half poison, half god

“A gulf of silence separates us from each other. I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other. I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there […] How can we bridge the gulf ? Never by speech or touch. Once I thought we might fill it quite up with tears. Now I want to shatter it with our laughter.”

Depression meal 1682

You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch. Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy. You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.

You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.

Earth: The only place in the universe where hatred exists.