Or am I reading the ACTUAL lines?
Contradictions? Oxymorons? Paradoxes?
I’m no longer sure what it is now…or what I do with it?
Everything in life is always open to our own interpretations of it and of course many things affect our interpretation of things – our own mental state being the biggest contributing factor on that.
I have discussed in the past how much I (over) analyse Jim’s posts. This morning was no exception.
“Don’t take things so seriously” seemed to be the first focus of the post. Well, that’s all good! Have you SEEN this blog?! Lol. But I know I’ve lost my way with that lately. The more confident you are, you more you are able to shirk off any doubts and that makes humour easier.
The self-deprecating humour I can exude is deeply steeped in actual self-loathing. I can brush it off as me just taking the piss out of myself when I know deep down the reality of it is VERY different.
Take last week in Paris for example. I met up with a person in the fandom that I was absolutely petrified to meet. Just the day before they had joked that they were going to leave Paris now they were aware that I was turning up. As much as I wanted to believe they were piss-taking and pulling my leg, the feeling that they were being genuine in their feeling of this (that they were dreading bumping into me and would leave Paris) had overridden.
I saw them on the day of the gig. I recognised them from the moderate distance I was located from them when first seeing them on the day. I stayed ‘incognito’. Not wanting to alert them of my presence. Fear of the reaction I would conjure up within them. That what I was feeling would manifest and they’d repel at seeing me.
We then did bump into each other. I was close enough to swallow down my self-loathing enough to say hello. They reacted much as I had feared – but it soon became apparent to me it was meant entirely in jest as they then asked for a hug.
Did that hug wash away everything else within me? I’d like to say ‘yes’…but not entirely. It quelled it, but it didn’t eradicate it.
The more I am aware that confident people radiate a kind of self-love that makes them attractive, the more I see how much self-loathing I have and how very unattractive I am. And I don’t know how to get myself out of that.
For a time it was working. I just…gave myself a break. And I forced myself to…love myself…for want of a better term. I could start to love myself then because I felt so much love! Well…not so much ‘love’ but I felt…worthy. If I didn’t have ‘self-love’ per se, I had ‘self-worth’. I allowed myself to believe that I mattered.
I can feel that I have lost a lot of what I had gained in recent years. That woman who stood in front of Jim at the Walk Between Worlds album signing – as nervous and sick with dread as she was? – she’s as gallus as they come compared to where I am now. That one in 2018 that stood in a crappy brown coat because she was too nervous to take it off and look good. Too many things in her hands. Too much else to concentrate on. Too preoccupied with not trying to boak on the floor. Throwing down a bag of sherbet straws, smiling, asking for something else to be signed – gallus! – conversing with Jim! Recording a bloody quiz show just a couple of weeks before that! Where the hell did THAT come from? The woman who actually went on TV to participate in one of the toughest quiz shows on telly! Where did she come from? Where did she go?
I genuinely marvel at someone like Sarah. To hear her talk, of how she was, of her upbringing in Aylesbury – how she does what she does night after night astounds me. Then again, I can feel that thing she gets from Jim. Well…it was something that I used to get anyway.
I described it once as a phial of…magic. This wee bottle of elixir that gave me all the strength, drive and purpose (well, if not actual purpose, the drive to at least SEE if I could FIND WTF my purpose is meant to be!)…the GALLUS I had in 2017 and 2018…vestiges of it in 2019. But I got greedy with it. I didn’t take from that wee phail of goodness moderately. I took and took from it. I overdosed on it. I think I had been ssooo starved of it that I just wanted it all. All the time. Every day. So often.
Now it has all be sucked dry and nothing is left. In fact, it might be worse than it was at the start.
I don’t know how to rebuild it. I don’t know how…
I’m trying to work past it with my university study. I am actually doing something that I had wanted to do for so very long doing this study. And I keep trying to justify WHY I am doing it. I’m trying to press home to myself that I am allowed to do this! That there is a purpose to it but I am finding it hard to actually see that.
“I’m sure you’d agree that there are some people who just make you feel good when they are around”, says Jim in his post today. I wish more than anything in the world I could be that person!
Back to the person I met on Friday…they said to me that they had been anticipating meeting me. That they actually think I’m pretty awesome and talented and what not and I am trying hold back tears when they’re saying this stuff to me because I don’t want to cry in front of them…but the tears are welling up in my eyes now because….they didn’t have to say those things and I never expected in a million years for them to say those things to me – AND I DON’T FEEL WORTHY!! And because I feel that way about myself, I expect everyone else to feel that way about me. And when they don’t, I am astounded.
How I am with Jim – I feel like Icarus. Jim is the sun and I, as Icarus, fly too close and my wings melt. And I keep on trying to grow new wings and they get singed too. I want to bask in that warmth so much, I risk endless signed wings for just a few tantalising moments. Fleeting glipses. It’s never enough.
I try too hard. But I don’t try enough. I’m persistent…but a quitter. Ignorant – but overly alert and overly analysing. I am my own oxymoron. I am a paradox. And I feel that everyone hates me as much as I hate myself.
Actually, I feel like only one person hates me more than I hate myself – Jim. And it shouldn’t matter. But it does.
