Oh this little brain of mine, I'm gonna let it shine....

Why do a lot of four letter words really get under my skin? So many words in the English language can be summed up in four letters from our dear alphabet. I consciously have an easier time dealing with them then subconsciously which is a never-ending battle with myself. I feel some mornings I'm dueling another person who always tempts to spill out onto the surface. I'm learning through breathing techniques and self reflection on how to cope with some of the thoughts that are better left kept in my head for the sake of everyone around me and myself. No one should have one thought cross some part of their mind and have it destroy all the positive they are capable of in that day. This is nothing new, I've been me for a whole twenty two years going on twenty three shortly. I'm working my way to mental clarity. The journey is not an easy one nor is it smooth. It's all about how you look at a situation your mind has put yourself in and allowing yourself to not let base human emotion and instinct drive you to a wild conclusion. I think writing helps me with this a lot. My work environment, while pleasant most days, sometimes drivels with an atmosphere of 'Been There Done That' mentality. I'm ready for a change. If not at work but outside of it. I've been doing little things here and there preparing myself for some unknown I inevitably am going to face in my lifetime. Whether it be something forced onto me, or some idea or own creative impulse I have been dying to express for a long time now. I think today I'm going to come home and play my keyboard some more. The movements my fingers make across it makes my soul jump with glee. I now find myself in the car playing the air and listening to key changes. Exercising the fingers and the elaborate workings of my complex brain. 

When I'm truly focused on something and put a goal into motion I am happy. This brings me to the second part of my entry this morning. By the way, I already feel a calm course through my body as I exercise the act of mentally jotting down the ailments I have become so accustomed to letting devour my soul. I said it this morning, "This isn't going to change overnight, I'm working on it." I was and am, telling the truth. If this were even a year ago I would still be focusing on the negative feelings my body suddenly became awash in like a bipolar nightmare. I'm going to focus on how i got to the positive I feel for a second then get to my second point. I am happy. Let it be known (and to whomever reads this journal in the long run) I may sometimes seem like I'm slipping but every time I feel the fall begin to happen again I am learning to pull myself out of the mud and stride forward with a realized and often calming answer to a problem that has vexed me. 

This all began at the apartment I was living at briefly at the end of 2010. I had once again, somewhat selfishly in some respects, put aside all my negative feelings about the situation and lent my helping hand out to people that I assumed would truly appreciate the value of what I had done for them. I had not even blindly walked into this mind you. I knew of the one girls predisposition to abusing the amazing privileges this life had bestowed upon her but understanding the nature of her past I felt maybe she could grow as I was growing. This is where the expression 'Putting to many eggs in one basket' probably should be used. The other girl was older but I had no idea what kind of person she truly was. When I moved in with them I had known her all of three months. Apparently you can hide a lot from a person in that time. The last person I was living with was my then boyfriend Jon. He had been a good friend but I had fatally decided to embark into a "relationship" with him seven months prior. I had already made a rash decision to move into my friends house earlier that year and felt like an ass walking out of that situation. The people I was living with was not the issue, it was me. I was unhappy with what I had done and I couldn't own up to what I was doing. I was not myself. I think all of 2010 I was a bit lost. I had allowed someone to give me their heart but just the idea of that notion. He ultimately couldn't even take me seriously when I told him shortly before ending the relationship that I wanted to quit smoking. If my gradual cutting back wasn't an indicator, the attitude I had when he was spending a large portion of his paycheck on pot should have been the ultimate sign. As I said before, the ideas for what he thought was a good relationship were there, just no follow through of drive to grow with me as a person. I don't think he ever truly got how much I was changing and still am changing. All three of those people basically were letting me defacto run the show. They got to have a good time, be lazy, and all that jazz while I essentially played mother hen. It's not like my sudden want to move out did not come without warning. I was clearly bogged down by the weight of so many responsibility's laid on my shoulders all at once but no one ever went out of their way to ease how I was feeling. I did this for them many times. Jon never even liked Lindsay even before we moved in with them. How can one feel when you're talking about how big of a mistake you've made and the person whose supposed to have your back says they moved in selfishly because they just wanted you beside them? That's a problem. I knew then that it was going to be hard to ever look at him the same again. I can't even get into the meat of that on here for I feel if one would like to know that is something I must say to one's face. In six years I never did something out of self love for myself. None that I can remember anyway. I think I'll always remember the moment I came home shaking one night and gave the mail box key back. I told them I couldn't take it anymore. All my roommate had to say was,

"What did we do?"

At that I told them I couldn't talk about it anymore that night or I was going to say things I probably shouldn't say. Now, mind you, all I did was go back to the bedroom. If ever they were friends they didn't show it then. They picked up a few beer bottles and left to go talk about it at a friends house. A friends house. I didn't even get the common courtesy to have one of them come knock on the door and try to talk to me despite what I might say. Apparently I was living with Frederick County's most spineless. They failed a test any decent person would have tried to pass. Then again, would decent people have made me feel like that in the first place?

From there I have been trying my best to make choices that I know are best for myself. I've never truly understood the meaning of loving yourself until then. I felt incredible. I did go through a rough transition period  that lasted into early 2011 but it was worth it for the mental clarity it has offered me. A stepping stone in a more positive direction. A milestone in my adult life actually. I walked away from something. I didn't let my own suffering get in the way of what I had to do as a person. I took those bad feelings and used them to make myself a stronger person. Transcended the suffering and utilized it in a way that I never dreamed possible until then. 

This leads me into the final part of this entry for it is long and I must go to work soon. I sat at work yesterday and devoured a book. I have not done this in years. The book is titled 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor E. Frankl. I believe if ever any book has been suggested to me in a long time, this one was truly worth reading in one sitting. I will actually do an entry on its profundity and impact it made upon myself in another entry later today but until then I would like to share some of the philosophical and meaningful parts I jotted down during my read.

"Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."

"As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen our faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in the sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty. Despite that factor- or maybe because of it- we were carried away by nature's beauty, which we had missed for so long."  

"Et lux intenebris lucet"-and the light shineth in the darkness.

"But it is not for me to pass judgement on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or late, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."

"We who have lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Everyday, every hour, offered opportunity to make a decision, a decision whether you would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become modeled into the form of the typical inmate." 

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us."

"Sed omnia praeciara tam dificilia quam rara sunt" - but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find. 

So there you have it. I'm going to jot down some notes about the off branch of psychotherapy his way of thinking spawned. "Logotherapy" which apparently this blog doesn't even recognize as the correct spelling of a word. 

Have a good day.