I've been deliberately trying not to write so much about my head and all of my many issues (for which I really wish there was a better word), especially because counselling was really helping there for a while. But alas, it was only a temporary measure (which I realise is better than nothing, but still, it's intensely infuriating to feel like you're just starting to get somewhere, and then the resource is over. But anyway - back to the point). So, given that I'm currently without any sort of counselling provision, maybe it will do me a bit of good to talk about things a bit.
Today, it's complaining. Negativity is a difficult and complicated thing for me. It's a huge part of my personality - I think most people that I know would mention complaining at some point in any description of my characteristics, and certainly being a bit cynical, negative and pessimistic is just a part of who I am, and who I have always been. And I like a lot of things about that - it's just not in my nature to be some happy clappy, sunny, optimistic person who accepts everything around them. It's important to me to question things, to play devil's advocate and see the downsides of things to try to weigh things up, so negativity is a big part of that. Also it's just funnier. It's difficult to have a sarcastic, sardonic sense of humour (which is the sort of humour I've always been attracted to) without being negative, darker, cynical - whatever you want to call it. And god knows I love a good rant.
But dwelling on the negative, complaining about every.little.thing in my life, making mountains out of molehills, and searching out things to get angry and annoyed about - these come down quite firmly on the Not Good side of things. And it's astonishing to me how easily and quickly I can go there without even realising it. There's a little bit of self-righteousness in there too (well, maybe more than a little bit). I seem to get a kick out of finding things to be annoyed about, and putting myself on what I see to be the right side of any argument. Something in there about my high standards, I should think. Maybe I'm constantly trying to find a way to vindicate my way of looking at a situation, trying to find a way to see myself as right so I find all these arguments, even if they're just in my head, and a storm of anger comes down from it.
It gets to the point where I don't know what else to say or think or talk about. I literally have no words left that aren't negative, that aren't complaining or moaning about something. I feel blank inside, like there's just a huge vacuum when I take out the whininess. And then, of course, I get down on myself and start to beat myself up, as if the constant anger and glass-half-empty-and-probably-has-poison-in-it-anyway attitude wasn't bad enough.
So I've been trying to be a lot more conscious of this lately. But when it's such a big part of who I am, it's difficult. I find it hard to come up with anything else to put into my head, to have any other thoughts at all. Which is probably why I end up spending so much time spaced out in front of the tv, trying not to think about anything at all.
And, inevitably, this all comes back down to balance. Finding a middle road that doesn't mean that I have to change my entire personality to be like Alec Baldwin when he guested in Friends that time, but to also not be a complete pain in the ass, and an extremely miserable, depressed and angry one at that.
I don't know why I find balance so hard. I don't know why I inherently seem to oscillate from one extreme to the other. I know that a lot of it is down to the whole perfectionist thing - if something isn't perfect, it's completely shit, so everything starts to exist for me in a solely binary state. But I don't really know why that is. And the question of why is a difficult one in itself. Part of me looks at this as some sort of logical problem, like an equation, or a murder mystery where one clue will suddenly solve the whole thing. And I do think that there's at least some rationale in the idea that if I could figure out why, then I could start to address it better. But it's highly unlikely that I ever will understand why, that's just the nature of these things. Wherever this all came from, it's here and I have to deal with it. These are just some of the rabbit holes that my mind likes to disappear down, to avoid having to actually do anything, to deal with the situation.
So, for the moment I'm trying to just not complain as much. To think twice before I write or say something that's moaning about something that's really not all that important. To stop and think and be conscious of what I'm saying or thinking, before I just let it take over. And as corny as it sounds, I've found that (for the meantime, at least) covering my room in photographs is helping. Photos of everything and anything from the last few years - a reminder that everything isn't all that shit. That I do have good things, and to try to stop the "but..." that tends to come after that. And as much as I don't like photographs of myself all that much, I'm generally grinning like an idiot in most of them and in some weird way that actually seems to help me remember that while I might not have a rose-coloured view of the world by nature, neither am I utterly miserable. I might act like it a lot of the time, but it's not really who I am. I just have to keep trying to remember that.
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