I love to write. I need to write more than I realize. I want to work towards writing every day. It’s one of the best ways I can process my emotions and thoughts. I excel more at doing so through writing than I do through speaking, and since I’m an introvert it works better for my needs than it does through speaking. My inner life is so rich that I should definitely be writing the stuff down that goes on inside my head. My inner life is much more active than my outer life so it’s best if I make use of that through writing.

I frequently think about how I want to want to improve myself. I frequently think about how I want to get back to having good, productive daily habits that are in line with my values and strengths. I was reminded of something I learned about years ago when I went to the training I went to last week. The speaker brought up “Flow Experiences” and I was reminded of how they really do increase your happiness levels.

Flow experiences are experiences in which you are fully engaged in what you are doing because you love whatever you’re doing. You end up losing track of time and are completely in the moment. Typically flow experiences result from doing things that you are passionate about or strong in, and so they are truly fulfilling experiences. Multiple Positive Psychology books talk about how the more often you engage in Flow Experiences in your day to day life, the greater your happiness levels will become. This is one way to slightly improve your baseline happiness levels.

My flow experiences include hiking, writing, reading, creating music, making art, and meditating. If I were to do these six things regularly, or atleast a few of them every day, I know I would feel happier. I would be doing the things that I truly love and am good at, and would be living a life that’s more congruent with my values.

One good thing is that for the past several months, whenever I have a day off, going hiking is a priority of mine. I don’t always make it since the daylight is gone by about 4:30 pm lately and I have a second-shift schedule, but I atleast have the internal motivation to atleast strongly want to go hiking on my days off. I also want to get to a point where I go hiking or atleast walking before I go to work too.

I forget what year it was in college but I think it might have been my first or second year when I started to really get into meditating. What motivated me to do so was when I start to get panic attacks a lot, and I also had tripped not long before then so that reminded me of just how spiritual of a person I truly was. Before then I was an atheist. During that trip I was opened up to the spiritual plane and it was the most amazing experience of my entire life. I actually saw energy itself, in everything. I saw the energy fields around the people I was with, I saw how people had different aura colors that were more predominant than other colors. At the time I didn’t really know what energy fields or auras were but I got really into them after that.

Everything in the room I was in, which was filled with creative/abstract/psychedelic art, was alive. All of the pictures were animated. The room itself was filled with this translucent yet multi colored goo type stuff that filled the room starting from the ceiling and was formulated in large cylindrical coil shapes. I understood this as matter itself, which I then learned that matter itself was composed of energy, which is primarily spiritual. This experience felt more real to me than any other “sober” experience I had ever had before. My ego was torn away and I was exposed to the spiritual realm, which was directly in conflict with the reality that the ego had formulated and controlled for all of my life before this.

I did experience “ego death” before the highly positive/spiritual part of the trip began. The ego death was the scariest experience of my life. It was like a panic attack times 10, and when I looked in the mirror I felt completely dissociated. I was sure I was going to die, so my panic got worse and I puked a ton. I didn’t know it then but what truly died at that time was my ego, and it’s scary as fuck when it happens because it questions your entire perspective and understanding of reality. The ego convinces you that are in complete control, that you are the center of everything, and that nothing is real except for concrete/factual based information. Ego death reverses all of that programming and so your mind and emotions are given a complete shock. The ego re-gained control later on, but this trip changed my perspective on life for good.

A bit later I went to get Reiki done. Reiki is a spiritual practice in which imbalanced chakras are balanced, blockages are opened up, and repressed emotions are brought to the surface. Your spirit is interacted with in a way that can be felt strongly, even physically. During this Reiki session my Reiki practioner told me that I was an Indigo child. At the time I didn’t know what that meant but I looked it up later and it made *so* much sense. The way that I had experienced my entire life was finally clarified and so instead of feeling like an outsider/alien, I felt like I was here for a reason, for spiritual and healing based purposes, and so I felt special. Again this was a complete turn around from how I felt for all of my life until I was given this information and this experience. After this session I started to meditate daily or every other day for a few months. I felt amazing and my external circumstances didn’t control my emotional state anymore. I felt at one with everything and that was exactly what I needed.

I want to start meditating every day again. I want to start writing every day. I want to start making art every day, like I did after my trip for awhile. I want to hike as much as possible, in as many new places as I can possibly find. I want to re-remember that these are the things that I am here for, these are the things that truly matter, and these things are what make life worth living. Of course having deep connections/relationships with others and spreading as much love and understanding as possible are equally important, but the aforementioned passions are all internal/individually based things that fulfill me the most without depending on any other people to do so.

My mom has been driving me nutty again. It’s like I can get along with her for a period of maybe a few days, but then she launches in to her same irritating ways of being, and makes me wanna duct tape her mouth shut. She’s like a human mosquito. Nagging the fuck out of me, starting at the first time she sees me, about shit that doesn’t matter, sucking my life force every time. It is very rarely that I can interact with her without her sucking life force out of me.

I want the fuck out of here. And Zak has told me I could come live with him soon since his roommate is moving out, and that it would be ok if I didn’t have money right away to contribute. I believe him in saying that but I also see the possibility that it could take longer for me to make money and that could put strain on the relationship. I just feel like the longer I stay here at my mom’s, in the same fucking room, for the 23rd year now, the longer I am going to stay in this rut and the more my anger will build up. It seems to have no limits, other than to eventually lead to me actually fly into a rage, but honestly it takes a lot to get me to physically acting out the anger I’m feeling.

I’m listening to Nine Inch Nails and I can’t explain how much I relate to the music and lyrics that Trent makes. It’s definitely super angsty music, something I originally related to a lot as a moody 14 year old or whatever age I was. I’m not that different than that self now, although now I don’t have as many environmental irritants/fights, and I’m on a psych med now that actually works. Although my mom is certainly an environmental irritant but it’s not the same as listening to/being a part of chaotic, chronic arguments within the family.

Regardless the fact that it was like like that so chronically for so many years on end, has lead to me being an angry person. I’m not the kind of angry person that will publicly start or engage in a loud argument with someone and I’m not the kind of angry person that has no patience and flips out over trivial shit like how many minutes I have to wait at a store for something. I have valid reasons for being irritated and it certainly has become an element of my personality, one trait that has been with me consistently for a long time. My mother and father have fed it very well, but so have many other things. Being controlled, being invalidated, being trapped, being prevented from developing my own individuality and autonomy, etc.

Anger isn’t the best thing but in a way it’s better than constant depression/sadness because anger is easier to channel outwards, it’s easier to express/dissipate. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be channeled into another person, but if another person is crossing a boundary or pushing your buttons and it’s really pissing you off, if you let them know in an edgy way that it isn’t ok, it kind of helps. Atleast then you are letting out the negative feeling and even if it grows for that period of time, if you face it it will fade away. But depression is something that tends to grow stronger and stronger because it is anger directed inward. When it comes to the fight or flight response, I think I fight just as much as I flight. I would rather hurt myself than hurt other people, but sometimes other people need to get the fucking message that they can’t continually walk all over you without some sort of backlash. They will have to feel the response to that kind of behavior. So it hurts both people, but sometimes it’s kind of necessary.

I guess I just feel like certain people know exactly how to trigger me. I’m not sure they are conscious of my triggers or that they are touching on them, and it may even be that they *created* the triggers to begin with. Those people generally being my mom and my dad, but also my brother. I guess it’s worse when it’s family triggering you, because then that’s just like chafing an area that has been chafed until it was raw millions of times over, only to be chafed yet again. When it comes to outside people, it doesn’t have the same effect. They aren’t able to get that same degree of emotional reaction from me.

So basically my mom triggers me really often. And I try to be patient and to learn how to deal with her more effectively, but it’s especially hard when she sets off multiple triggers at once and proceeds to do so even after she can see I’m really pissed off. Then she acts like I’m being unreasonable for responding the ways that I do, then she does confusing ass shit like asks me if I want to go out to dinner with her. Right after irritating the fuck out of me and causing me to storm around and slam doors and shit, right after getting an edgy tone out of me and short answers, she asks me if I want to go out to eat with her. Why. the fuck. would. she think. I’d want that.

So this is what happened a bit ago and when she asked if I wanted to I said no, not really. Then she says “Why not?” and I said Because I don’t want to and I just ate not that long ago. I don’t understand why she proceeds to ask me “why” when I give an answer that I feel is obvious and clear. What does it matter “why” I don’t want to? The only point of asking that is to get information to then use against me to continue trying to force me to do something I don’t want to do.

What’s even more annoying is that someone with her personality and someone as neurotic as her, is not even seen as dysfunctional at all. While someone like me, is seen as dysfunctional in a few ways. And why is that? Because being just neurotic is perfectly acceptable in our society, in fact since it correlates with things like OCD and perfectionism, it tends to help people make it in our society. But with someone like me, who is on the borderline between between Neurotic and Psychotic, I’m not accepted or seen as functional in this society. Because I have trouble getting and maintaining jobs, because I am highly emotional, because I speak my mind a lot about things other people are afraid to say, because I refuse to conform to the priorities and interests of the common person, I am viewed very differently than my my mom.

It’s absolutely fucked that if you appear outwardly perfect/functional, then that’s good enough for people to think you are on the whole ok. That there is no way you could be fucked up or have flaws, as if being able to hold a job and make regular income is adequate in proving your worth as a human being. All it means is that you don’t have trouble on a regular basis doing normal people things, and that you are good at molding yourself to be the way a workplace wants you to be. It means that you can control yourself pretty well in that way, and it also generally means you are good at faking things, unless of course you are the kind of person that doesn’t need to fake anything because the way you are does not disagree or conflict with society.

My point is that people need to stop discriminating against and judging people who aren’t busy bodies or working 24/7 and making money and having cars and houses and shit like that. I don’t know who decided that meant these people are superior human beings, and everyone else is inferior. It’s fucked. Why aren’t we focusing on real values like the kind of person someone is? How good of a person are they? What good traits do they have as a person, what degree of compassion and empathy do they have, how open and understanding are they? This is the shit that matters! Not how well you can be a puppet.