in which I attempt to reason with myself.

stop feeling lonely.
why am I like this now
stahp it rebecca just stahp
this is like a depression
be okay just be okay
stopppppp thinking
for once
is that really too much to ask
stop feeling cold when the sun is shining
focus on something else
it's about the problem not the person
stop wishing you were somewhere else
you actually like it here
stop wishing you were dead
you don't actually want that
stop touching your face
stop missing things
be happy about something
be happy for other people
be happy that things are going well for others
be as happy for them as if you were them
be happy even though you have a greedy shallow insatiable heart
but happiness doesn't belong to me.

Flashing thoughts while getting water today, all of which can be elaborated at some point or another.

Asian person has pandas on their desktop. Typical.

Sometimes I need to differentiate if I like someone or if I like the idea of someone. Difficult to do when I only have an idea of someone because they’re one and the same to me.

One of my most favorite sounds is the sound of water colliding into water. Not sprayed. So don’t think about the toilet now I’m trying to describe something beautiful okay. 

--

Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt. Don't check it'll hurt.

I DID IT AND I'M OKAY whew

--

MY BREATHING NEEDS TO CALM DOWN

did I eat something weird?

I keep having the worst dreams.

--

Reminder for the future: don't fall asleep right after eating bananas. 

I finished all my work an hour early.

What do I do for the next 60 minutes?

What do I want to do for the next 59 minutes?

• Cry and apologize and get stuck in memories and eat without feeling bloated because obviously my anger and hostility comes from a little starving monster with sharp teeth that resides in my belly and prods me with a spear like the servant I am to it. 
• Finally get good at guitar so I can try my hand at serenading because the virtual universe doesn't know about my lackluster singing career yet.
• Stop getting shut down.
• Hold Hercules.

What do I want to do in the next 47 minutes?

• Memorize this dance.
• Memorize stupid i-adjectives and na-adjectives and their conjugates.
• Stop shuddering.
• Reflect for a good minute about how to make my news release better.
• Spruce up my resume into something more than a blank sheet of paper.

What do I wish I could do in the next 46 minutes?

• Take a road trip.
• Scream.
• Finish every Wes Anderson movie (alone or not, preferably not, idkiywtwmsisdk).
• Feel skinny.
• Read the Screwtape Letters.
• Come up with another word-post for that blog that doesn't involve dumb emo poetry
• Not write dumb emo poetry as a derivative of some really good poetry
• Keep reading Shinji Moon's poetry.
• Make ramen and eat it.
• Be funny and nice and entertaining and likable and not like a guilty mistake that has to tread carefully because I'm on probation.

What have I done these past 20 minutes?

• Complain.
• Hope for the impossible.
• Forgot God existed.
• Nothing.

I feel like this is the sort of epiphany I should get when I'm high (which I'm not)

If food has too much energy in it ('cause it makes people fat), then shouldn't that say something about the energy crisis? What if there was a way to utilize those stubborn kilocalories and convert them into a sustainable energy source, especially if research proves that wind/solar/geothermal/hydro power still doesn't compare to burning fossil fuels and are unable to be used in vehicular transportation?

Basically, everyone should go back to manual labor because that'll 1. save the environment 2. inspire innovative ways to efficiently grow crops to sustain man and man's motion and 3. make us all exericise - excuse me, "work" - more and obesity will be gone. Everyone wins. Machinery is of the devil. Case closed.

--

Why are there popsicles stuck on my frozen tongue depressors?

Should I make you hate me?

I need to recognize that as an individual taking ownership of this life at this point in time, it's important for me to identify that there are people who presently do not hate me. In fact, they rather like me.

My head and my heart both know this to be true and that it is a blessing and my state is in a better place than most.

I think I only ask the question above not to become the recipient of animosity or indifference but to see how far I can push these pleasantries. Some part of me still feels like my whole form isn't welcomed or accepted or liked. You are nice to a nice person, unless charity/grace is your business. It's my social responsibility to reciprocate and return the said niceties you give me based off of what you like about me and not the parts you dislike.

There needs to be a reason why I had this dream though. In it, I get to spend the whole day with you but you barely wanted to hold my hand. Kept eye contact minimal. You said you later had to do things with friends and you "also gotta do this one important thing." Minimal physical dissatisfaction coupled with a corresponding emotional dissatisfaction.

I'm probably irritated because there's still a semblance of you retaining a tight privacy around your life that I can't access that should not be existing considering. This is the clingy side of me speaking. I'm asking for more than I should be, right? I feel like there's no way for me to break that down unless I walk away from this. Do you still expect me to apologize? Will I be blamed again? Have I not been blamed enough? Do you think that a life desiring to be near you is all there is to me? Should I show you which wolf I'm feeding?

It is all just a dream though. Don't ask about this 'cause honestly, I don't think I was even talking about myself at the end. I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. I think I'd rather build a tree house instead. I think I'll watch the maroon and cerulean clouds with no one.

Someone once told me to forgive others even if they don't know what grievances they've caused.

to that I wanted to say:

wtf would I or anybody else wanna do that?

the reason is because I've already been shown this kind of grace for the things that I've done and the things I continue to do all while thinking I'm not doing anything wrong and thinking that I'm still in the right with Him (see parable about the king and his servant's debt). and this is talking about a guy who loathes the existence of sin in any unassumingly innocent form.

But that doesn't make not demanding for an apology that much easier...

...until I think about how much pride I'm harboring and how much I feel like I deserve. you and I are no different in this regard. and in the end, I know I want to forgive, no matter the cost, because being right isn't worth being lonely.

it's weird thinking about how much power a word like "sorry" can have. in the end, it has no power at all but the power I assign it. what's playing a bigger role is my heart and the selfish satisfaction it gets from hearing that you know you were wrong. God loves me when I'm wrong even though that must be monstrously difficult for Him to do but I make it a little easier for Him when I can see how I've fallen short. I also make it easier for myself to love me when I can say that I'm wrong and get over it and still feel loved in the end.

this was a great learning experience.

12 examples and types of distorted thinking

• All-Or-Nothing Thinking – You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.
• Over-generalization – You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
• Mental Filter – You pick out a single negative defeat and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.
• Disqualifying the positive – You dismiss positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
• Jumping to conclusions – You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
  A. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.
  B. The fortune teller error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
• Magnification (Catastrophizing) or Minimization- You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”
• Emotional Reasoning – You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.
• Should Statements – You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
• Labeling and Mislabeling – This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
• Personalization – You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Key Take Aways

• Know the patterns.  Familiarize yourself with the ten distorted thinking patterns.
• Recognize distorted thought patterns.  Once you know the patterns, you can start to recognize thought patterns that may not be serving you well.
• Challenge your own thinking.   See if the patterns resonate especially in situations where your thinking or feeling is not particularly effective.  For example, you might find that you have a habit of jumping to negative conclusions, without actual facts, or you might find that you let negative emotions get in the way of interpreting your situation.

I think the key is to use this list to challenge your own thinking. In any scenario where your thinking starts to seem particularly negative.