Exasperation

This is an entry from my journal, just as I wrote it – edits are in brackets. Don’t hate. (:

I am constantly making mistakes. I constantly say too much, or too little. Rarely do I leave a conversation having said just enough. Mostly I jut lack the discernment to know when to stop or start talking. Mostly I just am too selfish to care. My lack of words is selfish in that I’m saving face, or protecting my heart. Mostly, my lack of words are for my self-preservation and self-preservation alone. Mostly, my saying too much has to do with being needy. Mostly, it’s because I’m insecure in what I have said, and feel the need to overcompensate. Mostly, I’m just a selfish person trying to protect myself. Protect myself from being looked down upon, protect myself from being thought too lowly of, protect myself from being too horrible. And mostly, my self-preservation leads to others’ exasperation. I exasperate people by not sharing enough with them, so they feel untrusted and unworthy. And, in a sense, I think they are [not able to be trusted and unworthy]. I exasperate people by sharing too much with them, so they feel overloaded by my burdens because I just keep heaping and heaping them on. Mostly, I can’t find a healthy middle between the two extremes. Mostly, I don’t know what balance looks like. Mostly, I can’t figure out how to even begin to weigh things out. I see everything as too heavy, or too light. Death, too heavy. Weather, too light. Feelings, too heavy. Thoughts, too light. Sin, too heavy. Holiness, too light. Or too heavy. Satan, too light. God, too heavy. Parents, too heavy. Class[es], too light.
I don’t know the in between. My gray-scale is missing all the gray. My color wheel is missing all the shades.

Mostly, I exasperate myself. My heaviness is too heavy, even for me, and my lightness isn’t even noticeable. I am too hard on myself, and mostly too judgmental of myself. And somehow, I have projected my perceptions of myself on to other people. Mostly, I can’t see the good in me. Mostly, I can’t see the “lovely” in me.

Mostly, my exasperation of others comes from my exasperation of myself. Once I’ve exasperated myself, the obvious next is to exasperate others. Not that this is done on purpose, no no. But I’ve never felt not exasperated, I don’t think. And if all I’ve ever known is exasperation, what can be expected of me but further exasperation of myself and the people surrounding me? But on the same token, by saying that I’m sort of excusing my behavior as unchangeable. But even murderers can become [saints], and even lovers can become haters. So what makes it so that I cannot change my exasperative tendencies? Nothing. Perhaps fear of lots of fear [maybe I meant ‘things’ there?] — of not being “enough.” But maybe not even that. Maybe just fear of finding out what is real and what is false. Maybe discovering the shades is scary. Maybe figuring out boundaries. It’s all rather frightening, maybe. But more than fear is maybe just excuses. Laziness. I don’t want to do the work to figure out the shades. I don’t want to do the work to figure out what is real and what is false. I don’t want to do the work to find out how much could actually be good in me. I don’t want to do the work to figure out the boundaries that would prevent exasperation. And writing all this has exasperated [me].

 

&

Well. yes.

I am afraid of finding out how much of me is actually good and how much of me is actually bad. What if the majority of me is actually really very bad, and I’ve been oblivious to it all? That scares me. What if most of me isn’t really good at all — not lovely, not wonderful, not good, not worth very much — and I’ve been thinking this whole time that there just has to be something good? That scares me.

A lot of things scare me.

Goodnight.