Reflection

Recently I read some things I had written three years ago, and some things I had written six years ago. I learned so many good lessons, and they're so easily forgotten, not too many years later. Trying to move on with problems, and my advice of the day (recalled from the not-so-distant past) is that your troubles are just a tiny star in the infinite galaxies of our existence. It's usually so hard to keep the tough problems in life in the right perspective. Maybe a few years ago I had a momentary stretch of infinite wisdom and maturity, when the planets were all in alignment with something or other. Maybe journal-writing therapy is the best way to figure something out. Maybe being impressed by my younger self is a little like being impressed with something witty or clever your child says, that only you and no one else finds to be witty or clever.

Here's what I wrote about rejection, from June 2005:
I was happy that I could feel so happy and energetic again. My happiness was feeding upon itself. I have been through this before. I knew then and I know now that it's my own brain that causes me to feel happy and full of self doubt. I know that my troubles this week are but a drop of water in the babbling brook of life. I know that pain and self doubt and jealousy are natural and normal. Disconnecting myself from things beyond my control should be possible. I only know what's here and happening at this moment and nothing else is real. Of course, people are shaped by their experiences, but they're selective experiences and the lessons from them are subjective.
What lessons have I learned? Nothing I didn't know already. Listen to my intuition. I don't want to do this again. I don't want to repeat what happened. I need to have more strength and commons sense and act on it. I should say no. I should have discipline and restraint. It's not easy to do when it feels like there may be more happiness in taking risks.

And here's what I wrote about rejection, from April 10, 2002:
I feel like the mystery has been solved, the etherealness of this will settle soon, and then the clarity will emerge. My mind is going in a thousand directions until this happens, and I'm still trying to keep an open mind so no damage occurs to my psychological condition. Maybe I'm still too sensitive to handle this. Hopefully I'll look back on this in a few years and find it amusing. When did my emotional side do me any good, anyway?
He called, I guess to say hello. I guess he's not completely detached. A very nice thing to hear from him. I feel good. I had a good walk today.
From April 12, 2002:
I thought I was supposed to be getting wiser as I get older, but I feel just as naive as I was when I was 17. No matter how I feel about this, I need to put these feelings way aside so I can get my work done. I have way too much to do, way, way too much to address this right now. Just store it away for when I have time to deal with it. Clarity over the issues is not as important right now -- I have school to deal with and the more I don't deal with school, the more I hurt myself.
From April 29, 2002:
I am developing a healthy realization of this man's faults -- critical, arrogant, cold. That doesn't mean I don't like him ... but I feel better, good, happy.
From May 15, 2002:
The whole fabric of his relationship to me he designed such that he never gets hurt ... how ingenious ... he got what he wanted ... someone who lives what, and carries out what, he knows is right for him ...
From May 27, 2002:
I was reading for my class about how to deal with difficult situations, and it said to imagine yourself looking down on yourself from a balcony. From the balcony, looking down at myself, I saw that my thoughts are just agony, I am agonizing myself, causing my own detriment, and that there's a reason, well, good reasons, why he does not want to be with me. That if we agreed on how we wanted to maintain a friendly relationship, then we would have one. Instead, we are apart, because we have different ideas on how well we relate. I have so many ideas about this, but I have no idea about whether and to what extent he put any thought in it.
I was putting my clothes away and I got frustrated for just a second that the hangers got caught together. But then I maneuvered the two stuck-together hangers so that I could take advantage of them being stuck together -- so the problem became part of the solution, in that I could use both hands to separate the hangers once I had picked them up -- it was all in a split-second thought that's hard to describe in writing, but I thought that if I could just apply that to my trickier problems -- making the problem itself work as the solution, using the problem to my advantage, then that is the answer. I thought of that months ago, though ... I thought that I really appreciate my time with him because it has been a real challenge to keep up my self-confidence and a no-defeat attitude; that I really needed this, to see and know that it wasn't me, it wasn't that I did anything really wrong, it's just that different people have a different way of treating you, and that most likely it's not a reflection on me ... I think that's a good answer, maybe the best one I'm going to get -- that this happened so I could become a better person, and to figure out what will make me happy.