Wednesday, June 22, 1994

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

I had a love so solid and so definite and it dissolved into nothingness. Did the love and care even exist in the first place? Were they just appearances, a front for something I can't touch or realize. What about the illusion of Shiho that I hold so dear? Can't that love just as easily be discarded? Do I trust Shiho? Could I? How can I trust anything anymore. I don't. Not even my own existence. My existence is hardly a solid and definite thing anymore and it hardly has any significance or reliable substance.

What is so important about our existences? We float in, we float out. People go on vacations, they go home after the party, they leave the stage after the act. They move to other states, they move to other countries, they die. It all boils down to absence and the future access. But what's the big deal? People who die are like people who move away and you never hear from again. Why should my feelings toward Amina be any different if she were dead? Dead only means dead to this existence, it's only absence. People who are true friends will always find each other in different lifetimes.

If Amina and I never meet again, eventually I wouldn't be saddened by her absence. There would always be the possibility of running into her, regardless of how unlikely that is. But if she died, I would be saddened by her death, despite the realization that we probably never would have met each other anyway.

I don't trust in anything anymore because that's the way it should be. I don't feel or believe in the importance of my life because that is the way it should be. Care doesn't exist for me anymore. Care is just another word for awareness. I care about people, but I don't think my caring makes any difference at all to anybody. It's mine alone, all I can do is be aware of other people's situations and be concerned to that limited extent.

No one "cares" about me. No one can have an effect on me or the way I live my life, so no one can care about me. No one can care about me in a way I can believe or accept. I must accept myself for who I am. I can't deal with my problems because I never learned to deal with problems. I never witnessed problems effectively dealt with. I grew up in a family that covered up and ignored problems and always pretended that everything was rosy.

I have huge problems looming over me, inside me, eating and rotting me away, creating pressure around every cell from every direction and there is nothing I can do about it. I can't approach the problems, I can't face them, much less do anything about them, much less tell anyone about them.

Is it low self-image? I know I have an immense self-hatred and I know that these things are a result of my upbringing and intensify now due to the loss of a support group and other external factors that have worked to counterbalance my disadvantages. I know that my feelings about my inadequacies and failures and failings are merely perceptions. I know that from another point of view, I'm doing better than fine. That is not the way I feel, and knowing it doesn't do a thing to help cope with it.