37

Every year I try to quietly reflect on the annual return of the sun’s position on my birth. I read last year’s entry, and I’m always amused reading these yearly reflections because I had absolutely no idea of what was to come.

Last year I wanted to learn just to be, and this year I know I want to be a different person. Yet I couldn’t have known that before I experienced who I was without external pressures.

I learned that even when everything seems to be in my favour, I am still unhappy. External conditions can exacerbate my unhappiness, but removing them does not remove my unhappiness. I am not naive enough to believe happiness is the goal, but I can’t continue to self-perpetuate my misery after being aware of it. I am existentially suicidal but not masochistic.

I’ve always been loyal to the perception of my identity, fiercely proud to be emotional and sensitive. I am still proud and will continue to be so, except I have grown enough to realize that it is one thing to allow oneself to experience the full-spectrum of emotions and another thing to suffer unnecessarily because I lack the capacity to cope and regulate myself.

It is difficult to strike the balance between being compassionate to myself and yet believing I deserve to live better so I should try harder. All I want is to be able to respond as the situation warrants it, not too little, not too much.

I don’t wish to be happy — I just wish to be at ease with myself, and not exist in a perpetual mist of self reproach and judgement. I want to experience life in the widest spectrum possible, not just in the spectrum I’m used to existing in. Life can be harsh and painful, yet it can too contain joy and aliveness. I feel like I have been missing out on a lot because I wasn’t able to tune my perception.

I used to swing between extreme despair and pollyanna optimism. I feel more grounded now, finally seeing that there is no magic bullet, or that no amount of grandiose shifts in external reality will be able to shift me internally. It is going to be a long hard journey to cultivate peace within myself and to open myself up to life’s aliveness. I have to be willing to bear the patience and determination to develop a lifelong practice, take the responsibility towards my own well-being, and foster the courage to believe that I can be a person capable of being alive.