I promise, I'm not going to talk about my moods in this entry.

But I hate how I live. I am bound by these awful constraints that maybe my dad started, but I, and only I, have perpetuated, turning these behaviors and thought processes into something that feels uncontrollable now.

I cannot let myself do what I want to do. I put on such a show of indifference. As if the things that are important to me don't matter, as if I have no interest in the things that tug at my soul.  I come off as distant, rude, uncaring, simple-minded, flat-out weird. And when I'm in the midst of my depression, I simply don't care; I have no interests then. But when I'm not in the mindset...I feel so ashamed. Of who I am and how I come across to others. 

I've been re-reading Evening by Susan Minot and came across this quote that struck home. 

"She could not let what passed between them matter too much afterwards so that when the memory tried to assert itself it had been pushed down by reason and habit and time, eventually becoming no more than a scruffy hidden scar on a scruffy hillside. She had worked to rub it out. That this had been forgotten once and would be forgotten again suddenly seemed worse to her than her own life ending." 

I do exactly this with anything good that happens to me. I worry that I make too much of small things, small gestures, and I don't want to get emotional over things so seemingly insignificant, to be so damned affected, but I always, always am and it's something I can't stop. Except by pushing it down with reason, out of habit, and knowing that with the passing of time, it will be as if it never happened. And isn't that utterly twisted? That I live at such extremes? To be so moved by something so small and feel ashamed of that emotion? And that my next course of action is to snuff it out as quickly as possible. But it's what I do. 

And it is worse than anything. I'm going to try to work on that. 

Just as I've been slowly, quietly, trying to work on other things about myself. I've made a promise to go shopping for clothes/personal items for one hour a week. Last week, I bought new mascara, underwear, a few new tanks, a random but beautiful green scarf, and clear nail polish, since I'm trying to stop biting my nails again and this is only method that has semi-worked in the past. 

That may seem like nothing, but I haven't bought anything personal like this for myself in almost two years.

I want to try to change. 

As a side note, my dad went to the hospital because he was having severe abdominal pain. He had an ultrasound done and it looks like the pain is being caused by a gigantic tumor in his liver, which has grown quite a bit since he last had a scan done (his cancer spread to his liver back in Aug 2013). Since my younger sister was there, he couldn't lie about the results (like he normally does)--it's 9cm long. 

It's amazing that he has lived this long--2 1/2 years with esophageal cancer. But now he's needing pain management...and if that thing ruptures or tears, he could bleed out internally. 

This post was for me, for my sanity. An attempt to get a new perspective, sort of. But now, homework calls. Again.