YOSEYVA

I’m feeling like crap, the titular line doesn’t usually come up so early, but I’d like to get straight to the point. I feel like crap..where do we go from here? I feel like crap. Unsure of myself. Denying any and all skill sets I possess. Why? I feel insecure, comparing myself to others, making me, in turn, feel like crap for taking the accomplishments of others as my own personal negative. I feel like a bad person because of this, and then reflect on the “lack of success” my own work has. Though it isn’t comparable in the slightest, it’s an automatic reaction and I must change this. I must not allow my worth to be defined by other’s accomplishments. That’s just killing two very healthy birds with one heavy stone. The birds are dead and nobody feels good about this. I want to feel genuine happiness and pride for myself. I feel it for my friends, but that pride turns sour in my stomach. As I think it over, that pride turns into toxic waste and the fumes make their way up towards my brain. Infecting all thoughts of self worth and acceptance. Muddling it all into a sticky and slimy goo that, from my brain, melts down my throat, getting stuck in my lungs, coming out of my nose, and the rest of which makes its way back to my stomach to be turned to smoke once it touches the acid only to start the cycle again. It’s like the water cycle, but with my toxic belief system. Unhealthy, I know.

Now, what next? I must go deep within myself and find the source of this self hatred and negativity, because, really, it isn’t helping anyone. It’s easier said than done, but just be proud of yourself!!! An absurdly simple statement that sticks its roots deep in my past. They’ve been clinging to me for as long as I can remember, and it’s held on tight ever since. Fear of success is a very interesting mix with an insatiable need for success. A need so insatiable, that no amount of outward perception seems like enough and I seem to always strive for more. That I could do better. That I should do better. That, because I didn’t do that great to begin with, I will just sit within myself, hating myself and what I’ve done, EVEN THOUGH there are people who actually do see it and appreciate it and THEY TELL ME SO. But that high from someone telling me they like my work is, oh so fleeting. So fleeting that after a moment or so of feeling like the best man on earth, I sink back, but with one less hole in my parachute.

There’s nothing I can do about some things. Though there are some things which cannot be changed by mere mortal hand, there are things which I can change.

I can change my perception of my work. I can change my perception of what I value, what values me, and how those things serve me rather than living my life inside of the deep darkness of the self doubt and negativity which I have made a home in. That’s probably why I regress to that state so quickly, so easily. It’s what I know the best. It’s where I’m comfortable. It’s what’s easy and what I know and where I live. Moving is hard. Moving is hard and I’ve done it so many times, that I believe this self doubt and negativity is a form of stability and consistency, which it is, but not one I should be proud to call home. I especially shouldn’t be surprised when I go back there and can’t find my way out. I’m not looking. I stay here because, sometimes it’s easier to hate yourself than to figure out why you hate yourself, why you shouldn’t hate yourself, and how to rise above it and out of the depths of misery.

I talk a lot of talk about rising and falling and it’s because it so aggressively fluctuating within myself at all times. There’s nothing I can do about raising myself in toxicity, but there is something I can do about how I live with it. I can write long winded pieces like this, trying to decipher what’s going on inside my head. I can work towards analyzing why this keeps and always is happening to me. Why I can’t simply be proud of myself for these big accomplishments. Why I must always be better, but simultaneously feel as though I can never be enough. I still feel groggy in my torment, but I think I turned on that big industrial fan in the back, because the fog is clearing and I’m starting to see the sun again. It moves and comes rolling back in and clears up and rolls back and clears and rolls and I think it will keep doing that forever. Even if I conquer this whole mess, I think it’ll still come in waves. My new job is to shut it down. Sit down with it. Ask it how it’s doing. I don’t think anyone has asked the fog how it’s doing in a long time. I always just tell it to leave. But this time, I’ll ask the fog how she’s doing, and why she loves to stay. Maybe soon, the fog will condense into a big sheet of water to cleanse itself in a bath of its own clarity. I can picture it now. It’s beautiful and amazing for the flowers.

I should be proud of myself. I will be proud of myself. I am proud of myself.