I feel off balance, like I need to recenter. And it’s not that I don’t have the tools to do it, but that I am resisting employing them. And I am not satisfied with where I am, but I am comfortable with this particular dissatisfaction, because it is what is familiar. It is what comes of following the path of least resistance.
I am refusing to challenge myself because accepting the challenge could bring failure, and I already am disappointed enough with myself.
Accepting the challenge could also mean success, and that, at some level, means a change of who I am at the core. And what if I don’t like that person as much? What if my friends and family don’t like that person as much? What if my changing, even the slightest shift, somehow makes it harder to get along with the people I care about? I worry about alienating them with, what, my desire for self-improvement? A lack of time to spend with them (despite already having to work hard to make sure I am socializing enough – keeping my relationships going as I try to keep the depression at bay)? And I feel, at times, that the depression is just an excuse to let me pick the lazy path and to tell myself that I don’t have a choice, not really. The depression becomes a convenient excuse to not try to do the things I think will help me to improve myself. That I think will help me deal with the depression.
So is this convolved feeling just the depression trying to protect itself? And if I personify or anthropomorphize my depression, is that going to make my fight against it harder, or easier? Something to consider.
I want to simplify, but I don’t know where to begin, because I am attached to the clutter I keep around me – the physical, the electronic, and the emotional. It is familiar, it is insular. Its the wall that I put up between me and, what, the world? Between me and getting to really look deep and know myself? Both?
Simultaneously I want to and fear examining the things and asking “why is this important for me to keep?” so I can learn to let go of the unnecessary.
