Trying To Understand Myself

I wanted this blog to be authentic. I didn't want it to become yet another excuse for my mistakes. I wanted it to be a learning experience for me and whoever read it. Over time, there has been a shift. A shift of my perception of the blog. I still believe that there is power in sharing your thoughts honestly, but it feels like that's just a clever lie that allows me to complain and absolve myself of any wrongdoing. I don't have pride in the quality of what I write, only that I write it honestly. While I type, the thought of people reading this shifts the direction I want to take it. That is how I live life. It is an automatic process, one that I have almost no control over. I've wanted to outgrow this for a long time. When I think of how I should act, I think of people I don't even know that well. I give people unnamed voices in my head that control my direction. In my mind, they are not the names I know them by. They're how they make me feel and how I feel about the way I feel about them. If I get a sense of power from somebody, this person now exists in my mind as something to strive to be like to be powerful. If I am attracted to somebody, that person exists as a symbol of my shame. If I see somebody in a positive light for any reason, they serve as a judge in my mind. If I fail to live up to the status they represent, I feel weak or unattractive. This is how I view people. I don't see people as complex thoughts and emotions, I look for the symbol that this person represents to me and I use it as evidence that I'm not good enough. Of course, I also act as a judge for these people if they do not live up to my symbol. There was time when I saw people as negative symbols as well. If I saw someone as unintelligent or unattractive, they would be a symbol of what not to be. This would give me evidence that I am above the other person in either category, giving myself the symbolic status of being either smart or attractive. I am using smart and attractive as examples, perhaps because they're the most prevalent but they are not the only virtues I focus on. It has gotten to the point where everything I say I have to ask myself, what does this symbolize? This way of thinking was probably developed when I was younger. At a time when I felt lost in my thoughts and emotions and they had nowhere to go but in. I turned intoversion into a necessary way of life, looking towards philosophy and psychology to aid me in understanding what I didn't. Again, I made the same mistake. Philosophy and psychology then also became symbols. Except these symbols were even more tightly constraining because they're so vast and my attempts to understand them have been half-baked. I feel like I fail these symbols. I use them to represent me, as if I'd become equal to them. Maybe it's just an attempt for me to create a symbol of myself that is beautiful but necessarily difficult to understand. I want to hide behind beauty so people see me through its lens. I feel comfortable until the lens is broken. I use the lens until we begin to speak honestly but I always keep it in my pocket just in case. Though once the lens is gone or treated with less importance, I feel I need to be honest. Honestly, I feel like a failure in contrast to the beauty that I've tried to trick you into seeing me in accordance with. I guess it makes sense. I am a person, not a discipline. 

So what do I do with all of this? How do I solve the issue I have with turning people and concepts into symbols of virtue and using them to criticize my every thought and movement. How do I know I'm right? This all came from my brain, so that must mean something. But I can't tell what motivated me to write this. I don't know if this is just another attempt to "win" and reestablish myself as a virtue or if I truly want to be better. Or if it just feels good to write. Or if I'm avoiding something else. Or if somewhere along the way while writing this there was another shift in which I started to create fiction. Maybe I started off honestly, but it wasn't interesting enough. Maybe I can't tell the difference between my desire to be honest or to be interesting. It doesn't feel honest to use metaphors or to simplify my case. My brain is fragmented and confusing. I am confused. I can't tell the difference between fact and fiction. Simple words with simple meanings have less meaning to me. When the color red comes into my mind, I have to consciously see the color. On top of that, I have to make sure that it is the right color because the right color might not come up the first time. If I have trouble with meanings like that, imagine something more complex. I'm going on a tangent. I'm fearful for and of myself.

Writing this has not helped me, at least in the moment. When I am consciously aware of my mind, I feel intense anxiety. I feel like this is my body telling me something but I also feel like it could be the symbols in my mind judging me for not being good enough. Trying to be aware makes me feel anxiety and fear. Trying to let go of my need to be aware, I live with no convictions or values and I make mistakes that I don't understand.