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Saturday, March 7, 2015

I have this intense need to be punished. Not in a 50 Shades of Grey kind of way (not that at all!) but in an honest, old-fashioned, punishment for punishment's sake kind of way. I can never quite shake the feeling that I am a bad person...and even when my mind is somewhat at rest the feeling that I'm bad is still there.

It never really leaves me, even when I feel I'm being as normal and as good as possible. I don't know if it has to do with me being gay or the fact that I feel like I wouldn't still be single if I were a better person. I don't know if being alone a lot feeds it, but I imagine it does.

It goes without saying that a person can make herself completely sick over worrying about things like this (or any thing, really) and it's even worse when you can't shake yourself...because you are always with you and you can't run away from yourself, not even mentally.

There's this quote from the novel Happy Now? that speaks to that:

"I mean, don't you ever get sick of yourself?" he asked Claire. "Doesn't it sometimes seem ridiculous that we have to live our entire lives in one consciousness, and there's no escape? Even when we dream, we dream about ourselves. Doesn't that just seem outrageous?"

Though the Bible is more spiritual for most people, and I certainly understand why, I read St. Augustine more often.

Many nights, I find I really need him. There is something about his writing that helps soothe me to the point that I don't feel ready to scream inside my own skin. I find the idea of living with the bare minimum, almost like a monk or nun, truly appealing.

The following won't necessarily help me get rid of the conviction that I am not a good person, but I do think it will help me live better and in St. Augustine's Confessions I find serenity I can't find elsewhere.

http://zenhabits.net/12-essential-rules-to-live-more-like-a-zen-monk/