2013-10-07 - 5:13 p.m.

There was a time I was satisfied with who I was. But I was untested and what I thought made me a good person were beliefs held in theory rather than practice. When life happened I did my best to adapt in order to stay sane, alive, and not a jerk. I've made so many compromises and continue to make them, quick fixes that keep me going but leave me fucked up. It's been a long time since I've been the person I want to be.

What if I'll never be done growing and being alive will always be hard? Adults tend to welcome kids, teens, and young adults into their world by saying "That's right, we haven't figured life out either, haha!" but I want to believe experience and time actually do contribute towards figuring one's shit out. I want to believe there comes a time where you can finally rest or at least it isn't so painful to work on it anymore.

I got the idea from Anne of Green Gables that someday you'll make all the mistakes you'll ever make and if you don't make them more than once then you're just done forever. I first read the book when I was too young to think I really made mistakes but the thought became a comforting one as I got older and realized what it means to be really wrong. Even if Anne is wrong and no one is done forever, it's nice to know some fictional character was written just to tell people it's human to make mistakes and how nice it is that we try to stop anyway.

Something happened recently where I was completely in the wrong. Why? Because of some bullshit of my own that didn't used to exist in previous, less compromised incarnations of myself and I've never had to process before now. I wish I could get a tattoo of what I learned from this experience and what I need to do so it never happens again. This is the first time I've ever had the urge to memorialize a thought process in visual shorthand just because it's so incredibly important to hold onto this.

This isn't related to something that happened recently, though it might still be pertinent: You predict you'll behave a certain way in a given situation but in the moment it's very different. Whenever I try to do something selfless it's emotionally very difficult. Maybe it's like that for enough other people that I don't have to feel like a terrible person for not hitting some average amount of non-difficult selflessness. Maybe instead of romanticizing things done selflessly I should just do things more gratefully. Being selfless is too much like living in a vacuum anyhow. To do something selflessly sounds noble on the surface but it comes off a bit self-righteous and lonely. It doesn't acknowledge how much we do even the nicest things because ultimately it will benefit ourselves or credit how grateful we should be to people for giving us the opportunity to be a part of their lives and maybe later be helped by them.

There are no shortcuts to being the person you want to be, except perhaps modeling yourself after people you admire. And if you're really lucky those people are your parents and they'll give you a road map to self-actualization. They'll raise you with what they've learned and you'll be genetically similar enough that most of it will be applicable to you. I don't know why other people become parents but this is what I want to do.

I must be more committed to working on acting more consciously about all of this, particularly when facing emotions that make me act dumber than I really am. I want to make the lives of people I love better and not worse, especially in situations where it's hard to remember.