I Wrote a Random Journal Entry and Decided to Turn it into a Blog Post (with Annotation)

My posts of late have been kind of heavy and I don’t know how you all feel but I decided I need a fun one and I’ve decided that my journal entry from yesterday is it.

Normally when I write in my journal it’s because I’m super overwhelmingly upset about something but I’m trying to change that. Below is the entry in full without any alterations aside from some notes that will appear in bold to help explain wtf is happening:

10/7/18

I’m not sure if I have anything specific to say I just felt inspired to write something.

I have a cold which is kind of annoying but it’s not as bad as they sometimes are/used to be.

I usually don’t pick this pen because ithe (it’s) the weird looking clear kind that’s transparent (not the clear kind that’s not transparent) and like octagonal and this one doesn’t even have a cap. But I’m noticing it’s actually producing decent handwriting. Or maybe that’s more to do with the fact that I’m not hyper-emotional right now.

I mean who thought this was a good shape for a pen? I keep having to spin it around so one of its millions of corners isn’t stabbing my thumb. I just realized how sad it is that this pen just had to write its own insults.

I’m sorry, pen. You’re great. Also I’m hardly perfect. I’m so out of the practice of writing that my hand is already cramping and my writing os barely legible. Look at that crappy “M” (The M in “I”m sorry, pen” looks more like an “n” wearing a Charlie Brown sweater).

I used to think I was bad at writing w/pen and paper because I think so fast it’s impossible to get it all and I can’t even type that fast let alone drag an octagonal pen across paper.

But maybe people used to be more patient with themselves. Maybe they were better at holding onto thoughts. Or maybe they learned to not care if they lost one.

I’ve always been so bothered by losing a thought. And I can almost always remember them so I can’t even let myself forget and move on.

I have this weird ability to remember shit by category. Like I’ll have no idea what I was about to say but I’ll know it was something that was worrying me because I’ll still feel anxious so then I just run through a list of what I might have felt anxious about and eventually I find it. It’s not just anxiety. Like I’ll remember if it was about sex or a fight with a friend or political. It just has to do with how I related to it emotionally b/c my body holds onto the emotion even if my brain has lost the thought. And almost no thought makes me feel nothing (and I dramatically underlined “nothing” with its own g curl for emphasis).

Ok but also I do think fast as fuck. Like often I’ll be in therapy and we’ll have just been discussing something deep like how 10 year old Arielle inside of me feels like she’s not allowed to say something wrong because she doesn’t deserve love and then I’ll look off to the side and she’ll be like “What does that bring up for you?” And I’ll be like “Honestly, I mean I felt that, but for at least the last 5 seconds I’ve been thinking about how I have to do laundry later and I always want to use the verb launder but that feels like it can only be used for money but that’s probably why it’s called money laundering – you’re making dirty money clean.”

My therapist is very patient, but I guess that’s most of the job.

The only thing she needs to work on are her clock checking sneaks.

Multiple times lately I’ve looked back and she’s quickly stopped looking at the clock.

And I mostly feel weird not acknowledging it. Like I know you have to keep track of the time. And I know it must be so hard. And I’m sure you’re worried I’ll feel like this means you’re not listening to me. But I know you can do both. Would it help if I checked the clock instead? Or maybe we should just get a huge necklace clock like that one rapper…what the fuck is his name. I mean it’s time related, isn’t it? Oh, no. It’s Flava Flave. that has nothing to do with time.

I’ve already decided I’m making this a blog post. I don’t even know if it’s good or if I’ve just grown self indulgent b/c my tweet about Big Mouth went viral and I need more hits of that sweet sweet validation.

(Then there’s a large arrow pointing up to “sweet sweet validation” and under it reads “genuine concern.”)

I’m going to wrap this up now.

I Love You

(And then I underlined it about 8 times and one of them was more like a cross out)

that’s an underline not a cross out! I Do love you!

Arielle

I’m Normal Until I’m Insane, and Maybe You Are Too.

I feel the need to open with an acknowledgement that I am not writing about the current situation with the Supreme Court and America in general. Part of me feels badly that I’m talking about inconsequential shit when such big and horrible stuff is going on and the rest of me is like you know what fuck it because this is all I have left now. If you don’t want to read this right now, though, I understand. I have, at times, yelled at people for promoting their work on days when shit that I view as tragic has happened and possibly that was just me being a dick. But anyways, that’s not what we’re discussing.

This week we will be talking about how eventually in every relationship (romantic, sexual, friend to a lesser extent) everything will be going great and then I ruin it by getting needy and insecure. Anyone relate? (Please oh god please say yes).

I don’t know why it happened this way, but I kind of started out my romantic career the way others start out drinking: too much too early, in severe excess, and by not shutting the fuck up about it. The way other teenagers drank heavily at parties to cover up the fact that they had yet to formulate a personality, I threw myself into someone else’s world hoping to attach their likes and accomplishments to my own resume.

I somehow decided that all relationships had to be serious and that everything in them carried enormous weight. My first boyfriend was a nice enough guy (and is lovely now. If you’re reading this, I know we were young and stupid and I am sure you’ve grown into a lovely person and I enjoy our occasional exchanges) but did not want to be as serious as I did and he didn’t know how to handle that and I didn’t either. We were together for about 10 months, lost our virginity to each other, and I was certain we would get married. Thinking back on the relationship, all I really remember aside from pockets of happiness here and there was being miserable and anxious. I was always worried about something. I was always trying to fix something. And I wasn’t having any fun. When he tried to break up with me, I wrote him an 8 page letter about why he was wrong and then made him say it was a “break.”

If I had had any sense of self worth and knew who I was as a person, I’d have at some point known that that situation was not for me. But for some reason I didn’t, so I didn’t.

The kind of super shitty part about it is that right after that I dated one of my best friends for about a year and while I’m sure we did stupid and unhealthy things because we were 17, it really was a great match and someone I should have been serious with. So when he broke up with me out of the blue I was devastated and it also kind of reinforced this weird story I was forming in my head of “Relationships are deep, amazing, and serious, and you have to constantly be on guard or they’ll end and everything will be terrible and you’ll have nothing.”

Then rather than, I don’t know, figuring out who I was or joining clubs (I don’t know what people do) I just kept dating person after person chasing the high and trying to cover up the low of the last. Then they would all break my heart because no one can be trusted and if you aren’t constantly checking in to see how everyone is feeling then everything falls apart!

This cycle isn’t super unique. A lot of people fall into a cycle of being addicted to the rush of a new attraction and then insecurity and resentment and distance set in when they realize that maybe it wasn’t what they thought it was. Or whatever, again, I don’t know what other people are doing but that sounds right. Right?

Then one day, many years later, I decided I would make myself be single for awhile and break the cycle of filling the void with another person. So I got a vibrator, kept a journal, and started watching Arrested Development.

And then a few months later I started seeing someone long distance, New York to LA, with almost no prior romantic engagement with them. I can’t be prefect all the time. I mean this is the same year that I stocked up on lentil soup before Hurricane Sandy but forgot to get cash and cried in the middle of a pizza place the day after the storm because I couldn’t buy hot pizza.

Even with the knowledge that I have issues with being my own person in a relationship and even with the strong desire to change, it still gets me.

Nowadays when a relationship of mine ends, with the help of a lot of therapy and meditation and a bunch of other LA magic non bullshit bullshit stuff, I am able to let myself feel the pain of it and give myself the space to recover. I no longer jump right into something to mask the pain or to give me validation. I check in with my motives if I decide to have an “encounter” (listen, my parents might read this. I know it could be better but this is a real concern for me) and ensure that I’m doing it for enjoyment and not to fill a gap in self worth.

After my last relationship ended, while it was hugely painful, I quickly felt I was really able to breathe and be myself again. I started laughing as much as I feel like my true self does. I was excited to work on artistic projects again. I became charming as fuck again. And of course people were into it. Feeling stable and excited, I started….hooking up with a couple of my friends (I’ll get over it eventually!). I wrote a journal entry about one of the encounters and how I had been seeing a couple people (I won’t include the uncomfortable details. Maybe upon private request) and the entry ended with simply, “So honestly things are fucking great.”

And I remember feeling that way. So free and happy and excited and alive and appreciated and loved by my friends.

And then this week, here’s what happened in my head:

“Oh no he’s not texting me as much. Should I not have said that? Am I texting too much? What if he doesn’t actually want to see me? What if he’s not interested anymore? What if he doesn’t feel the way that I feel? How do even I feel? What are you even talking about? Where is this going? How will this end? Do I not want it to end? What would that mean? What have I done? Was that all make believe? I mean, the time together is so fucking wonderful I want it all the time. Why wouldn’t he? Does that mean he doesn’t enjoy it as much as I do? I knew last week when everything felt amazing and I wouldn’t let myself ruin it for me that eventually I would ruin it for me.”

Casual.

And might I remind myself (and tell you, reader, for the first time because you don’t live inside of my head yet) that just a week prior I had told him that he was overstepping boundaries and I didn’t want to hang out all the time and I needed to maintain my independence and keep my oxytocin attachment crap in check because I’m recently out of a thing, as you know. And now I’m the one wanting more time and attention.

Somehow I get in a space where I think the other person isn’t equally capable of having complex needs that have nothing to do with me and change constantly.

I recognized my familiar refrain immediately, yet that brought me little comfort. I was thinking about it a lot on the way home from work yesterday. I thought about how this is just something I’m going to have to be aware of and battle probably forever. And then a friend of mine called me asking for relationship advice. I immediately thought “I’m probably the worst person for the job right now, but go ahead.”

He talked about how he will sometimes be overcome with love for his girlfriend and then the next day he’ll think “I don’t feel that way right now. I’m looking at her and I’m feeling nothing. And then I think were those feelings a lie? If they were a lie, I’m a bad person. She is so perfect and great and if I don’t feel the same way and I really don’t love her as much as I thought I did yesterday then I’m being an awful person by letting her be with me. But then sometimes I’ll start being worried that she doesn’t really like me as much as I like her I mean she’s so perfect. Why would she like me? And then I can’t even enjoy my time with her because I’m so inside my own fucking head and I’m driving myself crazy and ruining the point of the whole thing. Am I insane?”

“Yes, dear friend. And you’re in good company.”

We then talked about how our respective pasts have given us certain false beliefs about relationships that then lead to irrational fears and anxiety. I told him that it would be something he would have to continuously be aware of and work on and that he wouldn’t just step into perfection one day, but slowly progress. And sometimes it won’t feel like you’ve progressed at all. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re right back where you started. But that’s not true and you can’t listen to that. You just have to keep taking care of yourself and learning to listen to your true self.

Because those thoughts that he had and those thoughts that I had aren’t fucking real. But he and I are extremely stubborn and logical people so we’re really fucking good at convincing ourselves that our irrational fears are rational. Like “Sure this could be fake but also don’t they say that intuition is extremely important in relationships so if I feel like something’s not right I should definitely listen to myself. I mean I don’t want to be one of those people who ignores these feelings for years and ends up in a marriage where no one is happy and then we have to have a messy expensive divorce. You’ve read about how horrible and common divorce is. This is the kind of shit to look out for if we’re to change the way these things work and improve the way society deals with relationships. I mean we’re the future. Be the change you wish to see.”

Uhuh.

I told him about a therapy technique that a lot of people use and that has been super helpful to me. It really helps to name the crazy thoughts and not only name them but make them kind of funny so you help yourself snap out of the belief that what’s going on in your head is somehow the most serious issue on Earth. So I told him how I identify my anxious thoughts.

I’d like you all to meet Stergil. Stergil is a little green, cartoon snake and he wears a ratty tophat. Stergil is a failed vaudeville performer. When I’m doubting my career goals and dreams and wondering if I’m good enough or if anyone cares about what I’m saying, I realize it’s just Stergil being a fucking dick because he feels bad about his failed career and he wants me to feel bad too and he doesn’t want to see anybody succeed. Emily V Gordon talks about the same technique in her amazing book Super You.

Now the truth is, Stergil is a dick but he’s actually coming from a place of wanting to protect me. Stergil knows that I’ve had my heart broken multiple times by people who pulled away from me. But Stergil is still a fucking idiot.

I had only really used Stergil for career issues before, but when I told my friend about him I realized that Stergil also had a lot of failed marriages and he doesn’t believe in letting your guard down in any kind of relationship because everyone will just break your heart anyways.

So now when I am trying to ruin the best fucking shit life has to offer and I think “But why isn’t he texting me back?” I”ll say, “Stergil, listen, I’m sorry your second wife left you too even though she knew how much the first one hurt you but get it the fuck together, man. You can’t keep shittin on everyone else because you feel bad.”

But progress not perfection is the name of the game, as I’ve learned from a friend of mine who’s an avid member of the Al-Anon world. For those who may not know, Al-Anon is kind of like a spinoff of AA and is for people who have alcoholics/addicts in their lives and it helps them with things such as codependence and blah blah blah (this is good journalism). I sound really optimistic and on top of my shit right now but I didn’t this morning or yesterday. I was a bit of a wreck. But I realized that I have a fucking cold and am PMSing so in a very real way I’m less well equipped to reign in Stergil. And one of the reasons I know that Stergil is real and that he’s full of bullshit is that I just took a klonopin and smoked some weed and I FEEL FUCKING FINE. I am myself. I’m sneezing all over the place and I haven’t eaten in 10 years, but I am myself.

The goal of course is to be able to get there without self medicating, even if I do have a prescription and weed is legal and safe (I’m saving the shame I feel about taking medication for my mental health for a whole other blog post). But it helps me know that when I really am being myself, I do not have those thoughts.

Am I Carrie Bradshaw?

This is shaping up to be a bit of a sloppy dismount because, as I mentioned, I am sick right now so I’m not working at full capacity.

So, uh, go find your Stergil and tell them to fuck off. Be yourself. Laugh at things. Don’t take yourself seriously. Listen to your truths and enjoy amazing shit. You deserve it.

Oh and vote in November. Please.