My boss told me about one of her fellow classmates (I think it was her classmate, at least or a colleague or a friend, something in that general cloud) and how whenever they dined together, my boss (and others) would marvel at how this person ate so . . . defensively. Her arms automatically shielded her food, and she essentially ate in a way that her spoon was kin to a trowel. It turns out, my boss said, that this person grew up as the youngest in a very large family where she was the only sister of many older brothers who would literally take food from her plate/bowl!
So, in order to survive meals while growing up in this family, she learned to eat defensively so that she would sustain herself. While this isn't really all that surprising to me, in many ways it very much is.
I mean, I do eat defensively as an involuntary act because I think I felt like if I didn't eat fast enough, there wouldn't be any more food left for me at dinner.
Sometimes, I think it was just because there was such an inequality about how my parents treated my brother versus my sister and I. He was the youngest, and they had long since waited/desired for a boy/son/etc., and so he was spoiled (perhaps because he was a gift). It's far too late now, that my parents ruefully realize their mistake.
The way it always went growing up was that my siblings and I would split everything into thirds--we'd pool together our Halloween candy and then divide it, or we'd always divide all the Popsicles in the box evenly--so that we all had the same amount of each flavor.
But with my brother--it was okay for him to break these rules--for him to eat the whole box of ice cream sandwiches. For him to be given foods that my sister and I were never allowed to have. It was really unfair, and I think I was resentful as a child, but now I'm pretty indifferent.
It's just interesting to me how repetition of certain circumstances do condition our bodies to respond in a way in which we can survive. So that we can keep on living.
I think my body wants to keep on living. There is a serious and small part of me that wants no volition; I want to be helpless in my imminent death. Sometimes I wish it so fiercely, I fear myself.
But I am always fearful and full of waste.
I cannot see myself clearly, they say. I say it because it echoes, and because I cannot say that it isn't true. I'd like to think that my perception of myself is true--but if it wholly were, I think I would have ended my life a while ago. Perspective keeps me alive.
Maybe this is where I admit that lately, I sob terribly, in secret. I try to keep it quiet, but this rush is unlike my previous melancholy/ennui--this isn't even that. This is mostly just the feeling of sheer helplessness to be where I want. To be a citizen, a friend, a partner. To not feel like I am constantly full of mistakes and floundering. I do not see any place where I have done right.
I don't remember if I had someone who helped me come back before. Was it him before it was him? I feel like I should just stop signing onto iChat at work or at home because I don't talk to anyone anymore (rather, no one talks to me?). It's not even that pathetic--I'm not really close with anyone enough to hold any kind of conversation. Just typing that in real life made me sad.
I miss having someone unexpectedly remind me why they're friends with me. Without solicitation or knowing what's going on in my life. Like the moments with strangers where I have unexpected brief conversations where I remember who I am. That I'm a decent person. Where I laugh.
Did my pain make me blind? I feel like it's always the same boring, inane emotional drivel. Maybe like my mother, I cannot rise above my own muck.
I hate my ambition, my desires, my dream. It's the only thing which drives me to work at everything--and surely they must all be outside my ZPD because I only feel like I fail, and it brings despondency and indifference. Except I'm not indifferent. I mean self-harm.
I wish I could manage to do something neutral or right or non-harmful. I want to eat my toxic, and win.
And then other times, I just tell myself to keep working at everything as hard as I can. That there is always a way out--that I do not have to live feeling like this. That I can be in a different place, live a different life. I tell myself this dream, because it helps me stay awake. How to be patient.
I am constantly apologizing. Constantly ashamed. I think in a very pathetic way I just earnestly wish someone could free me from myself. To tell me something I did not know. To create a species and a story and a ecosystem that I'm a part of. I have been waiting for absolution and I did not know this until now. No one absolves me. I don't know why I've been doing this, but I realize this now.
I want the comfort of that, and it perhaps won't come now because I've recognized the fool. That everything that comes now (after this), is solicited, in some way.
I wish I could turn the clock back to when it was late in the night and you would talk to me. I smiled, then, right?
