This probably isn't my last entry. But it will probably be the last time I purge like this. You may feel free to crank "Not The Doctor" as you read, or not to read at all if the thought of one more young woman with self-esteem problems makes you feel sick.


I can't remember how long people have been telling me that I was talented. A good cartoonist; a natural Shakespearean; a wonderful, wonderful writer. And I also can't remember how long I've believed that all those classifications (compliments) would end up hurting me.

For some reason I've always had this fear--not always a conscious one, just a shadow tickling the corners of my mind--that if my life becomes a successful or even good one, everything will fall apart. My ego will swell, my friends will find me tedious (or maybe wonder what they ever saw in me to begin with), I'll disappoint my family and alienate myself from them, I'll eat myself alive. And I'll deserve it, for having pretended to be something I'm not--which is worthy of success in the first place.

It sounds like the stupidest thing in the world. And it is, really, but it's so deep in me I was startled to realise it was there. I've made myself fail at nearly everything, maybe since grade school, because success would completely destroy me.

Never mind that failure is now doing pretty much exactly the same thing.

This is the third college I've withdrawn from due to ridiculously low grades. Now that I've figured this out about myself (or have accepted it), I'm not sure what to do. Do I sound calm? I am, in a weird way. I don't really speak now; I neither initiate conversations nor engage in them. I haven't left the house. I feel like there's a bubble around me, a silent iron-walled thing that holds in all my sadness and new self-knowledge, and that this bubble is now the only place I belong. It's like coming home, like finally being punished for a crime that's eaten at the criminal for years.

I don't know what to do with myself--if there's anything I can do without completely fucking up again. Maybe this is a mental illness; maybe it's just that I've been stupid for a very large portion of my life. I don't know. Right now all I can try to do is clean out bits of this wound I've inflicted on myself, on my life, and wonder what the next step is. Or if there is a next step. Or when I'll be able to start speaking again, through email or IMs or out loud. Or if anyone, my parents and friends included, believes this is anything near the truth about me.

That much said, I'm so tired.


my misery has enjoyed company
and though i have ached
i don't threaten anybody
sometimes i feel more bigness than i've shared with you
sometimes i wonder why i quell when i'm not required to

i've tried to be small i've tried to be stunted
i've tried roadblocks and all my happy endings prevented
sometimes i feel it's all just too big to be true
i sabotage myself for fear of what my bigness could do

fear of bliss and fear of joyitude
fear of bigness (and ensuing solitude?)

i could be golden i could be glowing i could be freedom
but that could be boring
sometimes i feel this is too scary to be true
i sabotage myself for fear of losing you

this talk of liberation makes me want to go lie down
under the covers till the terror of the unknown is gone
i could be full i could be thriving i could be shining
sounds isolating

sometimes i feel this is too good to be true
i sabotage myself for fear of what my joy could do
"Fear of Bliss", Alanis Morissette