April 12, 2007
Current mood:
hopeful
"All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies." -Kurt Vonnegut.hopefulSo, Christofleure, I return to the Artist's Way. I've been so disgustingly unhappy lately that I can no longer stand myself. It's terrible when you're riding a bus with hospitalized mentally ill people and wonder if you're the sickest one in the bunch. I was reading from "the book" on the way back to the hospital today and had to stop because I was on the verge of tears.
Because of nuggets like this (I love to quote, did you read that horror show of a paper I wrote for my senior seminar?): "We say we are scared by failure, but what frightens us more is the possibility of success." How about this: "We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone. When we can't get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others we may look like we're there. We may act like we're there. But our TRUE self has gone to ground. What's left is a shell of our whole self." More? "As an artist, I can literally die from boredom...Ignoring my artist means a grinding depression...I will hate myself. Hating myself, I may lash out at myself and others."
I have problems with boredom: "Boredom is just 'what's the use?' in disguise. And 'what's the use?' is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair."
-or-
"You are not dumb, crazy, egomaniacal, grandiose, or silly just because you falsely believe yourself to be. What you are is scared."
I am terrified. Of nothing. Of something I have no control over, mainly the future.
And then there was this (these are my words, not the book's): I act like I don't have faith but I do. It's all I have. Hope and faith. Obstinacy to keep going no matter what, no matter how depressed or hopeless I think I am.
The thing about that is that I have never SAID that to myself before, or written it down anyway. Thought about it but never concretely. Not necessarily hope or faith in humanity as a whole, cause fuck 'em, but hope and faith in my own abilities as a human, the weirdest animal on the face of the earth. I am sometimes shocked by my strong sense of self-preservation.
(Quotes from The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron)
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