|[wait, what, where am i?]|

http://eezahbell.livejournal.com/


Go there.

chaos








yeah. chaos.




again.

I've been giving these some thought. Usually I have no idea what I want to do, because I choose a lot of things that are impossible... But this time I've realized that the goals are necessary for my sanity. Several of these resolutions have been my goal for a long time (one for almost 7 years) and some are just particularly revealing about my personality, fears, weaknesses, etc.

Here Goes.


Resolutions
Listed in order of most difficulty, after being grouped in two categories


Emotional/Mental Resolutions

|[O1]| Remove the personality defect, trichotillomania. Compulsive hair pulling.


|[O2]| Deal with the fact that my parents don't get me and won't. Grow up. Work on plans to move out over the summer.


|[O3]| Handle that some people actually care about me, for real, and don't mean to hurt me. Distinguish those people from others and actually try having a friend.


|[O4]| Goes with #3.

a) Those who are friends get treated with respect and complete honesty.

b) Those who are sometimes-friends get treated with respect, some kind of honesty, but no unnecessary openness.

c) Those who I don't like are treated with respect, but brutal honesty.


|[O5]| Goes with #3 and #4. Stop wasting my time with people who are absolutely useless and merely drain my energy.



Tangible Resolutions

|[O6]| Finish work on Isabel. Get it published. Write by hand, for the most part.


|[O7]| Finish work on my website. Make it so that I have a place to post poetry before I lose any. Along the same lines, write something non-prose.


|[O8]| Exercise more. Gym twice/three times a week, general exercise in my room, etc.


|[O9]| No drinking soda. (Pop, if you're from Western PA and apparently OH as well.) This means that I'm also going to try and limit fast-food. But a diet isn't that necessary. I'm not that fat, am I?


|[1O]| Finish reading/reread/read a few books: (In No Particular Order)

a) The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

b) The History of Sexuality, All Volumes, Michel Foucault

c) Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault

d) On The Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche

e) Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche

f) Physics, Aristotle

g) The Symposium, Plato

h) On The Soul, Aristotle

i) Something by Heidegger

j) My Philosophy Professor's Dissertation

k) Atonement, Ian McEwan

l) Anthing else that is deemed necessary


|[11]| Finish that Nietzsche paper.





Basically, I have my work cut out for me. *sigh* Here's to the new year.

His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise.

----------------------

Kind of motivational. I found a book that my mom gave me to cheer me up when I was having a difficult time. I never realized what a help it had been, and I had been meaning to reread it but never really did.

Anyway, I don't have much of an entry. Just thought I'd share.

----------------------

When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he thought, of the Breakthrough, they'll be wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise.

--Excerpts from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach.

Can't stop crying.










Tengo la camisa negra
ya tu amor no me interesa
lo que ayer me supo a gloria
hoy me sabe a pura
miércoles por la tarde y t ú que no llegas
ni siquiera muestras señas
y yo con la camisa negra
y tus maletas en la puerta
Mal parece que solo me quedé
y fue pura todita tu mentira
que maldita mala suerte la mía
que aquel día te encontré
Por beber del veneno malevo de tu amor
yo quedé moribundo y lleno de dolor
respiré de ese humo amargo de tu adiós
y desde que tú te fuiste yo solo tengo

Yesterday, two things happened. Well, more than two things happened, really. That's kind of obvious. Anyway. Two major things happened. In reverse chronology, here they are.


The girl I would consider to be my best friend lost one of her good friends yesterday. He killed himself. I didn't know him at all, and I don't know anything about how well she knew him. In fact, I don't know anything about him at all. I know that she misses him, or at least I think she does. I would imagine she does. See, here's where the second of the two things happened. (I said reverse chronology, remember.) And, in the midst of all of this, I realized that I have no idea what to say to her about anything serious. I had no idea what to tell her, no words of wisdom, comfort, or anything even similar.

What does it mean? This has an apparent significance. It has to.

It means that I don't know what to say, first off. That I don't know what would help her, I don't know what would make her feel better. But more significantly, it means that I don't know her very well. At least, that's what I thought at first. It also means that I don't know how to 'fix' her, in a loose sense of the word; I don't know what would help her. This made me realize, first, that I'm not as close with her as I would like, but also that I'm not as close with anyone.

There are two people who I would consider that know everything about me, two other people who know most things about me, and an assortment of other people who know some. Is that the problem?

Maybe.


The first thing that happened yesterday was that I permanently marked my body. Well, not me, I paid for someone else to do so. I have a purple and green butterfly on my left wrist. (see below) I'm not going to pretend that it's the most painful experience in the world, because it's not. And I didn't cry, but I'm sure I flinched. A lot. I kept thinking of other things, every so often watching. But I realized that because of the nature of the pain I could probably slice open my wrist. I imagine that it would have to be more painful to actually cut open my skin, but because of the repetition, I don't see why I wouldn't be able to handle it.

Enter the second event. I can't do that now. I can't think about killing myself after that happened.


What I learned about myself and my friend from what she told me proves to me that I don't know much about her anymore, but I want to. I want to. And that's enough inspiration.

Maybe I'll be able to deal with all of what happened yesterday. Maybe not.

Done.

First, pessismism is not the same as realism. Yes, pessimists exist.

pes·si·mist /ˈpɛsəmɪst/ Pronunciation Key - [pes-uh-mist]
noun: a person who habitually sees or anticipates the worst or is disposed to be gloomy.

pes·si·mism (pěs'ə-mĭz'əm) Pronunciation Key
noun
1. A tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view.
2. The doctrine or belief that this is the worst of all possible worlds and that all things ultimately tend toward evil.
3. The doctrine or belief that the evil in the world outweighs the good.


This implies of course that a pessimist does not take what actually occurs at its face value. Instead, the pessimist takes the situation as it actually occurs and represents it in a negative light. Hence, negativism, pessimism. This of course contrasts with realism, which is more of a kind of objective approach to any situation. See below.

re·al·ist /ˈriəlɪst/ Pronunciation Key - [ree-uh-list]
noun
1. a person who tends to view or represent things as they really are.
2. an artist or a writer whose work is characterized by realism.

re·al·ism /ˈriəˌlɪzəm/ Pronunciation Key - [ree-uh-liz-uhm]

noun
1. interest in or concern for the actual or real, as distinguished from the abstract, speculative, etc.
2. the tendency to view or represent things as they really are.
3. Fine Arts. a. treatment of forms, colors, space, etc., in such a manner as to emphasize their correspondence to actuality or to ordinary visual experience. Compare idealism (def. 4), naturalism (def. 2).
b. (usually initial capital letter) a style of painting and sculpture developed about the mid-19th century in which figures and scenes are depicted as they are experienced or might be experienced in everyday life.

4. Literature. a. a manner of treating subject matter that presents a careful description of everyday life, usually of the lower and middle classes.
b. a theory of writing in which the ordinary, familiar, or mundane aspects of life are represented in a straightforward or matter-of-fact manner that is presumed to reflect life as it actually is. Compare naturalism (def. 1b).

5. Philosophy. a. the doctrine that universals have a real objective existence. Compare conceptualism, nominalism.
b. the doctrine that objects of sense perception have an existence independent of the act of perception. Compare idealism (def. 5a).


The problem with the comparison between a pessimist and a realist is that people often confuse a pessimist with a realist, that is in terms of literature. A pessimist is not a realist. Not even close.

And yes, pessimists exist. In fact, I have a friend who is clinically depressed, arguably a pessimist when he refuses to take his medication.



Secondly, on the issue of compromise. Compromise is not a natural state of a disagreement. A compromise is a stalemate, an agreement to disagree. It neither resolves a problem, nor does it prevent future problems from arising, unless the compromise is like a peace treaty, in which case, the preceedings are so impersonal that they fail to address what is actually going on anyway. When the parties want to solve a problem, they have to actually combat the issues that brought them to the particular situation in the first place. Which means, that no compromise in its true form is found because change occurs after the parties set out to agree in such a way that means neither has to give up his position while the other gains.

Third, "giving up" isn't an adjective, nor is it meant to be one. It is meant, instead, in a verb phrase. Whether or not you think that the problem isn't me giving up, it is me being stubborn is completely immaterial to the situation I described. If you read the beginning of the post, the only thing that my friend told me was not that I was only giving up. That was the final determination.

You don't sound like a complete idiot, but it is clear to me that you don't understand the situation at all, and, like the friend I initially confided in, decided to comment on situations that you don't comprehend. And, really, the only fault lies in the fact that you decided to comment before you understood the situation well enough. So, the fact that you don't understand isn't really your fault, it's more along the lines of we don't talk enough, and you've assumed that what you knew about me applies today.

Why is it that the both of you have assumed that I don't understand the motives of my antagonist. Why is it that my vision must be clouded? Simply because I'm involved?

And I have tried this so-called fix, compromise, by doing everything except for spilling blood to reach him. He has done nothing.

I'm the problem?

Done.

I was recently informed that I am a pessimist and am responsible for the problems in my life. Of course, I understand that this was not the way I was informed of this news. I was informed in a slightly more appropriate manner, which is to say that a good friend of a good friend politely decided that after listening to a very slight amount of my complaining that I was really to blame for what had happened. He informed me that I was, in fact, not correctly addressing the problem, and all I really needed to do was look harder for the solution to my problem. He went further, deciding that not only was I incorrectly and unjustly accusing the person who causes me grief, but I also wasn't being fair to the person by deciding to refuse to acknowledge the monetary contributions that he has so generously granted me thus far in my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. This friend added to the list of my faults by telling me that I was giving up.

I am perplexed. What is giving up?

Honestly, I have no idea what exactly is the point of being objective if the person who has the complaint is considered in the wrong automatically simply because she is complaining. The friend offered to me two different perspectives, ones he assumed would change the decision I have agonized over for over half of my life. The entire premise of his counterargument was that I was being unreasonable in overlooking critical elements in the existing situation. Instead of considering the actions on the whole, and (I admit) in reference to me, he insisted I consider only the actions, the deeds, rather than the influences, personal prejudices and so on. To be completely honest, his assessment of the material, the deed, resembled closely the actual issue I take with the person who causes me grief. Why was I wrong? Because he agreed with my antagonist naturally.

It could be that he was on the right track to anticipate that I was set in the conclusion that I was correct in my assessment of my antagonist. But it could also be giving up to assume that I am incorrect.

When does the antagonist become sided with? When those around feel that there is no possible solution. When those who witness the destruction mentally, physically, and yes, even materially, decide that there is no way for the situation to be fixed. So the complainant must be in the wrong to disrupt the system. The complainant must be incorrect when she assumes that there is possibly a system of justice that would realize that she is no longer in a place where she must subject herself to the unfair treatment she has seen all her life.

Giving up is refusing to be objective while pretending to be objective simply because to do so makes the situation disappear, easier, or otherwise better.

Giving up is not caring enough to try and fix what is wrong because it is wrong and has yet to be fixed.

But that is not what I have done.

If anything, my decision to protect myself is the only way I can not give up. My decision to protect myself is the way that I have chosen to not give up, because it is the only way that I retain my ability to live. I live. Not give up.

Done.

I finally got the entire blog-website thing figured out. Except, I don't have anything figured out. All I know is that I finally completed a layout for this place, this livejournal that I've had forever. In the end, simple was better. I like the blues and black, and i absolutely love the ocean or lake or whatever the picture is. An orange, red, and yellow sunset might have been better suited to me, but the calm later evening sunset is soothing enough so that I just don't care.

But enough of my little rant. On to a new one.

It's not so much a rant at this point, just more of an FYI.

I've been working on lots of things on Gaia. Mostly a quest, but also partly two Roleplays about Harry Potter. Hopefully the second one (which has yet to be opened) does better than the first one, which is kind of dying. I haven't been able to be really poetic yet, and even as I type this, where there are no restrictions, I feel myself slipping from the person I was when I was in high school and poetry was everything to me. In a way, that would be the best thing for me... to move away from my high school self. In fact, I have very little ties to that point in my life. For the most part, it's better that way.

I don't have any regrets about that, I think. Not about that.


What I do regret is how distant I've become lately. I am more reserved than I usually am around this time of year, even though this is the one time that I haven't been sick during the winter holiday. I used to think that my reservation was solely because I was sick, and had been left alone to take care of myself so often. But now I realize that most of my life has been like that, with or without being sick, and I don't ever remember a time when it wasn't. There is something about how much this depression has taken out of me, something that is drastically impossible to control and yet itself is controlling, that I have yet to comprehend.

But it's not just me. It's also the people who are trying to deal with me. They don't understand that what they're doing is just like what I went through in middle school, high school, and now I'm done with it. I'm in college. I don't need to be walked on, bothered, or vented to without any form of consideration. Ugh. Rant.

Done.