In more ways than one, actually. This has been a weird weekend. I've been busy, I've been slack, I've played the Sims until I'm sick of them, I've studied pretty hard for my first test in Philosophy, I've had naps and gone to bed at strange times, I've felt extremely tense to the point of neckaches three days in a row, and I've been quite relaxed on occasion. I watched some episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which was fairly amusing, and the fourth episode of "Africa" on PBS. I finished my Le Guin books, and began reading a collection of science fiction short stories edited by Robert Silverberg ("Science Fiction 101"). I feel really strange, that horrible suspended feeling I sometimes get. I need to keep working on my therapy goals, but I am resisting thinking about what I need to think through. Because, you know, it's scary. If it wasn't scary as hell to change my behavior I could have solved those problems years ago and never had to know what a panic attack is. Instead, I have to chip away at the problems a little at a time so they doesn't overwhelm me like monsters under the bed.

I would like to clarify that I am not having a crisis of faith, nor am I looking for a religious answer to purpose in life. I have no religious instinct at all; I simply don't believe in God or an afterlife, and I don't feel I'm missing anything. Here and now is good enough, complex enough, for me. I crave an understanding of reality, not metaphysics. But I don't mean I reject anything I can't touch or taste. I'm too imaginative for that.

My sense of purpose is a matter of learning to be true to my essential self, something I have rigorously denied and pushed away in order to fit in, get by, not make waves. I have a million survival techniques. Some of them weren't very good for me. Now I'm going to learn success techniques. There's this habit I have of cutting myself off when I get to be too good at something. It's a safety issue. I want to learn to stop being safe. I want to let myself be as successful as possible at anything I choose to attempt without worrying about the outcome.

You think that's obvious, that's easy? Mazel tov. I wasn't born so lucky. I'm facing up to something that's the hardest thing I've ever confronted. I'm doing it through therapy and a little bit of medication and a whole lot of writing. It's doing me a lot of good. I just dislike being in the middle of it, sometimes, when it feels like I'm in freefall and I'm not entirely sure of my parachute.

But at least it's October, one of my favorite months. Even if it is unseasonably, unreasonably warm.

Past Life The Index Next Incarnation