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Ichabod!

09 June 2004 18:53

i used to think all the time. then sometime last semester, i must have stopped thinking entirely. because now when i catch myself thinking it feels the way a sliver of dark chocolate tastes on my tongue. rare. cherished. fleeting. bittersweet. pleasureable. dark chocolate is an uncommon pleasure i only get to indulge in now and then. when i catch myself thinking again, i almost feel like myself again. almost.

for the first time in my life i am truly sick of my long hair. but i can't imagine myself without it. ill prolly feel differently if/when i actually get it cut.

but the thoughts about hating myself are still there. i hate myself for being unhappy. my sister got me a book for graduation, the 100 secrets of happy people, or something like that. its all sposed to be scientific findings about why people are happy. it keeps saying things like "happy people do this. unhappy people do that." and i read it and say, yep, i do that, i'm an unhappy person. and of course, they phrase their findings such that unhappy people choose to be unhappy, and happy people choose to be happy. oh, if only it were that simple. can it really be that we start at a fork in the road and say happy? unhappy? gee, which will i choose? who wouldnt choose happy? but it seems like both roads are marked "happy" and its a crap shoot which destination really is "happy". i feel unhappy. does anyone choose to feel unhappy? (ok, the word happy is starting to look ridiculous to me in print) anyway, if i were to consciously start doing the things the books says happy people do, i'd feel like a sell out, cause its not how i really feel. id be doing things that dont feel natural to me. unhappy is how i feel and i act accordingly. if i did something that felt unnatural, wouldnt i end up feeling worse?

plus, so many of the 100 secrets of happy people have to do with nuturing friendships and relationships. and if my life has shown anything, its that im not a friend-making type person. at all. it almost seems like this book implicitly condemns all introverted and shy people to eternal unhappiness. why have a desire to be happy, and then be programmed to be unable to sustain the friendships that bring everyone else happiness? WHY?

fuck. now im gonna cry.