerial. Spitting angry, spurned, and literally sick with grief? Obsidian. Don’t know what the fuck is going on yet? Paint. They’re all abstract children of few words, they hint at what’s happening in me but don’t fully illuminate it. Through them, I hide from you in plain sight. Through them, I get to hide from myself. Through them, you see me as a truth teller while I see glimmers of truth on the surface of a giant, incredibly intricate lie. I think I’ve begun scratching the surface of what I’ve been concealing. I don’t like it very much. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. But my relationship with myself is changing, deep plates are shifting whether I like it or not, and even if I could stop it, I’ve learned enough to know I don’t want to. How the hell I’ll come through it, I honestly don’t know. What the goal is or what my life might look like in a year, I don’t know. What the fuck I’m doing or what’s happening to me or how I’m managing to function right now, I don’t know. I don’t know. Perhaps it’s all his fault. “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” -Brené Brown I shared this long enough ago that I really needed to see it again, therefore it’s being shared again too. Her follow-up from this year that I just discovered is awesome, too, and reminds me of many, many things I’ve talked about here on neevita. “You show me a woman who can sit with a man in real vulnerability and fear, and I’ll show you a woman who’s done incredible work” -Brené Brown Hold me. I’m so exhausted. April 4, 2012, 2:51 pm in public
Firstly, though metaphysically true, the title of this post is somewhat misleading. I still have a business, and an artist page on Facebook. However, my personal Facebook, which had become my main connection with my friends, many fans, and my own thought process, is currently disabled due to temporary meltdown. Facebook isn’t the problem, really. This isn’t like the last time I voluntarily walked away from it due to privacy concerns and a general dissatisfaction with how the thing is run. The problem is the crutch, the white noise that confuses and distracts me, and the flat-out addiction I’ve come to feel from the instant gratification of using Facebook to express myself, raw and incompletely, to other people. I have to say, though I really do feel that taking a break from Facebook is a smart, good decision for me, yesterday was fucking hard. My phone alerts were virtually non-existent. I repeatedly had the inclination to hop on my laptop, even though nothing new was to be had. I caught myself wondering if anything I would find hurtful or upsetting was being done or said in a social arena that I can no longer monitor. I missed commenting on my friends posts, leaving people <3′s, and sharing funny pictures. I thought about things I wanted to share on my friends walls, and then remembered, I can’t. I wondered if I never did return to Facebook, if I would be able to maintain connections with the people I wanted to. I wondered if anyone would seek me out when they realized I was gone. I felt disconnected, isolated, and more alone than usual. Which is really fucking saying something, I tell ya. I’ve been seeking a lot in the last few days, about myself, who I am, what I identify as, and why it seems so often I lose track of those things and have to periodically find myself again. I’ve subsequently also wondered about the “search and destroy” method I invoke against my psyche when I’m doing that, prompted by missing the convenience and familiarity of Facebook due to my own decision to sever my connection with it. Found a crutch? Kick it out from under myself! What, I fell down? Shame on me, stupid weakling human, what the fuck is wrong with you anyway. Pfft. Missing fucking Facebook. What a LOSER for ‘needing’ it anyway. It felt like ending an abusive relationship, which I’ve had more experience with than I would really like to admit sometimes; the reactions and the tendrils and the ache were real, in addition to all the other reasons I’ve been crying a lot lately. But was it possible I was just punishing myself, isolating myself more, withdrawing more, and falling deeper in my hole by doing this? Towards the afternoon, I made a phone call I now think I probably wouldn’t have made if I’d still been using Facebook as my first-wave outlet. I even took a moment to look AROUND ME while waiting at a crosswalk, rather than paging through my phone at my newsfeed. And then I contacted a friend directly to commiserate about a personal struggle with self-image, rather than posting it generally, and probably somewhat vaguely, on my wall. I realized I’ve recently come to generalize my opinions and experiences on Facebook for the audience, for greater impact, and to reach more people emotionally. It’s subtle, but it’s there. I do it in part to make the experience of following me there worthwhile, accessible, and meaningful for the people who are watching, and I think it had something to do with allowing public subscribers and experimenting with phasing out my artist page. When falling into so often using that created environment as a first line of defense in formulating my thoughts into expressions, it was no wonder I lost my shit about it a little. And now I know that, even though it may seem redundant to have it, the separation I have by maintaining an artist page apart from my private Facebook profile is what I need. Even if all the same fucking people are seeing them both, even if it feels a little dumb, even if occasionally someone I admire scoffs at me and says “Pfft. You made yourself a FAN PAGE?”, and even if what I choose to share ends up being intensely personal, like this. And so today I came here to work my latest meltdown, to write, to THINK about what I’m writing, to work fragments through to full and complete statements that I want to stand behind and preserve. For me. From me. Just me. And I thought — this is good. This is worth it. Also, sometimes time-travel me has some really awesome shit to say. http://neevita.net/archives/5389 I am so, so hard on myself. Sigh. April 4, 2012, 11:49 am in public
I wish you’d just go away. Instead, I forget. I forget I know you, I forget there has been work done by others, I forget there are others like me, that what I deal with is understood, and that I’m not some kind of inhuman freakshow because I struggle with the realities of this. I forget I was ever diagnosed in the first 3 years of intense, wrenching, horrifyingly naked psychotherapy that transformed my life. I forget the answers I put everything I had into finding. Largely, I choose, rather, my idealism, and resistance to psychological diagnosis which is often abused in the interest of drug companies and politics. I choose the sense that, surely, I am more complex than a wikipedia article on human behavior, which took me years to think to look at again. That, surely, I deserve to feel awful about myself an increasingly disturbing amount of my life. Again. That, surely something MUST be incredibly, strickenly -wrong- with me. Where is my courage? Why don’t I recognize when this is happening, or more accurately, that it is THIS IS WHAT IS happening? Why can’t I recognize when I’m watching myself dismantle my life, like there’s another soul inside me that shuts me off and moves and speaks for me. Why don’t I SEE IT FASTER? I’m think-smart. I’m smarter than my own fucking good. Why can’t I be honest with myself about this? Why am I so horrified, so embarrassed, so fucking ASHAMED? How many more nights will I spend paralyzed by incessant, merciless thoughts of how terrible I am? How many more times will I break down sobbing like a shivering, petrified animal? Why does something so common and ordinary feel so fucking WRONG? Why does the label feel like such a copout? Why am I not over this? Why am I not fixed? I think about it sometimes, but I don’t want to die. I want this to go away. Why can’t I STOP IT? I feel like it will NEVER. FUCKING. STOP. April 3, 2012, 5:38 am in public
Over the last few weeks, the life cycle of a typical facebook status of mine is about two days. I’ve removed hundreds of people from my friends list, attempting to identify my social roots and what facebook really taps into as far as my actual life and how I keep in touch with the people I care about. I’ve been uncomfortable, insecure, and upset, and centering that around controlling what’s become the main social outlet of my life. It’s a complex thing, society, and how one chooses to interact with it. However, ultimately, I’ve come to the conclusion that the way I use my personal facebook hurts me more than it helps me. Facebook has become a way to feed a starving ego with junk food that doesn’t actually matter, with compliments that can’t really mean anything, and with conflicts I don’t need in my life. It’s a way to frequently wipe out my existence without dying. It’s a way to attempt to convince myself that people care about me (or don’t), that I’m not being cheated on (or am), that at least someone out there thinks my art is worth a shit (or doesn’t), depending on what assumption about myself I want to feed. It’s a way to feel like I have some kind of lay of the land of my social life that gives me a perceived advantage or understanding that doesn’t actually exist. And it’s become this way under my nose, subconsciously, where I don’t see what it is I am doing until long after I’ve done it. Though Facebook can often provide a great sounding board and access to some fun stuff, more and more I’m noticing that Facebook is a networking application, not a social one. That seems like a no-brainer, but forgive me, I’m slow and stupid and fear intimacy. I fear it so much that I’ve done with Facebook what I, at one time, did with phuqed.org — I’ve replaced my relationship with myself with a bunch of one-dimensional fragments that I can’t count on. Over the last few months I’ve basically been making myself sick with Facebook, thrashing and spitting and posting and deleting, as I’ve systematically disabled and removed my other social accounts online. I’ve stopped understanding why I put myself out there, to be judged and assumed and commented on as if a couple lines of fucking text provide anything more than another thing for another person to manipulate and react to. I’ve been retreating, into myself and eventually to here, where The Stuff That Matters gets put. Shrinking away from all of it feels like some kind of awful, drawn out death. I hope and expect it will result in some kind of rebirth. I’m miserable, and this isn’t helping me. Some things need to change — Starting with how much time I spend on the computer or tapping on the phone desperately trying to reach a mass of people I feel hopelessly disconnected and alien from. My disabled account is intentional. I plan, at least for now, to keep it that way. March 29, 2012, 8:27 am in updates
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Driving behind an unloaded semi in Seattle = poor mans Bellagio fountain. March 2, 2012, 12:23 am in updates
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I’ve discovered another aspect of how art is growth, for me. Directing is a good exercise, as it’s impossible to do it well without drowning myself if I still behave with the hyper-vigilance I learned in childhood. That is, also, why it is so very difficult and draining. The bigger the show, the more desires and needs to consider, the more immersive and intense the experience. And I like to perform in the shows I direct not only to tell aspects of my story myself, but to have an outlet for that energy, and contribute it to the show. February 9, 2012, 1:28 am in quotes
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“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” – Carl Gustav Jung January 31, 2012, 12:45 pm in updates
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I’ve noticed recently that I tend to put an invisible wall up when I see strangers carrying musical instruments on the street or public transit. I think it’s out of a kind of shame for being such a shitty musician; I don’t want to get trapped in a conversation about the instruments I “play”. December 15, 2011, 4:58 am in public
Among the everyday occurrences of this and growing up with a military Dad, at one point I spent a year and a half with a sociopathic partner who incorporated this kind of emotional manipulation to cover up his lies. It nearly cost me my mind, and my life. Though I’ve virtually eliminated this kind of treatment of myself in current times, the PTSD from that horrifying relationship experience, and other significant experiences of emotional nullification, can still significantly overwhelm my interactions. Man or woman, read about what’s covertly happening to us, and don’t fucking tolerate this being done to you anymore. Use your voice to stand up for yourself, to educate and empower others around you, and take back your emotional body for the intuitive, amazing gift that it is.
Yashar will be soon releasing his first short e-book, entitled, A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy — How We Teach Men That Women Are Crazy and How We Convince Women To Ignore Their Instincts. If you are interested and want to be notified when the book is released, please click here to sign-up. I hope you will join him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter. This piece originally appeared on The Current Conscience Original article can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yashar-hedayat/a-message-to-women-from-a_1_b_958859.html December 8, 2011, 5:49 pm in public
There’s this time in every significant relationship where things are simply dripping in awesome. Life is flowing through everything you do with one another, you stand stronger on your own, the layers you skillfully peel away together reveal excitement, reverence and possibility. The processes are as enjoyable as the outcomes and it’s impossible to not at least occasionally catch yourself wishing and hoping that you may have found a fountain of perpetual fairy tale bliss that may just never have to end. And then someone fucks up. And shit gets real. In the most recent case, that someone was me. I found this detail highly inconvenient. It’s usually not me, at least not the first significant trial, but regardless of when it happens, the first time I royally screw up signifies a very particular point in the everlasting, yet constantly progressing cycle that is my relationship with relationships. It signifies a very important and basic test, a subconscious impulse that demands verification: Is this thing real. One side of a coin is not a real coin. Until you suffer challenge together, you don’t know the strength you may have in a bond. But until you’ve suffered the inevitable fallibility in the other person, until you know what that looks like, and how they handle themselves, and you, when it happens, you don’t know if that bond even truly exists. At least, I don’t. Or at least, some small hologram that periodically takes the wheel inside me doesn’t. So, that happened. I fucked up and it broke us both open and we were awesome and authentic about it and continue to progress as individuals and as a couple because of it. I’m not proud of it but I’ve worked through the vast majority of my guilt regarding my actions and I continue to learn a little bit more every few days. I demand integrity and truthfulness and breadth in my significant interpersonal experiences. But real, as much as I covet and search for and insist upon it, is god damn fucking scary. She wants you to fail that test. She wants to stay right, to have (job) security, to stay alive, to keep doing what she knows and does so well it’s almost sickening: Protecting the rest of me. And she’s incessant, she’s crafty and wise and skeptical, she’s righteous and wants to be right because her being right inevitably means less hurt. And that’s who bursting the bubble makes real, inside, for me. That’s when the shadows step in. That’s when insecurity starts nipping away at my confidence, when I start periodically shutting down emotionally and not knowing why, when I become ambivalent and oscillate between intense attachment and wanting the fuck out. Cause once it’s real, I have something to lose. Something else to invest in, give myself to, protect and foster and fight for, and fucking lose. And that just fucks up everything. She’s on. She’s fucking AWAKE. And it permeates everything in my life. I periodically want to leave my job, stop teaching aerial, give up music, get rid of all my shit, and disappear. Travel light. Travel light, and survive. I used to think it was all guilt. Once I stepped out of my integrity with someone, and treated them poorly in some way, the guilt ate my resolve away. I thought I felt muted and inconsistent because I deserved to for whatever it was I did, whatever thing I inflicted in my fucked up gauntlet I make the people close to me run. And I could imagine all kinds of things, even things that I hadn’t even done yet and may never do, that made me a bad person and a bad partner who was better off, and made others better off, alone. As well as I’m able to see this stuff in a relatively short timeframe, I’m still blindsided the test. It wouldn’t be a subconscious thing if I wasn’t, but god damn it if I don’t feel like I should see it coming. I’ve figured out that I feel muted and inconsistent afterwards because I’m threatened somehow, but knowing that doesn’t make it feel any less natural when it happens. I’m just being me, and everything feels fine. Monosaturated, but fine. I finally saw her today. She’s about 12, with long, stringy, dirty blond hair. She’s wet, and cold, and dirty, standing inside a stone cave, Indiana Jones style. She’s holding something, like a torch or a specter, stationed outside a huge, heavy door. She’s collected, logical, matter of fact and appears unphasable, but there’s a look in her face that tells you she’ll tear your jaw off with her teeth if you step sideways at her too quickly. She radiates old soul, intimidation, and is undeniably smarter than you. She’s the part of me that mama bears. She’s the one who stands up for the people around her because no one stood up for her. She’s the child that was so impressively mature. She’s constantly tense, constantly on guard. She’s intense and serious. She doesn’t sleep. She’s defined by her duty and by what lies behind that door. She’s the one who understands that there’s always a motive for someone to attack and try to steal what she’s charged to protect. She’s wrung out and full of endurance at the same time. She’s emotionally muted because she has to concentrate, obsessed with finding a breaking point and getting rid of you. And she has no fucking idea what it is she’s guarding. All the time I’ve known about this test, from the first “I’ll try to run eventually” warning I gave to this last “Aww, man, not again — What the fuck did I do that for?!”, I thought it was about the staying. It’s always been about the staying. Can they? Will they? Now? What about now? Oop, apparently it was time to test again, agh, I’m such a jerk. What, you’re still here? Really? Why? Sheesh, you’re fucking stupid. Again! Again again! .. This is boring. You know what, just.. nevermind. The test is never satisfied because it’s not about the staying. I want it to be that easy, and for a long time I’ve stayed in some version of this corrosive loop where the all-telling test us supposed to solve everything and prove I’m capable of becoming comfortable being close with someone, if I just run it one. More. Time. But it’s not. It’s about all the other shit that comes after the staying. All that scary shit I actually want. And it’s all behind that door. Another ingenious, beautiful, incredibly effective, creative, awe inspiring, bulldog stubborn, self inflicted fucking masterpiece of a booby trap. Fuck. September 18, 2011, 5:27 pm in public
The other day, my friend Sophia updated her twitter with “It’s amazing how being caged quiets my anxieties.” I took a great pause when I read this and felt an instant kinship to what was said. I’ve been spinning into a long chain of thought that is still moving through me, searching for the point of origin that caused her sentiment to stab straight into my core. I think of myself as being free, and needing to be free, to function. The concept of being caged makes my stomach churn and my talons protract. I’ll rip anyone’s throat out who tries. I’d probably fight so hard I’d break myself if someone did, actually, manage to fight me into a cage. I can feel my back lighting up just thinking about it. Last winter, when I was dealing with one of the worst depressive episodes of my life, I talked about the internet, and wondered aloud if its existence as my main social avenue when I was young hindered or enabled my ability to interact with people. I was met with a visual, provided by my best friend, who said something to the effect that I’d hidden away somewhere dark and controlled and safe, and through the computer I reached out my hand to see who would take hold of it. I’m frequently struck by the bravery in Sophia’s posts, how openly she talks about being vulnerable or scared, knowing how hard that is for me. I do it, but it’s often terrifying, I’m usually shaking and crying and imagining the intense, merciless judgement I’ll surely receive for having weakness. I just.. say it anyway. That judgement never happens. It has never, ever happened. Even back in the days of phuqed, when I was a dumbshit kid blaming the entire world for everything that was wrong with my life, I have never been ripped into like I constantly expect to be when I’m all feared up, desperate and aching for someone to show me they know what I know. It’s subsiding as I age, and yet, I still feel it, and I identify with that fear every time I conquer it — which is nearly always, now — and savor the relief when the support comes. I’m learning that I can count on that, that I can show these parts of myself in front of people, and even moreso — that if support doesn’t come, I can count on me. This place is my cage when I need one. And I damn well like having it. Thanks, Sophia. (P.S. I just realized like 6 hours after posting this that the youtube video frame looks like… a cage. Wow.) September 18, 2011, 6:42 am in public
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Thank god for the internet or I never would have done anything artful in front of anyone. August 18, 2011, 4:07 am in public
Summary video of my two week solo road trip, taken from my laptop webcam over the course of the 2500 mile drive. The music is Desert, Day 1, from the Fallout: New Vegas Soundtrack — which is excellent driving music, by the way.
This was, roughly, the route I took. There were a few stops I didn’t map that were within a few miles of other destinations or along the way. 
I took a fair number of pictures in the first week, and not so many after that. 
My deepest gratitude goes to my friends and family for all that they did — cars, equipment, meals, hotels, support, interest, text messages, emergency kits, parties, massages, cuddles, movies, phone calls, crash spaces, sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, music, lock picks, books, advice, appreciation, excitement, and much more — to make this trip the profoundly therapeutic epic healing catharsis it became. I don’t have pictures of everyone who contributed, (um.. there were women too. Really!) but here are a few. Thank you. July 21, 2011, 7:59 pm in public
Throughout my life, I periodically run into people who are infuriatingly incapable of taking responsibility for themselves. Even when acknowledging that there shouldn’t be one, there’s always a reason, an excuse, some kind of explanation as to why what happens in their life and the effects their decisions have on others ultimately aren’t their actual fault, really. When a persons inability to own themselves and their mistakes effects me personally, this behavior arouses my deep, penetrating anger. I find it insulting and calculatingly offensive. I see it as inexcusably dishonest to claim ownership of yourself and still behave like a fucking wimp. Sometimes, I find myself yelling obscenities and colorful insults like ‘flaming sack of curdled assbarf’, and ‘dicksnot’, and wishing death via car fire upon these types of people. In jest, of course – but seriously, fuck these fucking impotent shit spewing fuckers. I like my anger. It’s funny, it’s effective, and it helps me get motivated when action is necessary — but it’s not always the most useful aspect of coping. The sooner I can let the slew of cuss words out somewhere, the faster I slow down and remember when I was incapable of comprehending how I manipulated and controlled my surroundings through what was, ultimately, emotional retardation. I recognize, while I sometimes see it as malicious and lazy in other people, how rarely it was about that when I was constantly failing myself no matter how hard I tried to be a good person. I remember how incessantly difficult it was, and how much raw will power, determination and resiliency it took to pull my head out of my ass. How I spent 10 years before that moment running around digging trenches in my psyche looking for evidence of my villainy, having convinced myself that what I was doing was good inner work. I remember when it made sense to stay stupid, to remain confused, to sabotage my life and my progress in order to avoid responsibility for the neglected brilliance I was pissing away. I remember, as I wanted to grow out of my skin so much I’d slice it open myself, how being that person allowed me to wallow in safety, and to hide. I was like a beaten dog pressed into a corner, shivering, snapping and displaying for anyone who dared the mange and sunken eyes. I wanted it. Occasionally, people got bit, and I felt for them. But being wretched let me shirk my tasks as a human being, and for a long time, being stunted and dim was worth it. I remember how crushed I was when I realized that I lacked the ability to be cause in the matter of my own life because of how little I believed in myself. How guilty I felt when I realized that deep down, I’d been blaming the people I loved for that deprivation inside me. For not understanding me when, frankly, I didn’t understand me, or the true motivations for holding myself down. I remember how sobering and scary it was when I finally conjured the courage to face, and act upon the answers, to the questions I had been asking myself. How big the world became when I saw the potential influence I could have from a place of inner strength, when I’d mostly just reacted and seen myself as a shallow robotic shell trapped in a vicious loop. I remember the weight in realizing that embodied living meant the real work I’d finally stepped into was never going to be over. I remember wondering how long it would take to feel better, and being terrified of what little might be left of me once I escaped the strangle hold of my sadness. I still feel echos of that struggle, scanning for that terrible evil person that would make some kind of sick sense of why life can be so god damn hard. I remember overcoming being enslaved by that debilitating mindset and paying my fucking dues revisiting that place, thinking I could save others from it. And now, in my 30′s, when I see my peers still pulling the same shit I did when I was 20, I get annoyed. Sometimes I get hurt. And then I get angry. And then, I get compassionate. And then I let them go. July 15, 2011, 10:56 pm in public
Wing Chun was the perfect movie to watch tonight. Thank you, Sophia. Hm. In revisiting my last post (sometimes I revisit them periodically for the first day or two to keep checking in whether I want it public or not) I just noticed another change in how I interact with the internet — I no longer post things as members only if I realize I only want one or two people to be unable to see it. Expressing myself to a public audience when I think a stranger might actually benefit from what I have to say has become more important to me than protecting myself or someone else from looking like a dickhead. Huh. Wonder what that’s all about. Maybe neevita will eventually go public like phuqed was. Sean made me wonder in his comment on “Of Hope and Romance” about The One. I had already been thinking about the shape of my relationships throughout my life, how I engage, fall, bond, and break away. How it feels, how I almost crave the journeys through my relationships knowing they will probably end, how I seem to get off on the first breakup and enjoy engaging in that intense test of a relationship. I must enjoy it — I’ve only made a clean break once, and I’ve been a part of quite a few failed romances. Each and every one has been an artistic goldmine in some fashion, whether it be a slew of productivity or a giant leap in my understanding of myself as a lifeforce. The coping is almost a reward, a sickening, twisted, sinfully painful fucking amazing learning and growth experience that I get to express to people and release into the world and touch lives with. Making my art feels the best when I’m screaming it into someone’s aching ear, and I think I make my best art over heartache. I think my art may be The One. I am incapable of staying unattached and also incapable of attaching. I fear no mere mortal stands a chance at more than two years entwined with me, but I do wonder how my existence would be altered were I to view my muse as my primary relationship. Would I be embracing reality, or self fulfilling the prophecy that I will be searching and churning for sustainable, passionate love the rest of my days? What the fuck kind of fucking weirdass life am I living here? July 14, 2011, 7:47 pm in public
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Every once in a while, it really hits me just how much of myself I put out there in some ways, and just how little I do in others. Also; I find it really fascinating that while phuqed/neevita used to be the first wave, and then I would decide what to put on LJ/facebook, it’s now reversed. Maybe it’s because I wipe my facebook wall periodically, and keep what I put here — or that somewhere deep in me, I actually trust facebooks privacy settings with those instant, meandering streams of consciousness? Scary. |
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