I apologize in advance for two epic entries in one day. Ha. Although this entry might be more worth its length than the last one. I couldn�t possibly have saved it for tomorrow, because, it just wouldn�t be the same� I am very worried because this was four pages long in microsoft word. I am sorry for those of you without the patience for an entry this long, but it couldn't be helped. Hopefully a few will be able to stick around and read the whole thing, and enjoy it.
As the months of regularly keeping this journal have passed, I have progressed in my writing, and grown to be more emotionally open with my readers. Yet, at the same time, I have closed more and more of my deeper musings of more intricate or delicate topics. I am not sure whether to blame this on a dry spell in my thoughts, because I really haven�t been highly convicted about much lately; or if I have grown a greater self-consciousness from gaining a wider reader base and growing closer to some of my very regular readers, thus closing up about topics which I fear would gain disapproval.
I used to discuss nonconformist subcultures, romantic relationships, once I almost touched on historical politics, and a small slew of those sort of things. I have looked through my mind though, and anything near that magnitude, I am frightened to touch on any more. I hate to put forth my views about such things. I used to try and write an entry about such a topic every week, or two weeks�I�d have to check earlier entries for regularity of such topics to be sure, but I know I used to try to keep those sprinkled through my diary.
I think that, in the last 2 or 3 months though, that I have discarded every trace of reflection on the world around me, in favor of opening windows into my own soul. I continue to open the same window though, which shows only my emotion. There has been very very little depth of anything in my entries for such a long time. This is simply base emotion. Where went anything deeper?
I guess tonight, I decided I needed to start sprinkling again. These aren�t really observations or discussions on the world around me, but deeper topics which have troubled me lately. Tonight, I shall open up a different window of my soul.
The running theme, is going to be turning away from original truths. The opening of this illustrated that well. I began writing in this journal, mixing intellectual ideas, exciting day logs, and emotional trouble. Over time, I discarded the intellectual ideas, and gradually, even threw out most of the day logs. I had the right idea at the beginning. If my writing had grown and expanded from there, I would have been doing well. I turned from this good concept though, to better fit what I thought people would want of me, or what they should see of me. I happen to be very engrossed with creating facades of myself for people to see and admire. I comprise them of choice elements of my nature, whilst leaving other elements and musings, not quite so high and attractive, in a locked closet to keep my skeletons company. I turned from the truth to appease an appearance, to feed lies. And everything I have been pondering, harps and intertwines with that concept.
I do not know how I have stayed under the impression so long, but I have been na�ve and innocent enough, to believe for all but the last couple years, that anyone, anywhere, could not ever want anything else but to be a good person. Why would anyone want to be aloof and harsh? Withdrawn? Cold? Bitter? Why would anyone want to be a heartbreaker? How could anyone want these things? Truly they can�t, truly no one does, they must all want to be good. They must be all broken and bleeding inside because all they really want, is to be a simple, good person. It never crossed my mind, that when, pushed to the lowest of lows, that a greedy, power hungry person, or any other sort of bad, could want anything else, but to turn from their ways and be good.
My eyes have opened more to the way things work, and in my own mind, I have seen why a person would contrive themselves as hard, bitter, cold and proud, and be content to be that for the rest of their lives. To be empty inside. Unseeing of anything better. I have seen and understood why a person would let one small defeat crush and kill them. Crippling them forever. Binding them in a miserable existence, which they so easily could have crawled out of, and still could. Yet they stay there, because of how it affects other people. Depending on how they shape themselves, they can gain the acceptance, worship, affection, pity, attention, and other basic needs, which they long for. They desire power, love and attention, and they will construe themselves as beautiful and terrible to gain it. I can see how good that looks now. I shudder to say that yes, I understand.
I have lost my childhood innocence and understand these sort of things better. I have turned 180 degrees in the wrong direction, from my path of childhood, and struggle a little more with the girl I let myself be shaped into. There is the allure of turning myself into cruel, harsh, aloof, and utterly desirable. I have the bitterness, if I made the choice; I have all the means within my grasp to turn to that road to meet any needs I have. I once knew that that was not the way to go about things, but now, subconsciously and uncontrollably, I don�t see it as the incorrect way, but rather a different way to do things, perhaps even a more desirable.
I shudder to say that. To think that I have lost that much of what God calls us to be. Childlike.
But I suppose I have detected it soon enough, and developed a deeper relationship with God soon enough, that through Him, and only through Him, I can retain some grasps of the blind wisdom I had as a child. The knowledge of the truth, and the belief that it was the only way to be. It doesn�t come naturally as it did then, but I will fight nature to keep the wisdom on my side.
Then maybe I haven�t turned 180 degrees. Maybe then I have not tread any wrong paths. Not yet, and hopefully, not ever. Perhaps it�s a struggle every now and then, because of what �sense� dictates, but I will struggle.
I think this topic came up now, because of what I have read in Great Expectations. The way Estella is, and the way Miss Havisham is, really impacted my mind and made me reflect on this. Estella, cruel and harsh, Miss Havisham, dealt such a light blow, which she let utterly destroy her life forever. This also gives me an excuse to quote Pip, speaking of Estella and her impact on him,
�I never had one hour�s happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death�
I am not quite sure if that has anything to do with the subject, yet it leaped off the page at me when I read it. I had to incorporate it somewhere.
What are my thoughts on it? That would be to launch onto other topics, which might not fit here. Perhaps another day, but perhaps not.
I have turned 180 degrees in the wrong direction and traveled down many roads I had never tread before though in other areas.
I never cared about what other people thought of my looks until I was about 14. I had been relatively happy and content with every aspect of my looks (and although still not really comely now, I was almost homely then�well, just facial feature wise�) One day, something changed though. Something clicked. One of those supposed maturings or enterings into the adult world. One of those �eye opening� experiences maybe, and I became wholly engrossed with my looks, and what people thought of me. I was much more careful in how I dressed, and slowly, my dressing habits changed, and I became much more dissatisfied with what I would buy. More than that though, was how I perceived myself, and how I felt about it. I became far more self conscious and wary. I have become unhealthily obsessed. Another one of those pieces of innocence lost. A truth left abandoned for unhealthy lies.
Fortunately, I don�t have a lot of trouble with body image. I am skinny enough that weight has never been a problem, although concern that someday it will be is (although that�s absurd because everything points to no prospects of weight trouble�ever�my mom had 5 kids but was then still able to get herself down to a size 5 with no exercise programs, gym programs, or diets of any sort�she just lost all the weight naturally�bodes well for me I think�ha� I have the exact same metabolism�and I say this because she is not a size 5 anymore, but that is because of health problems and medications). I do have some other body image trouble, but that�s not really up for discussion. Ever.
The biggest problem is facial features. Unchangeable except by surgery, and I just don�t consider that an option.
So it�s a problem, which I fight. But I do fight it. I fight to get back to the girl I once was. To regain that innocence of childhood.
So there then, the window has opened, and you have been granted a look. You see what runs through my mind. Besides truth turned to lies, innocence. I didn�t realize it until I was done, but the theme of innocence seems to be a melody my mind is stuck on. It was even evidenced in the dream I had the other night. Childlike Innocence. Pure and sweet. I need to shut the window again now, although the picture captured, is forever open for viewing.