Essence

I've been trying to find so much importance in a self, my "self", that it's making me depressed.  The fact is throughout college all I heard was find yourself, become who you want to be, follow your dreams.  But I think that's destructive for me.  I realized as I "discovered" my self (more like created it),  I found myself growing more distant from others, getting more upset at what I perceived as faults and failures of theres.  Started to assess status and popularity, started to assess how I fit in to each given group, and started losing my child-like understanding of people and their motives. As I was creating myself, I could only internalize how "other" everyone else was.  I started to hate myself for not being like them.  For not being "one" with the group.  This hate fueled me to change, to try to become the version of a perfect human for what the group needed.  Trying to artificially create oneness.

But I was wrong.  The only thing I did was destroy my essence.   I changed almost everything about me and invented the rest.  Breaking the sacred vow with my heart.  It was like a slow poison, trying to create that oneness.  I would work tirelessly to shape that square hole into a circular one.  My mind said I was doing right, but my heart said I was doing wrong.  The reason for my dissatisfaction, a mind-heart war.  I'm a little saddened that it's taken me this long to understand.  My parents never realized that by raising me the way they did, my will could overcome my heart.  Forgoing all true emotion for a fake, scripted, and rehearsed version of a person I thought others wanted, but I could never truly be.

I look back over so many blog posts, notes, and messages.  And it stares back at me, glaringly obvious.  The problem with me is that I'm not me.  That the self I created was never supposed to exist.   That the essence of who I am had been warped and perverted by the only person that could do it, myself.

The validation of others creating the drug of "oneness"that created self so craved.  Before college I never needed validation. I never cared how many friends I had or if I had friends at all.  I never cared if I fit in or if people treated me right.  I never cared about my "self".  The only way to fuel this perverted self was to block out that old "self".  The one that only cared for others, never judged them.  The one that only wanted what's best for those around him, never his own interests.  The one that would choose last place so that others would be saved from ridicule, never first place for his own glory.

No more existential struggles, no more wars between heart and mind, no more.  I should have known that when I was reading the Bible my heart was seeking unification and my mind validation.

I'm going back, I remember how I felt before, I remember the essence, I remember my heart.