Chipped cups and bowls are important to keep around. It shows they still have value, are functional, and fulfill their purpose even though they are 'broken' in some way and are not very good at healing themselves. They aren't really broken and they don't need to be thrown away.

I mean, I know I'm not a cup. I am supposed to be self-healing. Doesn't stop stuff from being true or useful to think about.

Thoughts repeat themselves. Themes become tropes, my brain loses its folds and becomes a piece of sea glass.

As far as enjoying/coping with being alive, liking who I am, and feeling that I am a good person who does good things, I am both ahead and behind all my former selves. I wish I could take all the best parts of me from before and smash them all together into one me. It is a struggle to decide whether or not I am supposed to be content with the knowledge that this cannot be or if I am supposed to strive for it anyway. Well, I can hear Rilke pounding his fist on a door in the back of my brain, telling me "duh it's both, seriously why don't you know that yet, GEEZ."

So, um, I guess that's why I like talking to myself in here? It's the only place I engage in the synthesis of knowledge to anything resembling wisdom. This really is the best parts of me there ever was. Here I'm never prickly and I am always aware of what is actually important, like I'm acknowledging and believing in anything that has ever mattered to me.

It's too easy and too natural to be prickly. When I feel panicky and speak with vulnerability I ask for a lot and even though this is when I try my hardest to explain myself the most fully this is when things feel most unmatched, unreturned, unbearable. So of course I think I should change things. I don't know why it must feel like fighting against nature to change what I want or how I ask for it. It honestly feels like I am fighting my underevolved brain with primitive tools. Is it too self-congratulatory to take any comfort in the idea that this fight against self really is part of something bigger? We're all pulling teeth but maybe it's all being used to form this giant motherfuckin' wall of teeth that spells out the future of humanity. Or something.

Some things are different about the present. I don't worry as much about the fact that people hurt each other by necessity. All life is pain management. That sounds grim but I don't mean it to be. It's actually a thing that gives me some hope. And I don't know if I will ever change my mind about some things, how ingrained some beliefs are thanks to life experience as evidence, but believing in managing one's unhappiness doesn't mean letting go of happiness. That was poorly put but it is late and I have things to do tomorrow.

The fact that I can go to bed tonight at 1am with so few tears is hard-won progress and I will take my success where I can get it. My head hurts but it is mine and I do not hate myself for it because when I am here I can feel my past selves loving me in the way I have always wanted to be loved.


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