This is a method of discipline, it's meant that way anyway. I woke up today, I had laid out a few things for myself the night before, which seems to help. I get off track frequently in the morning. Lately, I'm too entirely obsessed with my appearance, or fear that it won't shake what I hope that it does shake. It's been twelve years since my last drink, officially. I staved it off and I'm glad I did. Why? An image matter. Sally & Bob both had birthdays today, Sally 2, Bob 13. I would have been 12. So it was an image in thinking I might have mixed with the others. Let them have the limelight, I figured. I didn't want to get my chip anyway, which is a sign of my current state of mind. I'm haunted by this whole experience of going out with someone at meetings, because now I think every move I make is telegraphed. Like this girl knows exactly what I'm thinking. Like she thinks I'm a zero and therefore, anything I say is feel of crap. My life, how wonderful. In the telescope of my own mind, my life is seemingly undesirable compared with those around me...people who 15 years ago I wouldn't desire their life worth spit. I walked into the rooms thinking I had fallen from grace because I didn't go to Syracuse University and hadn't yet published a poem in the university magazine. Never mind I'd gone completely insane a year before. Never mind that I had made an almost complete comeback from being given Thorazine to calm my nerves enough to be in therapeutic groups. It wasn't that bad but it had been bad enough.
So today was anticlimatic because I felt like I wasn't matching up. I had nowhere to turn seemingly. I stood on the porch trying to look unaffected. I am affected, instead. That's the true reality of the situation. Why it plagues me I have to look at again. I guess it's the whole thing I keep saying. I'm not living well with others. I act erratically from time to time. Like tonight, I'm afraid to look her in the face because of the rejection I felt a few weeks back. I went farther than I know I should have, trying to force a response from someone, now I just don't know what to do, so I do nothing. I smile. I act kind but really I just want to make her feel something like the hurt that I felt by just being tossed aside. This is resentment. My pride wounded. My personal relations affected. I could say that I was paying attention which I was until that pluperfect moron. started talking emotively about how he had gone out of his way to talk to someone "not like him." Hold yourself up as a fuckup and people applaud it, they talk about the way that they hate who they are because they... well, anyway, I'm sitting there and thinking this has absolutely with the topic at hand..and they are straying from an entirely viable topic. Something pertinent.
So something has crept in and stolen my paradise. You can say that you allowed it to happen. But I didn't allow myself to get affected, I just was. I was excited, and maybe wrongly so because at the time, things didn't properly make sense. But out of pride and ego, I went after something that couldn't be forced. I wanted someone to notice me, so I went after it. One of the reasons I shrug away from the social scene there is because it smacks entirely of being on the in-crowd. Christ, even Bill suffered feverishly from this particular malady, and he did not parade it as something that was a sought after virtue. Of course, it's natural to desire camraderie. It happens at practically every meeting you'll ever go to. The clique that forms. Truthfully, I probably would fall more in line with the gang on Wednesday, the real freaks, the social niggers of the lot. Not that I am, I just have always struggled with where I fit into the mix. This is a matter of feeling. A feeling of fear, a fear of being not quite what others are looking for, despite myself. An intense and innate desire to connect, and prove myself. It's as if you have to prove yourself. And I've always climbed the mountain to where I can display my ability to measure up to others standards. SO I can fit in. So I can be a proven commodity. Earn your way to the top. So this is what I find myself doing now. And because you take yourself so damn seriously, people see that. They see right into that shit and the natural inclination is, for that kind, for that arena, to just let you be. Because you're so damned use to trying to make others look your way, and if they do, seize the opportunity as a sign. So if they look your way it's a blessing, but if they don't then you are accursed. How are we ever going to survive the daily ups and downs with that mental attitude. The emotional rollercoaster of trying to please others and keep them happy with you. Of wanting to be adored at all times.
So this is what is happening now. Mostly because I simply want to keep the party going even now.

Just haven't found it very rewarding...which isn't totally true in the grand sense of how it's said. After thinking about this for a few moments I realize the selfishness of such a statement but I'm developing a bit of bitterness over the last couple weeks. It stems from the recent situation where yes, I met a woman who rocked my world. Rock n Roll Jen. And that was a lingering flash in the pan seemingly. I think she just wanted to go out. And that was it. She wanted to have a little fun and go out with a guy she knew & who was maybe safe? Enter me. Didn't help that I kind of looked at her like a rock star. I mean I know it doesn't benefit either one of us to look at it that way. But yeah, I put her on a pedestal and have for a long time because she has all the characteristics of what I like in a person and in a lot of ways the person I want to be more likke.... I mean, she's not perfect, she can't be. But at the same time, it was like maybe the green one's coming round. Because like TJ said, I'm not looking for a perfect woman, I want someone I'm attracted to, someone I feel comfortable with and ultimately, and more importantly, someone who is interesting. I worried for a good 24 -72 hours about whether I was interesting enough. Hell, I've worried about that since I don't know when... you just never feel like you're interesting enough for the rest of the world. Not for potential employers, not for your social circles, not for the women you're really interested in dating... but you keep going along as though, maybe by some mad circumstance you are going to meet someone in the right place at the right time... etc etc. People say well, why complain about them? It just hit me that actually there is no point in complaining about them... it is what it is and really, this is still about pride for me. This is still also about self-image. About how I view myself versus how I view the world. Maybe we just need reminders that it is okay to just let things roll with the punches....
For instance, it was actually good to hear John say that he was doing okay despite his recent escapade with joblessness, well, really the bedevilments, in general that he was really over it...things did change for him... he found some temporary work that was flexible and paid well, and even got to buy a new car so he could have transportation when he needed it. But he seemed to have gotten through a hurdle and decided he wasn't going to let pervading circumstances determine his present happiness. What makes him happy is hard to say. Not really my place to say but he has actually been on the down side for a long time, and I recgonized that I wasn't always the supportive friend I could have been for someone in that place.... it isn't easy I know when you're in the muck... I think I have been suffering from that old feeling like the shoe is going to drop. Really drop. We live toward distraction of that anymore I think... the fear of what's going to come or what might not come... the fear of what is possibly going to crash down around us... whether it be the ceiling coming down to the tune of thousands of dollars, the microwave exploding and starting a fire in the kitchen...