Journey through Faerieland

"Have you ever felt that there was something going on in life that not everyone was aware of?" Rose asked, turning her mug around in her hands. "As though there's a story going on that everyone is a part of, but not everybody knows about? Maybe 'story' isn't the right word -- a sort of drama, a battle between what's peripheral and what's really important. As though the people you meet aren't just their plan, prosaic selves, but are actually princes and princesses, gods and goddesses, fairies, gypsies, shepherds, all sorts of fantastical creatures who've chosen to hide their real shape for some reason or another. Or who have forgotten who they really are. Have you ever thought that?"
-pg. 36, The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold by Regina Doman

I really loved and related to this quote:-)

A friend on Facebook wrote down this quote, and I want to remember it:
"We compromised our pride and sacrificed our health / We must demand more not from each other, but more from ourselves." - Jewel, "Deep Water"

Often I can be very demanding in what I expect from people. I always expect people to have the best of intentions and to keep promises and make great efforts. I get disappointed fairly easily in people, though I don't often show it, or I try to compensate for it. I also just ignore imperfections when I put people on pedestals, but then sometimes if they do something "wrong" I get disproportionately upset with them. I fall apart emotionally if something goes wrong in a personal relationship. I often think if people did things how I wanted I would be so much happier and so would they. Maybe sometimes that's true, but often it isn't, and people have to follow their own paths. Instead of judging people or trying to control them (even mentally) I should show my respect for their choices, beliefs, and preferences. I should love them for who they are and what they want to be. If they seem to be making bad choices, I can try to help out if they want me to, and I can be supportive, but ultimately their life is up to them and I can still care about them just as much. I certainly can't live up to everyone's expectations. And there are so many flaws and faults I do possess that I should be working on instead of nitpicking others. I want to be a better person and that should be my main focus.

Some things to improve:
-Getting easily frustrated with people I have a miscommunication with or who holds a different opinion from me
-Getting frustrated when people try to debate with me
-Judging people who say or do something unnecessarily mean instead of just judging their action and realizing I don't know what's going through the guilty person's mind
-Holding grudges when people have moved on from the disagreement
-Assuming certain people possess negative qualities because they trigger an insecurity in me
-Lashing out when I get triggered
-Saying/doing really nasty things when I'm upset with someone instead of being honest in a simple and calm way

Sometimes it's hard for me to remember tomorrow will arrive. There will probably be a next week. There will probably be a next month. Seeing listings of books that aren't to be released until the summer give me hope. I don't know where I'll be then or what my life will be like, how it will differ from now, but it will probably still be going on in some way, and maybe I will even be happy.

"True love casts out fear." [...]

"Fearlessness brings with it the conviction that everything in our lives is part of our destiny, exactly what we need in order to become who we really are. Not only is it all right to be myself, it is even all right to let events be themselves. This means entering into a wholehearted engagement with our circumstances rather than arguing with them. Fear argues with circumstances. "No, I do not want that. Do not let that in." Love says: "Let it all happen just as it needs to." In Jung's words, this is "the unconditional yes to that which is, without subjective protest." The givens of existence live through us with our unreserved assent."
-pg. 105-106, When Love Meets Fear, by David Richo

Lately I've been listening to the musician Poe a lot. She has an album, Haunted, that ties into her brother's book, House of Leaves. I really loved that book (and the footnotes/interweaving reflective stories). The album Haunted also ties into her feelings about her father's death (there are clippings of her father's lectures played in the background sometimes during the songs). I also relate to that aspect, since I have mixed feelings and thoughts around my own father's death, over 7 years ago. I've been reading over her lyrics at times, and play Poe's music in the background while I do other things more actively. The general feel of the album fits my mood a lot lately.

The book House of Leaves, and to an extent the album Haunted remind me of Alice in Wonderland. Falling into the house in House of Leaves is like falling down the rabbit hole, passing through a liminal state into an entirely new world and manner of existence. Reality transforms, and the "normal" people making their way to this other world don't know how to interpret this other realm in which they become trapped. This reminds me of how people from time to time fall into mental states unusual for themselves, sometimes without even being aware of it at first, and usually unaware of what exactly is happening and why. We fall into strange places mentally or physically and our reality is turned upside down. We don't know what anything means anymore or what our goals are. Our relationships are shaken, both to other human beings/creatures and to the basic architecture of the physical "objective" world. Our minds can be our own worlds and people around us might not realize we've fallen into another world. We don't know how to leave that strange world. In ways, House of Leaves reminds me of a hollow and emptied adult Wonderland. Things just don't "measure up" literally.

I still feel I'm in that strange otherworld, through dissociation, overload, PTSD, or some other factor. Do I wish I could rewind time and stop myself from falling down that passageway to another place? Or do I just wish to find my way out and carry all that I've gathered (good and bad) with me? I always change my mind on that. I know I don't want to take everything back, but I also can't treat reality as my own personal fantasy. Things happened as they did because everyone was living out their own self in this shared reality. Sometimes that will be to my personal disadvantage.

Lately I've really liked listening to Poe's song Wild and relate to it ("I go wild that it doesn't make sense"). I like all the songs on the album, though (two other favorites being Spanish Doll and Amazed).

I forgot when I was really depressed how much better reading Kierkegaard could make me feel. Looking back on everything that has happened recently, I possibly relate even better to what Kierkegaard wrote. It all makes sense to me in my life and my hardest times, as well as my ideals and highest goals. There's still a lot more by him I want to read... My approach toward life and my more religious experiences make sense and fit very well with his ideas (and his experiences in some ways, from what little I know of his actual life experiences...) Focusing on all of that, his philosophy and my feelings/thoughts in my greatest and most transcendent states of mind, helps me move forward and not shatter so terrible. It all reminds me of how I blow things out of proportion, hyperfocus on details that really don't affect (or at least don't hurt) anyone but me. I need to "get over myself" in a lot of ways, get out of myself instead of dwelling on the past and getting lost in my emotions and desires. I know I'm not the most selfish person ever to exist, I'm not saying that or making some kind of exaggeration, but there is a distinct correlation between my deepest points of selfishness/self-centered concern and my deepest depression/most cruel acts. The more I feel I'm transcending my "self," the more relaxed and strong I feel. I don't know, I just hope someday to become a better person. There are so many things I am trying to work on and be aware of.

Usually my feelings are very clear to me. Everything about my feelings, thoughts, emotions, wishes, body reactions, actions, etc. tend to collapse in one point. My emotions and reasoning can be complex still, but everything aligns, which probably adds to the perceived intensity. Lately I have had more mixed feelings and confused perspectives than I am accustomed to. It's not exactly that, though. It's not that things are hazy and muddled, but that separate, intact lines of emotions and thought patterns exist just as coherently and sharply as usual for me, it's just that there are multiple intense patterns at once. It feels like I'm living in a bunch of parallel universes simultaneously, and I'm aware of the fact. The narrative of my life breaks down. Nothing makes sense. The patterns are shattered and intense shards haunt me from different directions, different patterns of thoughts and feelings matching different patterned perspectives. I can't figure out which is more realistic, which is more truly myself. But they can't really coexist in any way that isn't incredibly incapacitating and painful. There are just strange, violent pieces everywhere.

I used to be considered a very stable person, until around age 19. People used to remark upon this as an actual personality trait of mine. Even from 19 onward, I have gone through periods where I would consider myself reasonably stable like I used to be (albeit, "stable" and "happy and living in good circumstances" are not equivalent). But then something becomes chaotic. And I'm always hypersensitive no matter what, so that exaggerates and complicates everything. Even when I'm relatively stable, I'm still very hypersensitive, it's just that my hypersensitivity can be quite predictable.

I saw this similarminds personality test on my friends list and I retook it again (I have it somewhere in my journal from a couple years ago). For me on this test, the one score that can change most drastically is "stability," which I find ironic... I think they changed a few of the questions on that test.


( Quiz )