august 5, 2013 - good morning

i feel good this morning, even though i haven't eaten or done anything. i feel happier.

(this gets kinda sad towards the end. also a bit weird.)

it's probably not good to flucuate between emotions so much. happy one morning, lonely that night. depressed at lunch, excited between 8 and midnight. it seems exhausting.

it seems much better to find contentment in our lives. the highs aren't as pleasing, but the lows aren't as crushing.

in other news, i have not much going on in my life right now.

i'm sitting in my room right now, thinking about what i should do today.

when it comes to friends, it seems that i want the best of both worlds. i want friends to want me to hang out with them, yet i don't want to hang out with them. i want to feel wanted, but i don't want to be around other people.

i need to go out more often. i get sick if i stay inside my house all day. i get bored and unhappy.

it seems that every few months i grow sick of my friends, and make plans to abandon them. well, not abandon. you know what i mean: stop hanging out with them. and for the past few years, i think i haven't fully left them because i had no where else to go. you know? for me, especially because i'm fearful and reserved, it's hard to leave the familiar and comfortable. sometimes, you want to talk to new people. you get tired of being scared all the time, and you decide to leave the old in hope of finding someone or something new. something that's better for you in this certain time of your life. something richer for you to step into and aspire to. something beyond what you are now.

I finished The One And Only Ivan today. It's a children's literature book by Katherine Applegate. For the first time in recent memory, I said to myself as I was reading: "I can do this. I can be an author and write a book like this."

Have i ever told you that i never appeared in my senior year high school yearbook? i never went to take my senior pictures, so i'm not in the yearbook. at all, i think. haha, i think that's a good representation of my high school years.

it's not so embarrassing to talk about now, but the reason i didn't take my senior year pictures is because i was extremely self-conscious in high school. you see. . . well, you see, from the middle/end of eighth grade to about two years ago - from 14 to 20 years old, i guess - i had warts on my fingers. like, really noticeable, big warts. they were on seven of my fingers, right against my nails. only my two pinkies and the middle finger on my left hand were unaffected.

i felt really bad all the time because of them. i didn't feel comfortable or able to socialize normally. i hid my hands everywhere. i couldn't do things that required touching or holding something. even eating at a restaurant was embarrassing, because i didn't want people to see the warts as i held a utensil.  it hurt so much to not be able to be normal around other people because i was soo ashamed of my hands. i felt unaccepted, and not normal. i felt uglier and weirder than everyone else. i felt bad because i didn't think i was capable of being loved as i was.

now i wonder why i have so much social anxiety. haha. at least the warts are gone. and even though i didn't take my senior pictures with the school, my mom insisted i have pictures from my senior year. she took me to a photo place and had graduation-type pictures taken there. i was painfully self-conscious, and the photgrapher did see the warts on my hands, but she kindly didn't say anything. in the portrait that she took, you can see a wart on my thumb.

now i wonder why i don't like being around people.

body image is a very unique thing. it's how we see ourselves, but also how we think others see us.

you know, i started to work out because i wanted to have an attractive body. i wanted women to like me. but in the past three months, it's occurred to me that no matter how much i work, no matter how good my body looks, it's all kind of pointless. it's pointless because I didn't like the way i looked, so what did it matter if other people liked the way i looked? as i was working out all of last year, i only thought about how other people would see me, how impressed they'd be; i never put the effort forward to please myself, which is most important. people can't accept you if you can't accept yourself, won't accept you if you don't accept yourself. at least not the acceptance that satisfies your need for true companionship. a deep-rooted, flawed, painful acceptance.

and most of the time, i think, if a person likes you, they'll care less about what you look like, and focus more on who you are. the personality is much more powerful than any muscle group in your body. the body gets old, and you can't stay in shape forever. but the mind just keeps going most of your life, and with each passing year, grows in the experiences it gathers.

and i think that's pretty cool, because it means i don't have to worry about working out so much.