*Trigger Warning: self-harm The power of procrastination is so awesome that even though I have been without Internet access for several hours and I have things that I think I want to do, I have spent that time lying on top of my bed thinking about how I would do all the things I want to do if I were to do them. Very productive. I think that the ideas I have are worth so much more in my head, I can fetishize every negative feeling and pretend that it makes me special or interesting in some way. But when the thoughts become words that I type out and read back, I realise how banal everything about me is. That's probably the real reason writing blog posts and writing in my journal gets a little harder every time. Here is a quick list of the things I should be doing right now: On Tuesday I had a very intense dream that was terrifying enough to make me feel slightly separate from my body all week. Even now, everything feels a little unreal and abnormal; I haven't stopped
Something strange is happening to me; it feels like a crush, but I'm almost certain it's just some elaborate form of self-harm. I'm hoping getting it out will stop it in its tracks(no, I don't really believe that).
"As children, we spin in circles until we fall to the ground with vertigo, and this practice is repeated in one way or another throughout our lives."
--Thomas Ligotti
Many, many(oh so very many) years ago I started university and it was a really great experience because I got away from my family and there was a wealth of nerdy boys(which I was really into at the time) roaming the campus. And during the course of my undergrad years, I went through many a creepy(Facebook-stalking creepy) crush on various nerds in my classes(physics, mainly). But there was one nerd I never had any interest in, but I ended up interacting with him quite a bit because I was into a few of his friends. It was actually quite pleasant because he was really smart, liked all the same things that I liked and I could talk to him without my anxiety causing my throat to close up. Also, he was one of the very few people I knew who enjoyed drinking more than I did. Eventually we became sort of friends(which is what happens when you get really drunk at the same birthday party and both get tagged in photo neither of you remembers taking), so I went to his Master's thesis presentation. It was a really odd experience. One minute he was talking about the algorithm he'd developed for autonomously fitting gravitational microlensing light curves(very simple, 90%+ success rate, genius), the next I'm feeling all warm and flushed and thinking what an excellent choice he made with the blazer he's wearing. The whole thing really did a number on me because it happened after the end of my last relationship and the very last thing I wanted to be feeling fluttery-school-girl-crush-related stomach problems. I tried to ignore it and in the hopes that it would scuttle off into the dark pit in my heart where all the other hopeless crushes live. But then I tried to borrow a book(All the pretty horses by Cormac McCarthy. It's not as good as The Road or Blood Meridian, but it's good) from him a few months after the presentation and my core temperature dropped a few degrees and my ears were ringing for a good hour after I went to go pick it up.
Under normal circumstances, it would maybe count as a cute story of a blossoming crush and possible romance(I don't know what usually happens in normal infatuation cases, but I imagine it's cute). But he left in September. Went off to Oxford. I'd known for some time that he would leave, but all I felt was intensely jealous and also happy for him. For the whole 10 months before he left, I more or less avoided him and that worked fine for me. But now that he's actually gone, I've been filled with the urge to contact him(more than normal). I tried to convince myself that it was because he's the only person whose taste in books I completely trust, but it turns out that that's not a very convincing lie. I think I'm trying to "explore the crush"(that just sounds filthy, doesn't it?). It's great that at the moment because he's still replying to my messages and I still feel giddy and infatuated. But I've been down this road far too many times to think it could possibly end well. In a few days, I'm going to be torturing myself with images(both mental and photographic) of him and better women. I know it. That's what always happens. Which, of course, raises the question of why I would want to do that to myself. This isn't one of those cases where an incredibly hurt and fragile young woman somehow finds a way to hope for love in spite of the obstacles. This is a mad little girl finding a new and yet all too familiar way to hurt herself, cut the scar tissue. Maybe it's self-hatred rearing its ugly head again after playing dead for months, coming to shout, "You're not good enough" in my face a thousand times a day. Or maybe it's just force of habit. Either way, it won't end well and I need to stop. Now.
"sexual desire, especially when through fixation on a definite woman it is concentrated to amorous infatuation, is the quintessence of the whole fraud of this noble world; for it promises so unspeakably, infinitely, and excessively much, and then performs so contemptibly little"
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