Why I Haven't Been The Friend People Expect
01.07.2006 - 8:29 pm

It's felt really good to chill with old friends. I've really been enjoying myself. I don't really feel like I need to write an entry about it, but I haven't written in a long time and I'm making myself write. Me and Billy noticed that usually people only vent when feeling shitty and when bad things are happening and too few people write when things are going well, so the documentation is skewed and biased. Well I'd like to write that things are going very well.

I see people who are not particularly happy with their lives and I see them going about things so wrong. I remember feeling that way too, and I would love to talk with them on how I helped myself feel better, but at the same time I feel I don't have a right to strut around happy while they lie in misery. na na na na boo boo. Yeah, thank you Jackass Lauren. So it's hard for me to know how to bring things up and comfort someone. And the thing is too, when people are depressed, there really is no way for ANYone to help. All depression is is a way some people disguise their drama in a parallel universe of some sort. They do not see reality, they see what they want to see. So no amount of advice and counsil would ever help unless they were truely ready to overcome and open their minds. But most of the time, as was the case with myself at a time, I wasn't ready to BE happy. I WANTED to be depressed. I wanted this big dramatic story to tell people about HOW MUCH my life SUCKED and how "truly horrible" it was. But when I look back, it was all bullshit. All drama. And THAT'S what people can't handle. Because that would be the first thing I tell people: "It's not real, wake up!" And to have someone try to conceive themselves as not having any "real" problems... is just that, inconceivable. I was especially stubborn, and like everything in my life, I didn't make changes until I sat down and said to myself "I am done feeling this way." And that second on I was ready to open my mind to other routes. Thus I found Buddhism Plain and Simple and The Power of Intention and it was the most amazing feeling.

Another thing that people aren't ready for as far as my advice goes, is it takes tons of work. I was in a deep state of depression and I sure as hell wasn't going to be "cured" overnight. It took me almost a full year before I was completely over things and saw shit in a new light. I became a completely different person unable to turn back to a life of depression. Now of course I get "sad" from time to time and I also get what I call "normal people depression" which is what I think 100% of people are prone to in their lives. What I had gone through before was no where near "normal" and so the depression I get every now and then these days is NPD. And it is a hell of a lot easier to deal with, not to mention very fickle and goes away shortly. (And sometimes I think that "almost a full year" is not a very long time. It isn't. But my theory is the younger you are the easier it is to do. So me being only 18-19 years old, took relatively little time as opposed to someone in their 40's, 50's, 60's.)

People want instant results, no doubt, so my advice of "wake up and work at it the rest of your life" doesn't EXACTLY fly. People usually need to come to things like that on their own. I had to, and it makes sense. You are the only person to solve your problems. The reason any advice works in any case in the first place has to do with timing and people's need for reaffrimation. People are ready to change and they thought of something (though it may be subconsious) and some wise member of the group steps back and observes unbiasedly, figures out what needs to happen and says it. Ta Da, good advice ol' chap, I think I shall.

But you're the only person to solve your problems. The ol' "you can lead a horse to water..."

And then there are those people who absolutely worship you so whatever you do and say, they follow w/o question. Yeah I got some people who feel that way about me and to them I never hold back advice because I know they actually go home and think about it. I may not particularly agree with that view they hold of me, but at least I'm able to help them figure out their problems until they stand on their own two feet and realize they are capable, unique, and beautiful beings themselves.

So I feel really good about my life right now. Nothing is perfect and I really hate that word anyway (except when describing Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element). I am in the best place in my life I have ever been and it feels really good. I have the greatest friends anyone could ask for, I am doing well in school, I'm enjoying being back in California, I'm enjoying the possibilities of my future, did I mention i have the greatest friends anyone could ask for? I'm just absolutely smitten with all of them. I feel very greatful. Very greatful indeed. And, I just had a sobering thought: I feel like I don't "need" anything ('anything' referring to a 'relationship' - why beat around the bush) -- but is that just because I have this huge crush on someone who I believe has similar feelings toward me? If I were to have truely no one to look forward to, would I feel the same? After some thought, I say yes, if only because I'm mainly focusing on other important things in my life such as school. And I've worked hard the past year and a half to feel independant again, wishing for no one. WHICH is probably why Robbie works out. He found me when I was just discovering happiness again and had I not grown and changed according to my new philosophy of Zen Buddhism, he might be a shadow of a thought right now. It's when you least expect it that someone finds you, and it holds true in this case. I asked for no one, wishing to focus on my own needs, and that's when it happened. So yes, I still feel that I would be satisfied had I not [re]met Robbie.

I think that's another big issue going on with some of my friends these days. Wishing for relationships. The fact of the matter will always be: if you're not happy with yourself, as you are, right now, add nothing, you will NEVER be happy.

Because honestly, if you cannot please yourself with what "little" you have, then how in the hell are you expected to please someone else? No; people who "wish" for a relationship are the very people who do not deserve them. I think that's cause for statistics pointing out that 50% of mariages fail.

Well, that and the fact that kids keep getting pregnant out of wedlock at the prime age of 16. Fucking sluts, get over it.

Thank you God, for all that I have and will have and had had. I am forever greatful, please do not let me forget that. To take for granted is not wise and I hope to never feel that arrogant or proud.

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In other news, last night I had a dream that I was back in Hawaii and I had a pet lion and I kept fucking around with people and with cops a lot. It really amused me. And I was doing other stuff in Hawaii and something about being back made me really sad. I was crying in my dream and I had a cop stop me and ask if everything was okay. He thought I was a tourist and wondered where I was staying, but I showed him my Hawaii ID. There's a lot I don't remember about it, and a lot of stuff I just can't put into words. Hm. I wonder what the crying was about.

yesterday - tomorrow