A Space That Shouldn't Have Been Left Empty

It's 2:11am right now, and I'm sitting here...well, laying here, in bed, wondering what I should be doing aside from sleeping.

I feel more and more restles. I figure it's the fact that I'm still jobless, and that my efforts to secure a job seem paltry at best. It's probably the fact that I always feel inadequate around you, and no matter how many times you tell me "it's OK" and that I shouldn't, I still will. You say it's because I do not have enough confidence in myself, and that I need to believe in myself or else how can I believe in anything, even you.

Tonight was not a good night. I'm alone, rather than softly muttering into the phone and having to repeat myself and grinning because I know you want to talk to me despite my ways.

I'm stubborn, I'm brash. I'm foolish.

You should know that I do have motivation, that I do put forth effort. I don't believe I have "all the time in the world"...I never have. I simply don't act, and that has caused more problems than good, for myself and for us, for everyone I've ever dealt with it feels like.

But now, here I am, 7 minutes later, still in the dark, still alone, typing on a dirty laptop with a dead fruit-fly staining the corner of my screen. Has this gotten me anywhere? Does typing this out do anything for me? Maybe. All I can see is that when I actually create the words, when I can get them out of my head and on to something more...real...or at least more visible than from within my head, I don't feel as pressured. I don't feel like I'm being so easily crushed into a little ball.

But why should I feel so pressured, like I'm stuck in a compactor with no way out? Am I holding myself down to a lower standard and not allowing myself to achieve something? Am I simply resigning to the notion that there is nothing I can do in this world that makes a difference and I should just give up? I don't think I am, because I probably would have actually said that a million times by now. I doubt I'd bother writing about it, because that would only accentuate the futility of the whole thing. I think.

There's not much to this post. I'm just rambling to empty out my head a bit for other words to eventually take the place of the ones put here. It was time for me to make room I guess.

Looking back on the past few years, especially the college ones, I can find nothing that has struck me as truly fascinating work. I'd like to dabble in music in some form, despite my apparent inability to carry a tune. I want to go around taking photos for my own personal pleasure, but I feel that I do have an eye for visual media. Having no formal training, this would be a tough field for me to enter just yet. I am an English major, and yet I am afraid to write. It's a wonder I can even post anything, but that's probably because there is absolutely NO creative merit to any of them.

The idea of writing, be it scripting or poetry, story-lines or lyrics, scares me. When I used to write, in high-school, that's all I did almost every night before I went to sleep. I would be in bed, with my notebook and a book-light, squinting to see if I was still writing legibly. I could write forever. I once spent a good three hours writing in the dark like this. There was this feeling of accomplishment that came as soon as I finished a piece, but I would also later feel sick. Sick that I would write anything at all resembling what I saw on the paper, hating myself for expressing myself the way I did. It felt dark, it felt so wrong when I would revisit those lines scribbled in the night.

My mood changed as I wrote, and as the writing increased so was my mood affected. I would be glad to have finished writing, but I ultimately felt weak, scared, alone. When I wrote I felt as though the words were branded on my body, with the most hateful and dark of them upon my forehead. Each word weighed me down, but I could not stop. I was suffocating but I had to continue or else feel like I would explode. Either way, I felt like I was losing myself.

Thinking back on all that I have written, I feel sad, almost sorry for myself at that time. I feel that my writing did nothing but torture me, hold me hostage to feelings I did not want to have and force me to think in ways that scared me.

Eventually, the feelings started to dissipate. The urgent need to write started to die down. I really don't know what I can attribute this to, but it was a welcomed relief. It's almost as though I willed myself out of writing, forced myself to write only when absolutely necessary, such as writing an essay for school. This was most easily done during college, when I could really occupy myself between class and sleep.

When I think about sitting down and writing, I can't even come up with an idea of where to begin. I do miss how I used to be able to write endlessly, having new ideas all the time, but I do not miss the fact that my creativity was morbid, that it was destructive and bitter.

That was a fun tangent, wasn't it kids?

I guess I'm just doing all of this to fill a space that shouldn't have been left empty tonight. I'm sorry I don't talk more to you, and that when we do get together, I'm usually quiet. I still freeze up around you, even in the context in which we meet. It's like I'm still shy...-shrugs-

Okay. My mind has emptied itself enough for now. Hopefully Saturday will turn out more positively.